Saturday/Sunday

OK, I'm going to get everyone caught up on our weekend. I have been pleasantly surprised at how many people have been following the blog online. Thanks for the many emails and well wishes.....sorry if I haven't had the chance to get back to all of you quite yet but I definitely intend to.

On Saturday morning we had our best weather of the week. It was easily in the mid 70's with beautiful sunshine throughout the day.

We had our normal morning practice from 9-12 and got through the 2nd group of pitchers throwing bullpens and our hitters got some defensive work in and went through hitting stations.

Dan ran over and got us some Subway to eat at the field before our clinic, which turned out to be the biggest/busiest of the week. I am going to attempt to post a picture after this blog post of our team mixed in with several of the kids that was taken after the clinic. We started out with about 30 kids at the listed start time of noon, but as the clinic went on we were quickly reminded of what "Bohemian time" means.....

By 12:30 we had 120 kids at the clinic. It made for a challenge to fit them into the stations that we had set up but our guys were up to the challenge and it ended up being a great experience for all of us.

At the end of the camp the local coaches asked me to speak to the kids about the importance of academics to the kids who hope to pursue college baseball in the U.S. When I asked how many wanted to go to college in America, I was shocked to see about 90% of the kids raise their hands. I was proud to tell the kids in attendance that in the past 5 1/2 years at Taylor we have never lost a kid to eligibility/grade issues. It is a testament to the current players and graduates to have that type of record at a school with the academic demands that Taylor has. It is also a challenge to our current team to keep that streak alive.

After the clinic we returned back to the hotel and the guys had some time to grab dinner before settling in to watch the Colts take it to the Ravens. We took the evening off from our nightly devotion time.

On Sunday everyone had the chance to sleep in a little bit before we headed off to our base Church (Freeport Gospel) for the 2 hour Sunday morning service starting at 11. What an experience that turned out to be.....I think the the 1st thing that impressed us was how much they truly love being at Church. It seems in our country we like to keep Church on a strict clock, it was obvious early in the service that there is nowhere else that they would rather be. The second thing was that all the women in the church wore big hats......a little thing but it was obvious that these women went all out for Sunday church.

The people of the church were very welcoming to us and the pastor (Randy's brother) gave a great sermon about Nehemiah and his people building the wall. He challenged us to Pray 1st, set a watch 2nd before taking any action in our lives. It was a powerful sermon and really struck a cord with a lot of people in attendance.

It POURED Sunday afternoon, which turned out to be a blessing because it gave the guys time to study in preparation for the 2nd test of the course. I'm sure if it had been 70 and sunny that would have been a more difficult task.

In the evening Randy and Carolyn had the whole group over to their house for a great meal out in their back yard and time to relax outside by their pool, play ping pong, pool, or watch some of the football game on TV. It was a great experience to be out in the community again and spend some time with these 2 great people.....we couldn't have had this trip without them. I plan on doing an entire post on these 2 later in the week and all that they have done for us.

During our meeting time we heard from freshman Sean Ford, Ryan Dykstra and Taylor Luna.

I think that brings us through the weekend and up to Monday....more on that tonight and I hope to get that picture posted shortly of our team with the kids from the clinic.

Thanks for your prayers, things are going great so far!