In the YWAM base we have a need for new musical instruments in the worship ministry team. The gear that they have is mostly broken and repaired and broken again and repaired again. It has gotten to the point that they cannot depend upon the microphones. Worse, the only electric-acoustic guitar that they had was destroyed in a fall.
Welding up the broken goals.
So to help fund the purchase of some basic gear they decided to organise a soccer tournament between the churches of Port Madryn. Although not all participated... the church that I was sent to had only three people turn up and all of them were women... we ended up with six teams playing including two teams from us.
Some parts had been completely missing.
We had our staff team (Tito as captain, Rene, Gaby, Fabian, Daniel, and me) and a Discipleship school team (Jorge as captain, Gabriel, Juan Pablo, Ernesto, Dawelky, Stephanie, and Heather). The two girls were happy to go it with the boys as they loved playing soccer and there was no girls team.
We were ready after lots of repairs on our old goals, changing our soccer field from up-down to cross-wise and making it larger, putting up big nets to catch stray balls before they left the property, and leveling out the ground somewhat. A quick game between ourselves the day before to make sure all was good, some last minute work on the day, and then we just needed to wait for the teams to turn up.
By the end of the first series of rounds, our staff team was set to move into the play-offs. The Discipleship school team also moved into the playoffs as the losing team with the highest points score. We beat them and moved into the final.
The final took place immediately after our semi-final play-off, leaving us all tired as we competed against a team that had been able to rest up. This is not an excuse for the fact that we lost this game. They were better players and deserved to win. It is just that I believe we would have made them work harder for their prize if we had been given a short rest between the games.
As it turned out, the winning team took home a lovely big trophy to remember the day by. We too ended up with a trophy that said we were "Sub-Campeones", which brought a smile to all of our faces.
That night we all slept solidly. We were stuffed.