Why do you play soccer?

It's a valid question. Considering the fact that I have played soccer for 13 years now, I must have my reasons. And I do. But unfortunately, until recently I didn't have very good reasons. It's not that they were bad, they just weren't good enough. They were things like.... I play soccer because I love the team. I play soccer because I love our coach. I play soccer because I love working out and then being able to eat whatever I want! None of those are terrible reasons for playing, but towards the end of my freshman year of college, they ceased to be good enough.
When people asked why I played soccer instead of helping with Bassycs, TWO, WOW, YC, or any other Taylor program that works with youth or focuses on missions, I didn't have a reason. Logically, those really did seem like a better use of my time. It got to the point where I had decided that if I couldn't come up with better reasons for doing soccer over the summer, I would have to quit. I couldn't put time and effort into something that I didn't believe was worth it.
Then my team went to South Africa for a missions trip... during the World Cup! I know what you're thinking; that's not a missions trip, that's a party! And it was. We did have a lot of fun, go to a World Cup game, and go on a safari. But it was so much more than that. While we were there, coached several soccer clinics. All of the kids were on holiday for the World Cup (Soccer is so big there, they schedule school around it). A lot of the churches were hosting soccer clinics to give the kids something to do and keep them out of trouble. We came in and helped create and organize drills. Through these programs, the church had an incredible outreach to the community through which they could share the Gospel. We also played about 5 games and an all day tournament. Originally, I thought that was part of the selfish touristy stuff, but it actually turned out to be the biggest part of our ministry. Since we came in and played good, hard, clean soccer we were respected. Our athletic ability gave us credibility. Then afterward, when we would hang out with the other team and tell them we also loved Jesus, they would listen! It was during these two weeks that I really realized I could use the things I love to do to share Jesus with the rest of the world. That makes it worth the many hours I put into it. The other reasons I had for playing soccer still exist, but now there is even more motivation to work hard. I can glorify God through playing soccer and hopefully spark some conversations that will share Him with others who otherwise wouldn't listen.
So, when the opportunity arose to help coach a girl's team here in Ireland, I was all over it. Today, was day one of soccer insanity. I am helping coach about 25 7-year old girls of all different levels. They are absolutely adorable! And absolutely insane! I swear someone gave them all a can of Red Bull before practice. But I loved it. I had them do a couple drills we did in South Africa and some simplified stuff that we do at Taylor. They picked it up really fast. I'm excited to keep working with them mover the next couple months.
They all think my American accent is amazing. But then just to throw them off I started talking to them in a British accent. It must have sounded pretty legit, because they got confused. I asked them how they knew I wasn't actually from England and had just lied and told them I was American. That made their heads spin. But they loved it and will probably ask me to switch accents all the time now!
But beyond that, we really did get some soccer accomplished and relationships formed. I look forward to getting to know them better and hopefully sharing a little of my story. They are eager to hear about life in America and since God is so much a part of my life I'm sure He'll sneak into the conversation! After all, He's why I play soccer. He's why I do or don't do anything. Hopefully, over the next couple months, I can at least share a little of Him with these girls. I will consider it all worth my time if I am remembered as the American girl who came and taught them soccer and also happened to really love Jesus.
After all, He is the reason why I play soccer.

Tea with Joan

There are some people in life that as soon as you meet them you immediately know you like them and want to be their friend. Joan is one of those people. She is this absolutely adorable 86 year old woman I have gotten to know through the church I attend here. Her favorite outfits include a brightly colored sweater and matching beads. And I do mean matching. Usually, the color is so close to that of her shirt if you’re standing too far away, you won’t even be able to tell she has a necklace on. I’m convinced she has beads custom made just to match her outfits. But even more important than her personal sense of style is her endearing personality. She is so sweet and kind and can carry on a conversation for hours. Just be warned, you won’t be doing much of the talking. When I was first introduced to Joan a couple weeks ago, I knew I wanted to be her friend. So when she invited myself and three other girls on an outing, I quickly accepted.

            For the past two weeks she has been dying to take us to some place called Avoca Handweavers. She went on and on about the fantastic coffee and soup they have in their cafe, and all the wonderful things they sell in their shop. Especially the rugs! She is completely convinced that all Americans want to take home rugs from this shop! The four of us accepted the invitation mostly because we wanted to spend time with Joan. To be honest, we were all a little skeptical about the place we were headed. It couldn’t actually be as great as she said.

            On Sunday we finally got it all arranged. Our schedule has been really busy so it was hard to find a time that would work. But we finally figured it out. That was a great conversation... We had decided she would pick us up at 11am on Friday.

Joan: “So I’ll call for you all on Friday at 11.”

