It's a Beautiful Thing

You know, I know that I didn't understand all the implications of when Leslie, my sister, spoke out that she wanted to be a missionary. Ten years later, December 2014, I got the chance. I don't think it truly hit until we took them to the airport, zippers bursting on the bags and Lucy slightly sedated for the plane ride. Checking the bags, no big deal. It was starting to become a reality that her and Jeff, her husband, are headed off to language school before they make their final stop in Honduras in a year. They're excited and we're super excited for them. Bags checked, we walk down the short hallway through the small, hometown airport onto security. Now it's time. We're still doing good, smiles on our faces, tears in check. Hugs all around. Then those words come "I love you and I'll miss you". There's no use in holding back the floodgates now. And you know how it goes with crying, it's like a chain reaction. I started it and all the females in the family followed suit (maybe some males joined in and just hid it well). Then they're off to Costa Rica.

Right before Christmas (2015), they come back having completed language school! However, their visit is short, only six weeks. It may seem like a long time, but when they have churches and family and friends to visit with, it seems like no time at all. Before we know it, it's the beginning of February and they are scheduled to fly out to Tegucigalpa, Honduras on a Monday morning. Fortunately (no floodgates this time) and unfortunately, Brandon and I weren't able to be there to see them off, but thankfully we were able to travel in for the weekend before to say bye. Leslie's dream of ten (now eleven) years has finally become a reality. As always it was sad, yet exciting, to see them go.

The last supper (technically lunch)

Our family has been blessed by the Shaw family for many years. They have always welcomed me into their home as I grew up, and now they have taken the opportunity to reach out to Leslie and Jeff (and Lucy;). They have been wonderful by not only paying for Leslie and Jeff's flight to Teguc, but also giving Hannah, my sister-in-law, and I the availability to fly out to visit Leslie and Jeff for free! Hannah and I just flew back to the States this past Saturday. We were able to spend the previous week with Leslie and Jeff. 

The four of us at the farm/school on mine and Hannah's last day

Hannah and I flying down allowed us to bring more luggage of Leslie and Jeff's and Lucy's belongings down to them. The crazy thing was that one of the suitcases we brought down, full of their stuff, was mistakenly (we're not positive about that one) taken out of the airport and we were afraid we had lost the bag forever. We're still not sure how this happened as our suitcase was black and the extendable handle was broken (i.e. if you tried to pull out the hand it just kept coming until it was completely pulled out! Hannah knows this all too well;), and the mysterious suitcase stealer's suitcase was a navy blue. Maybe they were color blind. Fortunately, a few days later the airport called and said that our bag has been returned!! Leslie and Jeff checked and nothing was taken out, including money in an envelope that was in a front pocket that had "somehow" became unzipped while missing.

Hannah and me with a stuffed llama we found!

Living, and visiting, in Honduras is full of adventures! Not only with hoping your luggage arrives when you fly in, but also driving is a whole new experience down there! If you are not the slight bit aggressive when you drive or you're scared to honk a horn or don't have quick enough reflexes to swerve if needed, then I don't recommend that you drive in Honduras. Honking down there can mean a myraid of things. One long, loud blast can mean the person is aggravated while a little short blast is communicating to the other driver that they can come on in, to which they will probably reply with a couple of short honks to thank you. And for some reason, Hondurans believe that if they're hanging their arms out the windows, its like their own signal of cutting in front of you, whether you want them to or not. Having their arm out excuses them somehow for the action, or attempt. Just because someone has a desire to slide into your lane and cut in front, it doesn't always mean it will happen. You always have to be on the alert to break because the largest vehicle wins down there. Also, roads signs? They're just suggestions. And if the traffic is all backed-up, there's good chance the policia is up ahead directing traffic.

Leslie seems to have adapted to the Honduran version of driving quite well, or perhaps the U.S. version was just holding her driving potential back. I'd even venture to say that she enjoys it. Many of the routes that we took gave us beautiful views of the city. The route that we took to go out to the farm and school gave us a good view to understand what the majority of Hondurans live like. When coming to Honduras on mission trips before I saw solely the hungry, the dirty, the weak, the poor. This trip, I got to round out my view of the country. Fortunately, their new presidente seems to be doing a lot of good. So where there use to be basically no middle class, now it is slowly growing.

