June 4, 2009
Yesterday was my 30th Birthday and I feel pretty much the same as I did before, only the whole morale of being 30 may be a little ominous. I didn’t really do anything for my birthday, because I had to work all day and then had Bible study in the evening, but I plan to go to dinner with friends on Saturday. My plan is to go to a Mexican restaurant in town and then for milkshakes.
I continue to work on the Bible Study material, I’m on the second of four booklets. I’ve been searching for examples from professional soccer players to illustrate the lessons. Quite frankly, I think I may be the worst person for that job. I’m limited to searching for stories by key words on the internet. As much as I like soccer, I don’t follow European soccer at all, which is where it is easiest to find relevant stories. I’d be way better off using NFL or NHL athletes, rather than European “football”. The sessions start with an illustration, then have an introduction to the value being presented, followed by sports discussion questions, life discussion questions, and a Bible focus. Most of the material is already written, but I’m doing my best to make it relevant and clear.
I’m enjoying working at the homeless shelter, and the girls who come seem to enjoy our time together, but lately attendance has been sporadic. I think a couple of months ago there were closer to 16 girls and today we were lucky to have 9, yesterday was closer to 3 or 4. Some girls who don’t live on the property can’t arrange for their transportation to come later and a couple of the girls are constrained to their quarters for discipline reasons, but I don’t know what excuse the others have. We’ve been talking about the fruits of the Spirit (which is what I’ve been leading for devotions with my reserve team), and I think it is something valuable for them to hear. So, I pray they come and listen. I know they get Bible teaching where they live, but today I asked the girls who wrote most of the NT letters and none of them could tell me Paul, even after much prompting, so I’m not sure how much they hear and care to retain.
The girls who I coach need some prayer for encouragement as well. Two weeks in a row our opponent has not shown up for our match and that’s after a rained out weekend prior, so they are discouraged. Some of them say they want to give up, but I told them that at least we still get together and practice and play small-sided games when the other teams don’t show, which is better than being on one of the no-show teams. I also arranged a scrimmage this past Tuesday with the team I play on and they did pretty well. Hopefully that gave them a bit of a boost and I really hope the team shows up this Saturday. If they don’t, I’m going to have to find another competitor very quickly. Winning by forfeit is not fun.

June 8, 2009
Well, the opponent for the team I coach did not show up again on Saturday. That’s three teams, three weeks in a row. I think the league tried to add a bunch of new teams from townships where they aren’t taking the league seriously and don’t make provisions to transport players. Needless to say, there was discouragement all around. We ended up scrimmaging a group of U15 boys, but it’s not quite the same as playing a league game. The girls had to pay to be in the league and it really isn’t fair to them to keep missing out on their games.
Other than that, not much else is new. It rained for about 2 weeks straight and finally stopped on Saturday morning. It was sunny yesterday and today, so I’m taking advantage and doing some laundry while I can hang it to dry. It took so long for my clothes to dry last week that some of them started to smell and I’m rewashing them this morning.
I leave on Sunday to go to Johannesburg for the Confederations Cup, so I’m sure that I will write more about that later.