Me: “Ok… but we have it all decided. So you can just come on Friday.” (Thinking: "Wwhy would she need to call? She probably doesn't even have our number.")

Joan: “Right. I’ll call for you at 11 on Friday.”

Me: (In my head) “Oh, call for us means she’ll pick us up at 11… wow, I’m stupid.” (To Joan) “Sounds great! We’ll see you then!”

Just when I think I have all the Irish lingo and phrasing figured out, I mess up! So this morning at 11, Joan “called for us.” We walk out to her little red car. I call shotgun (Boo-ya!) and the other three girls squeezed into the back seat. (Don't fret mom, I was polite and let someone have the front on the way back. I haven't lost all my manners.) This is when things got interesting. Remember, Joan is 86 and a little…. Out of it at times. Now I have never driven a stick shift before. Nor have I have driven in a country where you have to be on the left side of the road. But man I was tempted to take the wheel today. I think in the course of the outing she killed the car at least half a dozen times. Sometimes it was while we were waiting at a stoplight or for our turn to enter the roundabouts. Oh, roundabouts. Those were a whole other problem. She is not an aggressive driver, which was really a good thing for her. But at the same time, she was so passive that other cars would go around her and enter the roundabout since she wouldn’t go! The funniest part was, she kept commenting on other people’s driving. If someone cut her off she would mutter something about “Crazy woman drivers!” Of which she is one! It was all I could do to keep from giggling.

            Throughout the entire ride she kept up a constant stream of conversation. She talked about her life as a teacher, her experiences climbing the Alps, her friends in Texas, etc. She has done so many things! And she knows just about everyone! Joan is definitely Greystones famous! All of the posters of the candidates in today’s elections were posted along the street and she was commenting on all the different people that were running that she knew. It was incredible. I suppose when you're 86 you've had time to make a few friends.

            So after the short 15 minute drive we made it to Avoca. I have to say, this was the cutest place we have visited yet! It's too hard to describe, so just know, it lived up to and exceeded all of our expectations. Joan, being the sweetheart that she is, bought us all coffee. So we sat on the porch and chatted for another hour. After that, she released us to wander around the store for a bit. Everything was adorable... and expensive! She had warned us about this beforehand so we weren't too sticker shocked, but most everything was easily out of our price range. But that's ok. It was still a great time. While we were there we met one of Joan's friends who runs a mini-Avoca shop about half an hour from Greystones. Joan has promised to take us on another outing so we can go visit that shop. I'm so excited! It will be wonderful to spend some more time with this endearing woman.               

The Invisible Army

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a mighty king who ruled over a vast kingdom. Now the king had a good friend, a wise man, that knew God. He spent many hours every day, talking to God, getting to know Him better, and listening to what God had to say. Often, God would tell this man messages to pass on to the king. At one point, enemies of the king plotted to come capture the man who loved God and conquer the king's kingdom. So they mounted a large army and went to the town where the man of God was staying.
Early in the morning, the servant of the man of God awoke and saw this large army approaching in the distance. He was terrified! He immediately ran to the man of God and asked him, "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?!" But the man of God was not at all worried. "Don't be afraid!" he told his servant. "We have way more people on our side and can easily defeat this army." But the servant was not convinced. He did not know what large army the man of God was talking about. They did not have soldiers at their beck and call. He was convinced the man of God was going crazy! But then, the man of God prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes. In the hills around the house he saw hundreds of thousands of horses and chariots... all made of fire! Then the servant knew, the Lord would protect them from the evil that was approaching. He did not have to be afraid.
(My paraphrase based on 2 Kings 6: 8-17)

Someone brought this passage to my attention today in our morning Bible study, and I had to share it! I hope you don't mind that I took a little liberty to add my own flair to the story. You really ought to go read it straight out of the Bible. So often, I think we overlook the Old Testament as not having enough lessons we can pull away for every day life. We prefer the New Testament where we do really quick devotions. We can read 5 verses and have enough wisdom for days. That way we can check our devos off in less than 5 minutes. But the thing I love about the Old Testament is the stories. It is people's every day life. The things they did right and the things they did wrong in their lives... and even better, the things that God did in their lives. Stories like this one remind me how much we need to trust God, even when we can't see him working.