The view of Tegucigalpa 

We were able to go to the boys shelter a couple days of the week and spend time with them. If you've read this post of mine, it'll give you a little more understanding of all that I am writing about. Sadly, the boys were being boys, and unruly ones at that, and got in trouble several times this week so we were unable to play with them as much as we had anticipated. On Monday, before they were in trouble, we went to visit and play with them in the evening. They love love love to play tag! And of course soccer :). But really, what they truly desire, is to be loved and showered with affections. Hugs and smiles are a must when spending time with the boys. But after being around them, there's no way that you would even want to withhold that kind of compassion and care towards them. There were a lot of boys that have been there for years and I've played with them before (however, it had been nearly 3 years since I've been there so I had to work on the names a lot. But on the bright side, if you call them Carlos or Christian or Joel or Roberto there's a pretty good chance you'll get it right;), but they've also had some additions. Jonathan is the newest one, he's only been there for three weeks so far. He's the only nine year old and the only black kid, so this transition has been tough on him. Most of the black people of Honduras live on the coast. They, the ministry (FCM), thinks that he and his sister, Fabiana, is from La Ceiba. Even still, they have no idea how Jonathan and Fabiana even got to Teguc. To give you a better understanding, Teguc is a good five and a half hours from the coast. Despite any curve balls life may have thrown at him, his smile is so sweet, he's super (surprisingly, really) strong for his size and age, he loves to play soccer and tag (he always wants to be "it"!), and he will wear you out with thumb wars and rock, paper, scissors! And, really, Jonathan's not the only one that will wear you out playing rock, paper, scissors! The others love it too! And his reading is quite good too! There are so many stories to tell, of the adventures of the trip and of the boys, but Jonathan stuck out to me just because he is new, and needs friends (he's got either big 11 year olds or a 6 and 4 year old-- who are as precious as could be!), and needs love (and sponsors!).

 
  Me with Jonathan & Nelson
 

 Me with Fabiana

  

Joel, our resident "baby", the four year old. Isn't he just precious??

 This is our six year old, Victor. Precious too!

The soccer goal out at the farm. If you look closely you can see chicken wire as the netting.

While at the shelter, I got to see my sister and her husband in a new light. Whenever I've gone on mission trips with FCM it's always been with Leslie and Jeff as the team coming down. But this time, they are the missionaries. They help take care of the children. They help love on the children. They help teach the ninos. It's a pretty cool thing. It's so awesome to get to see them in their element. Listening to them use their Spanish, watching their smiles as they love on the kids and treat them as if they were their own, and hearing them laugh and tease as they play with them. To see someone get to live out their dreams allows a new light to shine within them, and I have no doubt that it's Jesus lighting that candle. While I may not get to see my sister, brother-in-law, and niece-doggie very much, I can handle it when I can see how much joy they are feeling and are creating. And how they are showing Jesus to the helpless and unloved. It truly is a beautiful thing.

Jeff helping Jeffery!


Victor wanted Jeff to tag him so he could be "it"!

Leslie helping with an exam


Leslie helping Osmin study for his exam

  
Tickles and laughs with Victor

For The Love of The Game

If you had asked me a year ago if I would ever want to coach a soccer team I would have told you that I wasn't sure, but I doubted it. Mostly because I doubted my abilities and qualifications. Now, re-wind to the beginning of September, my neighbor told me that the local parks and rec was having a shortage of soccer  coaches. We had played together on the same adult league in the spring, so he knew that both Brandon and I play. When my neighbor first told me about the shortage I responded, "I don't know..." and somewhat forgot about it. Then, that next Sunday, a lady at church found out I played soccer and told me about how they're needing coaches for the rec league. Apparently they were really struggling to find enough coaches. Finally, I let myself play with the idea of coaching.

Soccer is my passion and has been for years and years. I've played since I was five (or six, either way it's all "bunch ball" at that age) and I continue to play when I have the chance. I've played rec league, travel ball, with my middle and high schools, and then I was able to pursue my dream of playing collegiate ball.

The idea of coaching intimidated me, yet I started bubbling from within of excitement when I thought about it with serious consideration. After asking some questions and some contemplating, I decided to give it a go and asked Brandon to be my assistant coach. We were going to be coaches for a U10 girls soccer team. I then began getting excited about getting to teach the girls about my passion and, maybe, hopefully, light that same passion in them. I was hoping they would be excited about the sport as I am and want to learn. I also hoped that I could somehow shine a light for Jesus with these girls and their parents. But I also began feeling a little fearful of if I could actually do this job and do it well. I know the game hands down, but creating practices, being in charge of the strategy of the game, and being in charge of 10 8-9 year old girls?? It started to make me wish I had taking the coaching class when I was back at Tennessee Wesleyan College (TWC). I began looking things up and creating my first practice. I was excited and nervous, but mostly excited.

