Having the opportunity to travel to Africa has been absolutely amazing. Something even more amazing-er? Playing Soccer in Africa. Oh yeah baby.
I remember telling the guys in my house how excited I was to play soccer abroad. I have understood through testimonies and stories I have heard about how big of a deal soccer is abroad. I’ve heard it said, “if you can play soccer, you can speak their language.” This past week, I got the opportunity to play a big game.
Our team was in Kamuli, Uganda and we had been traveling with some of the players and the coach from the NFC Kenya Futbol Team. This is a team located in Nairobi, Kenya that is associated with our ministry. We had spent a few days with the players at the SLAM Service Camp and traveled with them towards the direction of Kenya. We stopped in Kamuli at a church very late at night and had a service with worship and praise. The next day we played with the NFC players on a soccer pitch just a few minutes away against a local team.
As we arrived, I was blown away at the view. It was a very wide open area with an absolutely huge rock/mountain in the background of the field. Now the field itself was one of the most interesting I have ever played on. Essentially there was a giant mound in the middle of the field where it always seemed like each team would have to be playing uphill.
As we warmed up, the joy of the Lord was with me, because it hit me, I am literally in Uganda, wearing an awesome uniform, playing one of my favorite sports, with some of the most amazing people in the entire world. My friends. We warmed up a bit, and I just took it all in. There was a lot of gratitude on my heart to be where we were and to have such an amazing turnout. We had one of our Interns count the people they could see, and the number ended up being just over 1,000. To play in front of that many people was an incredible feeling and to have a lot of our team cheering from the sideline was also great.
Through the game there were some controversial calls, to which we had many moments of up and down emotions. My favorite moment from the game is when the line referee called off one of our goals, and our team confronted the ref, to which the Ugandan fans on the sideline even agreed with us about the bad call, and everyone was cheering at the reversal of the call. Looking at this image from a distance, all I could see was fists going in the air cheering, and I was so confused because I had thought we had just gotten a goal robbed from us. My teammate, Justice, ran to the sideline where I was at, and told everyone it was reversed and it was awesome.
We ended up winning the game, and inviting the players of the other team and community members to a lunch that some of our team had been preparing. There was around 450+ people that came to the lunch and it was so incredible. To serve adults and kids a meal felt very amazing and I was so full of gladness to see the Lord move through this time.
God has been so good to us. Right now I am writing from Nairobi, Kenya. I hope if you are reading you feel the joy in my words. I cannot believe that I get this opportunity. Keep praying for us. We’ve still got a lot left to go!