July

July 11, 2009
The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy. The week before last I was trying to get one of the curriculums edited so that it could be sent to the publisher. I had started it a little before I went to Johannesburg, but didn’t get a good look at it until Tuesday and it had to be done on Friday, including a graphic for the cover, so my time wasn’t spent doing much else other than coaching and going to practice in the evenings. But I got it done.
This past week we held a soccer camp at our home field for 3 days for kids within a 2K radius of our field. So we spent Monday and Tuesday finishing preparations and finding kids and then Wednesday to Friday held the camps in the morning. We had about 60 kids a day, a little less than we had hoped, but all of the kids enjoyed it I think. We led Bible Study each day and did a skit at the end of the day to present the gospel. We had a local church very involved with working with the kids and helping out and they are committed to continuing a partnership with us to plug any kids in to the church who desire to do so. All of the kids and families have been invited to their service on Sunday morning, where we will also present the kids a certificate for the camp.
My leg is starting to feel a bit better. I have been able to job and was able to do a little over 3 miles Thursday night, which is the farthest I’ve gone since I pulled my muscle. I’ve also been able to kick the ball around a little bit with kids and have more range of movement. I can’t do anything major, but I think I might be playing goal keeper again on Sunday. We don’t have enough players and without me, we can’t even put out a full team, but I think I can do enough with my left foot to be able to play in goal, I hope. We shall see.
I had some crazy evenings the last couple of days. I have a friend coming to visit before I come home in August and we wanted to go to Kruger National Park, the largest game reserve in South Africa, while she is here. I went online Thursday to book reservations and found out that all accommodations in the park and in all of the game reserves around the park were booked. I was in a bit of a panic and quite disappointed. I called asap Friday morning and was told I could get accommodations, but not exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t care at that point, I took them. Then, I went online later Friday to pay and found I couldn’t do it without doing a bank transfer, which is very difficult from the US to Africa, and only had yesterday afternoon to do it. So, I searched for accommodations online again, and was thankfully able to get everything I wanted, when I wanted it, and after 5 attempts with a credit card, got it all paid for and confirmed. I think there are so many websites that allow provisional booking for accommodations and hold them for 48 hours, that it appeared as if there were no accommodations left, and was able on the fourth try to find what I wanted. It was a bit crazy, but now I’m at ease and excited to be going. We are supposed to be staying at a site in the middle of the best game viewing area in the park, including lions. I hope to see lots of all kinds of animals. Speaking of which, I went for a drive along the southern coast of Africa with my friends on Monday afternoon and I was just admiring the coastline and the view and saw a whale surfacing in the bay. We pulled the car over and he surfaced a few more times for us to get a good look. Also, I think I forgot to mention before that when I was near Johannesburg we had four baboons hop a fence and run across the road in front of us and continue through the field. It’s sort of fun to see baboons here like we would see deer at home.

July 13, 2009
I spent the weekend watching soccer in the rain. I had to coach two games, played one, and just went to watch the fourth, but everything I own ended up drenched. I wasn’t planning to play yesterday, because my hip flexor is still sore and definitely not 100%, but I dressed for the game just in case there was an injury. There were no injuries but with 15 minutes to go in the game my team was down 4-1 and my coach thought we could still win, so he said he was putting me in. I didn’t think he was serious, but he was, he just wanted me to send the ball forward to our attack. I was able to run and do everything left footed, but there was no way I was going to make a tackle or stop with my right leg, even reaching for a ball too far away hurt. I’m not sure what impact I had on the game, we still lost, but the final score was 4-3, and I had one assist, a nice left-footed cross.
I had a couple of the players on the team I coach over for dinner Saturday and then they spent the night, because we had another game Sunday morning. They begged me all afternoon Saturday to buy them a chip roll, which is French fries on a hot dog bun. I find them disgusting, and I refused to let them fill themselves on junk, so after much arguing I finally convinced them to settle for homemade spaghetti bolognaise. It is quite a culture where people would pass up on a nice homemade meal for 75 cents worth of mushy fries on a white bun. Healthiness is not a priority. Sometimes it makes me laugh.