To my dismay and surprise, I discovered that pretty much all of my team was fairly new to the sport and had absolutely no fundamentals. I had previously figured we'd go over them and perfect them the first couple of weeks and then move on. My expectations were a little too high. I noticed a couple girls had potential, but I'm not sure that anyone knew not to kick with their toe! Oh my gracious, that was painful for me to try to get them to break that habit. And if you've ever seen someone just trying to learn to kick a soccer ball properly, just to pass it, it's kind of awkward. They have trouble with opening their hips and kicking with the right section of the inside of their foot, all so that the ball will go where they are trying to direct it. But it's not impossible. Just takes a lot of patience and perseverance.

I discovered a lot of things about teaching and working with 8-9 y/o's. Their attention span, if any, is extremely short. If your eight year old can pay attention for longer than 30 seconds, then kudos to you! They talk. A lot. And they all try to talk to me at the same time, and if they're not getting heard right off, they'll just speak louder. Goodness. They have not quite reached the capability to settle disputes among themselves, like who gets to do the throw-in or goal kick. They also get side-tracked really easy, that kind of goes with the attention span one.

I was prepared to lose our first game. The girls were just learning how to kick properly and dribble. But I was viewing the game as a trial-run, to see what kinks really needed to be worked on and who played where the best. We hadn't even gotten to the point of defending, being a forward, throw-ins, kick-offs, passing, shooting, etc. I hadn't even had a chance to work with the goalkeepers, at all. So, you see, we had a looooong way to go. We got beat pretty good the first game.....and the next....and the next. You can see how the pattern is going, don't worry, it doesn't really get switched up. Unfortunately.

As the season went on, I continued to try to have an upbeat attitude about the team and our games. I didn't want my frustration to be obvious to the girls, but to continue to encourage them to play better and better, but also to have fun. If they're not having fun, then why play? Plus, if they're not enjoying it now then they probably won't continue to play. Towards the last few games I was getting hugely frustrated and just downright mad at some points. Sometimes I felt like all the practicing we were doing hadn't made a lick of difference, at least for the majority. However, with this league each team plays each other twice. So my goal was to not let the other team score as many the second time as the first game. I mean, there's only so much I can do coaching them from the sidelines. But somehow, we did improve. It was slow and painful and frustrating. But little by little the girls quit running in packs down the field. They slowly (even though it took some reminders from me and Brandon) learned and remembered to stay behind the half line if they were defenders. That toe though. And believe it or not, the girls sometimes would actually kick properly.

The girls would get frustrated, unable to understand why we kept getting the beat. Even a couple said the field hated us or was cursed :) The thing was that they were just so far behind in understanding the game and using the proper techniques. Granted, they are 8 years old and they're just learning the game and some for the first time. I had to remind myself of that frequently. However, we were at a severe disadvantage when it came to a couple of the teams we were playing against. These teams did very well and had a couple girls that could just take the ball down and shoot decently. We discovered that these teams were hand picked, so they were stacked (and did travel ball together) and the rest of us were just out of luck. I basically had the leftovers and all the youngest. But I came to love the girls and wanted to push them to be better. In a way I enjoyed the challenge of only have a couple of truly experience girls and the rest starting from scratch.

Last night we had our last game of the season. We lost. But I was so so proud of them and so pumped of how we did! The end score was 3-2. That's the best we had done all year! Yeah, we had a few toe balls in there. But everybody was throwing the ball in properly, my goalkeepers learned and remembered they could come to the edge of the big box to throw, we even began passing a little, we learned how to "mark up", we learned how to be aggressive yet not overly and become dirty, we were doing so much better at defending. We learned a lot and I'm a proud coach. If I'm able to coach next season, I would hand pick those girls in a heart beat.

I surprised myself in a way of how much I enjoyed coaching. I knew I would love being around the game so much and I love to help people learn about the game I love, so why wouldn't I like it?I have learned so much about coaching and I know I still have a ways to go, but I've enjoyed all of it. I've wondered if the parents like me enough to have me coach their daughter again or if they'd rather not have to deal with me again. Last night, one of the moms asked if I would be coaching again next season, and that was all I needed to hear to know that I did do something right and I must've done a good job.

Coaching has made me appreciate all the hard work that my coaches in the past have put in. Larry Fowler, Tom Gorman, TJ McCallum, Naomi Clarke. Shout out to all them for doing such an awesome job of being a mentor to myself and all other players that they have coached. It's amazing what an impact you can put on someone as a coach and I can only hope I'll be as half of a good as a coach as they were to me. There were many times when I'd walk the sidelines talking to my players and wondering if this is what Coach Clarke felt like and looked like, and I could only hope that I could emulate her. It's funny that I remember when I played in college, and during preseason or regular season we all thought Coach was nuts or we were mad at her for something, but nevertheless we respected her. But now that I'm in that position of being a coach, I understand what it's like to be in those shoes. At least somewhat. Who knows where this coaching career will take me... :)

(Somehow my eyes managed to be shut. We're also missing two girls. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have.)