Tackling the Hard Stuff

Hard discussions are difficult to blog about, so I'll just give you an overview of some of the tough stuff we've tackled in the past couple days... And maybe some lighter stuff just to mix it up. In fact, let's start with something light...
Yesterday morning, we had our second and last drum lesson! I'm actually really sad that we only get to have two. And while I still wouldn't list that as a future career possibility, I think I actually improved a lot over those two classes. I finally got decent at "rolling," which I would never have expected in a million years. All in all, I'm really glad we had an opportunity to experience a little bit of that part of Irish culture.
In the afternoon, we had a debate and mock election. We were divided into 5 teams of 4 people, each group representing one of the political parties. My team was Fine Gael. We researched their policies, manifestos, proposals for the future government, etc. Of all the parties, Fine Gael is probably the one closest to our Republican Party although they do fall a little left of center on a couple issues. One person from each team was the "spokesperson" and presented to the group their parties positions and then debated the other spokespeople on key issues. Then the audience could ask questions to the candidates. I know this might sound boring to you, but I actually found it really fascinating. One of my majors is political science, so I found it so interesting to learn about another country's political parties and government system. I really wish I could vote in Friday's elections! Oh and just to go on record, my team won! (Not going to lie, I really enjoy winning. I am pretty competitive... probably a result of so many years in athletics!)
Skipping ahead to today, this afternoon we had our first of four newspaper discussions. Throughout the semester we are expected to read newspaper articles pertaining to Ireland and write 4 one page summaries of an article. In addition, we all take a turn leading a discussion on one major article. The two articles brought up today were really intense topics to discuss. The first was about the Catholic Church. They recently held a service in Ireland in which they publicly apologized for all the sex offenses done by clergymen in the church that have recently been coming to light throughout the world. Our conversation was a good disussion about the importance of repentance and forgiveness, while also recognizing the need for retribution for wrongdoings. It was also pointed out that this is a problem in many other circles, the Catholic Church is simply in the limelight for now. It was not an easy topic, but a important one to address. Our second article discussion was not any easier. It focused on legalization of civil partnerships for gays and lesbians in Ireland. Apparently, all of the political parties here currently support civil partnerships, but not all support gay marriage. This was another tough discussion. We looked at the impact of that kind of legislation on Ireland. But we also recognized the importance of loving people, but if they are claiming to be Christians, carefully calling them out on sin. This is something I think Christians have failed on so many times in the past. Sin is sin. All of it nailed Jesus to the cross. While the consequences on earth may be different, all of it looks the same to God because all of it is failure to achieve holiness. As Christians, too often, we are  too quick to judge people for this sin and believe it is one of the "greater sins." But that isn't true. I think all of us walked away from that conversation, more convicted of the need to love people. That doesn't mean we have to approve of their actions, but we do need to love them. After all, didn't Jesus eat meals with prostitutes and tax collectors- the "worst" kind of sinners of his day? To Him they were no different from the child on the street who told a white lie to his mother, to the man who cheated his neighbor by adjusting the scales. In the same way, we need to love everyone and not be so quick to point fingers. Instead, we need to have honest, open dialogue about our struggles. None of us deal with the same things, but if we are really a part of intentional community, we can help each other deal with every kind of sin in our life so that we become more and more Christ-like every day.
On a not so lighter note, we went to a play tonight! Fun, right? Well... sorta. It was well written and the dialogue was witty Irish humor. For example, one of the lines was:
"Jesus also drove 2000 pigs into the sea, but everyone seems to glaze over that Gospel story." 
"I didn't know Jesus could drive."
But, as a whole, it was dark and brought up a lot of depressing issues. The title of the play was "The Cripple of Inish Man." (In Irish, Inish=Island) So as you can tell from the title it's about a cripple who lives on the island of Man and all these terrible things that happen to him. (I'm about to spoil the ending so stop reading if you  plan on seeing it and want to be surprised.) His parents were killed when he was a baby, the townspeople mock him, he runs away to America and then returns only to suffer more cruel treatment, he contemplates suicide, and then dies of tuberculosis. So a bunch of really hard topics. The interesting thing is, in the midst of this dark storyline is constant witty, funny dialogue. Irish people don't seem to like to stay serious very long, so whenever things get too depressing, someone cracks a joke. I don't really understand that part of this culture yet, but it is interesting to observe.
Well, I'm sorry this post is a little bit of a debby downer. Go back and read about our Three Stooges adventure if you need to laugh again. That's what the Irish would do! But, at the same time, sometimes we do have to tackle the hard stuff. After all, life's not easy.

