So being a team on our own this month without anyone on our team who speaks fluent Spanish (but enough people that know some Spanish so we can figure out way through most things), there are bound to be a few misunderstandings. Fortunately, we do have one woman from the town that does know English, so in ministry settings we do have a translator. However, on the Race, not every moment is a ministry moment. Sometimes there are just relational moments that you try to have fun and use the best Spanish you can muster at the time.
Well, throughout the first week of being in Honduras, the pastor kept asking me “Usted juega futball en domingo?” (Do you want to play soccer on Sunday?). A very simple question. So I gave a very simple answer, “Si!” (Yes!). I figured this was just another great opportunity to build community and relationship with the pastor here. You could tell that he we very excited about playing futball, because every day he kept asking to make sure I was still down for playing. Well, you could tell that it was very important to him and that he was very excited about it, so of course I wasn’t going to back down, be he was just generally excited about us missionaries being here in his town and at his church, so I thought nothing of it.
Then Sunday morning came (in case you are wondering, here they have church service at night, so the pastor wasn’t skipping out on his own church service to go play soccer). My whole team was eating breakfast at the pastor’s house discussing what we were going to do for the day before church, when the pastor was very eager to know if the girls were going to come watch us guys play soccer. After a while, the girls finally decided that they would come because it was evident that this was very improtant to the pastor and that he was very excited about all of us coming along.
This whole morning, however, none of us seemed to be able to bridge the language barrier communication gap. Simple sentences became so hard to understand (very unusual for the time that we’ve spent here, especially since this is the 3rd Spanish speaking country we’ve been in in a row). For example, one of the girls asked the pastor if he liked soccer (Le gusta futball?). Not a hard question at all, right? The pastor responded while holding up his pancake, “Si, con miel, pero no hay.” (Evidently speaking about the pancakes we were eating and not understanding the very simple question at all, “Yes, with honey, but there is none.” That should have been the first clue that there had been some major misunderstandings going on).
Well, after we finished eating breakfast, we wait for another pastor to come give us a ride to go play soccer in the back of his pick-up truck. Up until this point, I thought we were playing a little game of soccer with the pastor and some of the local kids across the street from his house at a little hard dirt clearing where teeenagers are often kicking a ball around. But apparently we are going somewhere else to play with some adults. Ok. Now, you have to understand that us as Americans from the United States MIGHT be able to hold our own against some Central American 8 year olds, but high schoolers could definitely kick our butts. Adults? We are definitely going to get schooled now.
We hop into the back of the pickup truck and end up driving 40 minutes way. We get to a small town, and pull into a small, narrow, dirty alleyway, and that’s where we stop. During the car ride, I noticed that the people we were with to go play soccer were wearing nice jeans and dress shoes that everyone seems to wear for everything. So I figured this wasn’t going to be too bad.
But then, we walk through the gate, and there I find myself walking on the best grass I’ve seen in Central America (and when I say best grass, I mean I think I’ve only seen grass maybe 3 times so far at all, and this grass was definitely well kept with a sprinkler system and everything). On the field already are two teams in red and yellow uniforms. We definitely have gotten ourselves into something.
As Will (the other guy on my team) and I walk into a small little concrete shelter that serves as the changing rooms, we find uniforms laid out for us–jersies, shorts, long socks. We see that pastor and several other people we came with pulling out nice cleats and changing into the uniforms.
Once Will and I get changed, we step out to show the girls who are now sitting in the stands to watch. They scream and yell and cheer us on as we start to get warmed up to play a game that will surely go down in history. Fortunately, one of the local guys lets me barrow his cleats, otherwise I would have been running out in the field with my long socks and Keens.
The game that we walked into ends, and shortly after we get out onto the field with the same guys, in the hot sweltering sun on a at least 90 degree day, playing through the heat of the day. We are now playing on the red team. When Will got out on the field, his strategy was to always make sure that someone from the other team was covering him so he wouldn’t get passed to. When I got out on the field, I thought I was going to try to use the same strategy, but I always seems to be open and running for the ball.
No thanks to us, our team did win the game, 6-5. The long, hot, sweaty day was over, and it was time to head back home to rest with a late lunch–hot soup, of course, to top it all off.
Yep. This is life on the Race. Language barrier misunderstandings that lead to some of the best stories of your life.
