Professional Soccer Games: Philadelphia Union

It is not every day that you have the opportunity to go to a professional soccer game for free.  In August of 2013 one of my friends texted me while I was at work wondering if I wanted to go that night to a game.  I quickly got off work and headed home to get ready to leave.  
When we arrived to the stadium I met my friends father who happens to be the chaplain of the Philadelphia Union Soccer Team.
The game was going to start in less than fifteen minutes and my excitement was growing inside of me. We were in our seats waiting for the game to start, just a few minutes into playing time my friends father came to where we were and told us to come with him.  We had no idea what was going on until we ended up sitting right behind the players and I couldn't believe how special it was.

My friend's and I have been soccer players from the young ages of four, to us watching any game is amazing.  I have never seen the Union team play before nor did I know any of their names but it was an amazing opportunity in which I will never forget!

Meeting the players was a lot of fun but just being there with my friends and watching a good soccer game was all I could have asked for.  I have gone back to several Union games as the years have gone on, but none will be as special as the first one.  The stadium called my name and the grass field was the best field I had ever stepped on making it a dream come true.

Life Lesson #25: Viewing soccer games live are awesome, with good company it is so much better!

Continent Jump

Up until 2013 I have never left the content of North America.  For the fifth missions trip I had the amazing opportunity to travel to England.  We flew into Heathrow Airport in London, England from a redeye so we arrived in the morning to try and quickly adjust to the six hour time change.  We then took a Train to York, England where we would stay that night.  
As we are all exhausted the people we are staying with show us around York and I bet that if people really payed attention to us they would see walking zombies.  As we reached our rooms we were tempted to fall asleep right after dinner but they had something else for us to do, praying that we wouldn't fall asleep.
The next morning we said goodbye and then took another train to Cambridge, England where we would stay for the remainder of the trip.  We had the opportunity to explore Cambridge as well and try different types of food they had.  
Seeing such amazing architecture in those old buildings and looking at the intense detail was so fascinating to realize how the technology was when these cathedrals and buildings were being made and how impressive it is because they are so wonderfully designed.   Such detail and work put into buildings that sometimes those working on it wouldn't see it finished because it took them so long to build them.
As we entered into the missions section of our trip it was an interesting time.  I had talked to people about my faith before but this was the first time I was on a week long trip just to talk to people.  It started out slow and it was difficult to start up conversations with people.  But once I started it was easy to continue.  I realized that I wasn't just meeting people from England but all over Europe.
We played soccer in the field of one of the parks we hung out at to speak with people brought in a lot of people we had never met before and then we were able to start up a conversation with them.  I started talking with this one guy on the second day there and I had never came across someone who believed what he did.  He was from Switzerland and He told me that he did not believe that history is reliable and he had to be there to see something happen or he doesn't believe the even occurred.  He continued to explain that he didn't know if the Revolutionary ware occurred or the Civil war.  I really didn't know how to talk to him about anything because without believing in the reliability of history then you can't believe much at all.


As I was speaking with this young man  I found it difficult to reason with him so I had a friend nearby go and find the youth pastor that was with us to help me converse with this new ideology.  It worked in the beginning because he was able to show the guy that his belief had so many holes in it and he even admitted it to himself, but he was still adamant on remaining in the belief category.  He told us that he knows many people who believe what he does...I have yet to met another person who does, but maybe one day soon and I'll know what to say.


I also spoke with two girls who had never heard about God before and this was strange to me, they were taught evolution in school but they knew there was a reason for life more than just being an accident.  I spoke with them for three hours and gave them some books to read about significance when you are a child of God.  I don't know where they are today, but I hope that they are well wherever their life path has lead them.

Life Lesson #24: When going to a different time zone taking a red eye get you quickly adjusted to the time zone, but if you don't sleep on the plane you will be very exhausted.

Turtles Take Hershey

I can never clearly recall why my girl scout troop had a turtle for our mascot.  I think it had something to do with national turtle day one year and some embarrassing moments for one particular girl. Thinking back it was cruel at the time but the one girl was so excited about it that it just sorta stuck.
As we did every summer we went on a weekend trip somewhere.  In July 2013 we went to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania.  The drive was always difficult with seven of us we didn't fit into one car.  But that was okay we made it work even with all the things that some girls need to bring on a weekend adventure.

Hotel rooms always had interesting moment for us.  Choosing who was going to sleep in the same bed and who was maybe gonna sleep on the floor so the didn't have to deal with sleeping with one of the girls who always took over the bed every night.  Once that was settled we got to work making our t-shirts.  We always made a shirt for every trip, and this trip was no different.  We drew a candy on out shirts that and instead of writing its proper name we wrote turtles to fit with our theme and our personal expression.


One thing that was always nice was we could be ourselves around each other. We went swimming in the hotel pool and then we went to Hershey Park.  We went to Chocolate World and had a lot of fun buying chocolate and seeing how it is made.  In Hershey Park we went to the water section and enjoyed all the great rides that we could in the short amount of time. Then when we were finished we met up with our leaders and the other girls who didn't com with and we went on regular roller coasters for  the rest of the day.

Life Lesson #23: When Going to a park with water rides also pack flip flops so you don't have to walk around barefoot on the hot ground.