Hey! Probably most of you know that I’ve never played soccer before in my life. (honestly I’ve kind of run from it), I’ve been asked to play every year in high school, and every year I said no. It’s not my favorite sport, I’m not very good at it, and I don’t really understand or enjoy it. But here I am, with soccer in the blog title, and as many of you could probably guess, soccer has been one of our biggest ministries here in Costa Rica.
One of the communities where we play soccer every Friday afternoon, is a town called Margarita. The people from that village are always eager, they are quick to laugh, and easy to play with. So early last week, when our base host told us that we would be playing a more structured game with them, you can imagine the smiles that came onto our excited faces.
When we showed up to the soccer field last Friday and shared with the children that we were excited to play a real game against them, they casually smiled and said they were looking forward to it too, that it’d be fun to watch us play against their moms.
Yeah, now if you’re thinking “oh shoot” then you’re having the same thought that ran through every member of my squad at that point. We weren’t about to play against the ten year olds that typically come (and are still typically better than us). No, we were going to be playing a real team, of experienced women soccer players. And as if that wasn’t daunting enough, we got back to our base to find full soccer uniforms laid out for us.
So yep, this was a real game. on Wednesday night, the girls on our squad were putting on jerseys and climbing onto the bus, getting ready to play against Margarita’s women’s team, and I was getting ready to play my first soccer game ever.
So many emotions were present on that bus ride. Everything from pre-game adrenaline and excitement, to a pang in my heart missing the pre-game adrenaline and excitement that came with high school sports, to extremely nervous laughter at the thought of playing against adult women in a sport I’d never tried before.
We got off the bus and found ourselves warming up under the pink sunset, and as the lights over the field turned on, I was jogging onto the field getting ready to play. ( I was playing left back if you’re curious haha)
The game started and our team began to play, to communicate, to cheer, and to rotate, as if we had played together before. Of course, it was not the most coordinated, definitely not the most skilled group out there, but as questions from new players (like myself) were being called across the field, a teammate would yell back the answer, and continue to encourage and cheer for every other player on the field.
We lost the game 5-1, but if I’m being honest it still felt like a victory. Cheesy I know, but our squad had taken a group of girls, put eleven on the field, with only five having had any soccer experience, and we played together.
The point of this blog isn’t really to sum it up with a deep moral of the story, but just because I wanted to shared about a fun and completely unexpected ministry opportunity that we had this week! Never would I have expected that coming on the race would mean putting on an old East Texas Baptist University jersey and calling myself a soccer player, but as any racer could tell you, the race will never meet expectations in the way we think.
So thanks God that we got to do ministry in a way that is new to most of us! thanks God that He gave hearts of encouragement to every player on the field! thanks God that He gave me a genuine smile and excitement to do something that I would never have chosen to do, simply because we were doing it for Him! and thanks God that His grace is sufficient enough and His power is strong enough to use the very sport I’ve run from for so long, as a fruitful ministry in the town of Margarita!