July 19, 2009
I think the team that I coach may be done with their matches. The league doubled up games the past two weekends to get the season over with (I’m not sure why) and although we had one game postponed earlier in the season and yet to be played, I’m not sure we will play it. If we don’t play again then we fittingly ended our season this morning with another no-show team, I think it was our fourth for the season, which is just ridiculous. We will practice on Tuesday, but it will be sort of a fun practice and a wrap up to the season. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the girls and hanging out with them. I know I’ve been encouraged by my relationship to them and hope they have been encouraged somehow through me.
The team I play for still has two more weeks left, but things will wrap up there quickly as well. The coach asked me earlier this week to lead devotions for the team twice a week for the last couple weeks of the season. Normally it is on a rotation, but he thought it would be good if I could hit them with some good solid gospel teaching. I did the first two already. I’m sort of hitting them with characteristics of God. The first was God Is There, including the fact that He is the only God, that He is at work, that He desires to be in a relationship with us, and that knowing those things should change us. The second devotion was sort of a hard hitting, God Is Holy and Just, leaving them to think about our sin and how we cannot stand before a holy God, but are deserving of punishment. I’ll do at least two more, God Is Merciful and God Is Our Hope, and possibly a fifth. I’ll lead the last devotion with my other team on Tuesday as well, the final 2 fruits of the Spirit, so I really need prayer that I will have the time and diligence to put in to preparation and guidance from God to speak the right things. It will be 5 devotions in 10 days, which is a great opportunity, I’m really thankful for the chance to share so much of my faith, but a bit of a task as well.
This past week was beautiful weather. It stopped raining midday on Monday and besides a few sprinkles on Wednesday, it has been sunny, clear, and warm. I was in shorts today and was hot in the sun. Good weather was much needed as well, because we were running a holiday club (Vacation Bible School) for about 200 kids. It was a last minute addition to our schedule, we were meant to go out of town, but thought we would be rained out and we were supposed to camp (it did get very cold at night and would have been nearly unbearable even without rain anyway). So at the last minute, someone asked us to help with this club that would have been cancelled otherwise. It was at a church just a couple of blocks from where one of my roommates grew up in a very poor area outside the city. It was a bit unorganized and I had to fight the temptation each day to want to take over and run things myself, because it wasn’t really my place. So, I dealt with a little chaos and just waited for the time each day when I was on my own with a smaller group of kids. The kids were rather unruly, mostly just loud and distracted. It was hard to keep their attention with the programs in the church unless they were actively involved. But we sang songs, did skits, taught Bible verses, etc. I somehow was left on my own to handle all of the kids 12 and up, but there were really only about 10 of us with 200 kids, so I dealt with it. I was one of only 2 people who didn’t speak Afrikaans though, so it would have been nice to have someone helping who did speak Afrikaans. The kids in general spoke English pretty well, the biggest problem was that they don’t care to speak English if they don’t have to, so it was hard to be a part of conversations. We spent about an hour to an hour and a half each day in our small group and my group tended to double as soon as we stepped outside. I literally have no idea where the kids appeared from, but they would show up out of nowhere the second we went out to play. We spent most of the time playing games, and the majority of our group wanted to play soccer most of the time (I think that’s why the kids appeared out of the woodwork, because I had a ball and they didn’t). It was a little difficult to get everyone involved, especially with a few quieter people being intimidated by a couple of rough guys, but for the most part there weren’t any major problems. I had a chance to share the gospel with them each day and I’m not sure if many of them cared, but I at least got their attention for a bit in the middle of our games.
It was definitely an area in need of Christ (not that there is anywhere not in need of Christ), but it was good to get the kids in to the church and hopefully some of the kids will continue to be involved. One thing I still find hard to believe is the number of very small children being cared for by older siblings. Everyday we had a dozen or so 1 and 2 year olds who came with their 8-12 year old siblings, who seemed to be their primary source of care. A couple of the small ones were dropped off by an adult, but for the most part, I kept seeing 2 year olds completely dependent on their 10 year old siblings, and it always seemed rough for both of them. You know that the older ones are doing their best and they often care for the younger ones, but the younger ones tend to get pushed around and dragged about as the older ones get exhausted and weary trying to find freedom. They both need love and proper discipline, but lack both.