The Three Stooges Bike to Bible Study

You know those times where nothing goes exactly like it was supposed to? Tonight was one of those times. What was supposed to happen is three of us were to get a lift (Note, we say lift not ride. That word has a different meaning here!) to Bible Study from Laura. Wow. That would have been really simple.
Instead.... here's what happened. (For the sake of all involved, the three of us going to Bible Study will be referred to as Larry, Moe, and Curly; I'll be Moe!) Laura says she can give us a lift, but it turns out Kyle and Kelsie need the car. No big. We figure we'll just bike there. We have a general idea of where we are headed, so we figure we can probably make it there. Probably. So we go get the bikes out of the shed and start off down the road. Now, we have been warned to watch out for cars. It is illegal in Ireland to bike on the sidewalks so we have to be on the road. Plus, they drive on the opposite side which is easy to forget and disconcerting when you're on a bike and a car is whizzing by. But we go for it anyway. We get maybe a block down the road when all of a sudden, a van starts zooming towards us. But we're on the left side where we should be and he's on his left, so we're all good, right? Wrong. I'm in the back of this three person bike train. Curly, in front, gets passed the van and keeps going. Larry freaks out and slams on her brakes. I have two options, hit my brakes and hope I don't die, or hit Larry and kill both of us. I go for option one. I slam on my brakes, which yanks the chain off. So my back wheel goes up in the air and I go flying over the handlebars. I must say I landed really well. I would probably give it a 8 out of 10. It was very graceful and I was able to get back up without any scrapes. In the meantime, the van has slowed to a stop right next to me and three guys peer out the window. "You ok?" "Yep!" I give them a thumbs up and grab my bike. It's at this point I realize the chain is off so Curly spends a few minutes trying to get it back on. That doesn't work so we walk back to the YWCA and exchange bikes so I can continue. But at this point, John who runs the Y roles up in his car. "Where you headed?" "Bible study." "You want a lift? Joe and I are headed to town to return a movie and we can drop you off while we're there." "Yes!" So we put all the bikes in the shed and John gives us a lift to Bible Study.
I'm really glad we finally made it there! Thankfully Irish time is not very strict so showing up at 8:10 was actually very on time. We had a great discussion about the first 4 chapters in Exodus. There are so many times I can relate to Moses. God will ask me to do something, and I will give him every excuse I can think of to get out of it. But in the end, we follow His plan, knowing that He will be with us all the way here. I'm really enjoying learning from these people. I enjoy spending time with the older generations and hearing what God has taught them. I hope someday I can be as wise as them.

Shall We Dance?

I would not consider myself a great dancer. Scratch that. I would not consider myself a good dancer. I'm more the person who just has a ton of energy all the time, so when you turn on music I just jump around and wave my arms, all the while trying to hide in the middle of a group or stay off to the side so no one notices that I am really not very good at this. So, when I heard we were going to be taking Irish dancing lessons, my first thought was, "Oh no." Followed by, "I hope everyone is as bad at this as I will be." Thankfully, that was pretty much the case!
Today we had our first of five lessons. Our instructor is a dance instructor (duh). Her mom was an Irish dancer. Her grandparents were Irish dancers. Her daughter competes in Irish dancing. Needless to say, this family can dance! But the rest of us... not so much. Thankfully, somewhere in high school I did learn how to swing dance, waltz, and square dance. None of those very well, but I got the basic idea. So even though those aren't at all related to Irish dancing, I have at least learned how to step to a beat.
In class, we learned the steps to a "reel." Whatever that is. We basically had to hop back and forth between feet on a three beat count, then do a half a grape vine, more hopping, half grape vine back, spin around in circles, and do it all over again. Oh and somewhere in there we were standing in a square and had to switch places with the person kiddy-corner from us, all while hopping to the three beat count.
Sound hard? It probably really isn't. We're just don't catch on very fast. Thankfully we still have four more lessons! So maybe after all that, I'll be halfway decent at all this. But please, don't ever ask me to demo for you. Even after 5 lessons, it probably won't look like it's supposed to.

They're not dumb Americans. They have Will Smith!

As Americans, we get some pretty funny comments, but this was definitely one of my favorites! So here's how it came about... The YWCA where we stay his run by John Ellis and his wife Lisa. They have two little boys Joseph (age 11) and Theo (age 7). They are all originally from England but moved here a few years ago, but they often go back home to visit their relatives or their relatives come here, which was the case this weekend. So normally we have 2 crazy kids running around here, reeking havoc, but this weekend there were 5. And when Double Trouble gets even further encouragement, things go absolutely insane. So Theo and Joe along with one of their cousins (whose name I never learned) decided that one of the guys in our group, Dan, was the perfect jungle gym. So before church they challenged him to a wrestling match! But, being the good Christian he is, he told them he doesn't fight before church. Fair engough.
However, the second he returned from church, the battle was on. (Before I continue, please note no child whether age 7, 11, or 21 was hurt in the following fight.) The three immediately jumped on him and tried to take him on. The battle lasted for at least 15 minutes and I still don't know who won. But in the middle of it, Dan must have made a comment about them being Irish because between punches and tackles, they retorted they were not Irish they were English. But then they decided they were Irish and English. So one boy calls us dumb Americans for not knowing that. But then, as another leaps on to Dan's back, he shouts out "They're not dumb Americans. They have Will Smith!" Which was quickly followed by the third boy's comment, "Yeah! And they have Jim Carrey!"