Just a WAWA week

Wow, this week has been a trying one. On Monday our A-Team had a scrimmage, and during the second half one of the players blew up at the coach, and they both got into a huge argument. The player was frustrated that he wasn't in the starting line-up because he's one who shows up to every practice, always works his tail off and guys who had not shown up in a couple weeks were starting ahead of him. That was the start of a very long, very emotion filled week. So as coaches we talked over what his punishment should be and everything, and on tuesday we told the team what the decision was. He was given a chance to apologize but took the opportunity to go off again. On Wednesday the A-Team had another game, the start of a tournament and in that the African coaches and American coaches (Todd and Derek) didn't see eye-to-eye on several things and it just added more fuel to the fire. On Wednesday night I was riding my bike back to the house after having dinner at Jason's and we had all been talking about everything with the team so we were already a little upset, but 3/4 of the way home my bike chain broke. So Thursday I went to Jason's because thankfully he had some extra chains and allowed me to buy one off of him. So I put that on on Thursday and then Friday night I was riding bike home after game night at Jason's and my back derailleur (gear shift) snapped in half. I don't know what caused it but now my bike is not usable. Thankfully though Jason has lent me one of his bikes to use until I can get a new derailleur brought over from the US, which will hopefully be in a few weeks. There was another game in the tournament today, and apparently the kid who blew up at our coach is now playing on one of their teams, so he won't be rejoining the club I don't think, but we shall see. I feel like this week has been a huge spiritual battle, just draining all of us of energy.

Ok now on to the positive parts of this past week. Tuesday morning I was put in charge of our boutique (store) project. We have a small shop off one of the main roads that we will be selling cleats and jerseys out of once the container comes in April/May. So it's my job to fix it up and get it ready to be used as a retail shop. I'm really excited, I have some ideas for a counter and shelving. I'm also hoping to get Todd to draw a huge Club Logo on the back wall. We are the Lions, so I want to get paint the walls white, and then have this huge blue logo in the middle of the back wall. I think it's gonna look pretty cool. I will also be building, or at least hope to be building the counter myself, I guess my carpentry blood will finally get put to use (thanks grandpa). We'll see how it turns out.

On Wednesday Jason asked me to put some bike-racks on the back of momma's and Eric's bikes, and he also wanted me to change out the cassette (back sprocket) on his bike, so I spent all morning and part of the afternoon putting those on and replacing his cassette, it was a lot of fun, and really relaxing. I learned a lot. Thursday and Friday were pretty uneventful, except for our coaches meeting which was a little unusual because of what had been going on with the team. Friday as for every friday for the next several weeks Todd and I watered the soccer field. It's pretty easy, all we have to do is set up the pump and then just let the water flood the field, and move the hose every 30-60 minutes. We usually stay out there from 10-4:30 when kids start coming for practice.

Saturday was a blast. Jason took his son Eric out to the swimming hole on friday night with their bikes and they camped out there for their father-son camping trip. We went up and met with them then on saturday and had a blast. The swimming hole was gorgeous, we spent most of the day out there, swimming, jumping off rocks, and we even went tubing down these little falls, it was a lot of fun. I think my favorite part though was seeing a fire-red Dragon Fly. Even cooler then the dragon fly is the story behind it. I was just taking random pictures of the water, and people jumping and I thought to myself how cool it would be to get a cool picture with a cool looking bug. So I prayer that God would provide a cool looking insect for me to take a cool picture of. Well as Todd and I were jumping off the rocks at one point we saw this bright red dragon fly, even its' wings were an orangish-red. As soon as I saw it I knew God had answered my prayer. After a while I went and grabbed my camera and it was finally time to go find that dragon-fly again, so I went back to where Todd and I had seen it but it wasn't there anymore, so I kept looking around, and finally got the idea to go back to where I had prayed about it, and after about 20 seconds of being there it flew by me again, so I tried to follow it and finally got a really cool picture of it. I love how awesome our God is, that he cares even about the little prayers we pray that make our day! Today was pretty typical, we had church in the AM, followed by market day, and then our afternoon study with the guys. Tomorrow is my day off, but I really want to keep thinking about the boutique, so I'll probably end up drawing up more schematics for it, and calculating everything out for the counter.

Figured you guys might want a couple pictures so here you go (More on my photobucket ablum, link top right):

Coach H (my co-coach of the B-Team) and I had our kids sit and watch the A-Team play in their scrimmage on monday, thought the sunset was pretty cool.

This is our swimming hole from the road, you can't see much which is nice because it's all tucked away so less curious Africans then other swimming holes.

And here's my awesome picture of the dragon-fly. Look how his wings cast an orange shadow on the rock!

Blessings,

Mark