Good Day!

Yesterday was a big day!

It started out when I helped Nadine lead worship at Vineyard. It was so refreshing! There was something about it, I can’t say exactly what, but it was like a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t that we played perfectly. We did practice before hand and that made everything go really smoothly; but we still had a few glitches. But that didn’t matter. What matter was that we were worshipping. At least I was. (Maybe nobody else enjoyed it, but I sure did☺).

Before the service, I asked God not to disappoint me. (Honestly, I’ve been feeling a bit disappointed lately as I have left recent church services). I wanted to feel His presence. I wanted God to show up.

He did!


After church, our family went out to eat, and then I walked from there to Unga Limited. The rest of the family went back home, as I headed for the soccer field for the big game! Our team, Nyota Ndogo (Little Stars) had reached the finals in a local tournament. It was the day of the final.

As I was walking down the dirt road, I came across one the Nyota “scouts”. I call them “scouts”. They are everywhere. There’s a whole network of them. You see my soccer team, Nyota Ndogo, practices on a soccer field in a slum area, and all (at least most) of them live very close to the field. During any kind of team event, big or small, you’ll come across a “scout” on nearly every corner. They have this network all figured out. The scouts can be players, assistant coaches, or any of the hundreds of kids that are avid fans of the soccer team. These “scouts” are very useful. If you need to know the score of a game that is currently playing, if you need to call a dala dala (local transport bus) to take the team to a game, if you need to find one of the players, just send a “scout”. I assume that they pass the information from one “scout” to another, so they only have to run to the next corner or so; thought sometimes, if it’s important business, the “scout” will go all the way and back himself. It’s a pretty fascinating system.

So…as I was saying, I came across one of these “scouts”. Apparently, his job was to take me to Franki’s house. It was a big game, so the team met in a bigger room then the cramped kuku club house (I’ll have to tell you about that in another blog) to get dressed and get ready for the game. I hopped on the back of the “scout’s” bike and we road off. Every one was amazed to see an mzungu (white person) riding on the back of a bicycle. Every 10 seconds I would hear some funny comment about the white person on the bicycle.

We won the game 3-0! But to me, that wasn’t the highlight: the highlight was the celebration. If you weren’t there, you have NO IDEA what it was like. But, I’ll do my best to describe it for those who didn’t have the opportunity to witness it first hand.

First of all, you have to realize that practically the whole local soccer community is watching the game. 80% of this community is children. You have hundreds of fanatical 5-11 year olds enthusiastically watching the game. You also have some of the “scouts” who have been told by the coach to run around the field waving a Nyota flag to get the crowd hyped up. When we scored the third goal, the little kids couldn’t hold back their excitement: they all rushed onto the field celebrating with the goal-scorer! We couldn’t get the game started again until all the children had been shooed off, which took a couple minutes.

When the final whistle was blown, everything changed to celebration, dancing, mobbing, and chanting. It was crazy! If it had been just a couple minutes of that level of celebration, I would have been impressed; but this continued for 30 minutes!
One of my teammates took the flag and ran to each corner of the field with 50 little kids right at his heels.
Other teammates circled up and started singing little chants as different people took their turn dancing in the middle. If you heard your name, you had to dance in the middle. Of course they wanted to see the mzungu dance. They called my name, and I did a little jig until someone else’s name was called.
Other teammates grabbed our coach and hoisted him in the air.
Groups of teammates would pose for a picture from the cameraman.
The little kids were running and circling around all the players that they looked up to and admired. They were especially flocking to the trophy-bearer. I got to witness a very humorous sight when the trophy was being passed from one player to another. In the chaos of everything the cup unscrewed from the base (it wasn’t the highest quality trophy). But no one let that get in the way of the celebration. One person grabbed the cup and triumphantly ran off with it, as did the person still holding the base. Eventually the base-bearer went running toward the cup-bearer to screw the two back together. The whole atmosphere was thick with joy and jubilee for 30 minutes! It was so fun.


We didn’t leave the field till after dark. I needed to get back home because I was helping to lead the EnGedi worship night. For those of you who don’t know me too well, let me just say: I love to worship! Some people might think that it must have been hard to get back from such a huge day and lead worship; but for me it was so relaxing. I felt so comforted as I led the worship that night.

I got ready for bed. Dad said: “Wow! Big day for you Skyler: worship, soccer, worship.”

It sure was a big day: a good day!