It's Football Time in the Dominican Republic

This past week we were blessed to have a group here from Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, TN.  While I always enjoy groups being here, this one is extra special for me because they are from Cookeville, my hometown.  As anticipated, this group went above and beyond what they came here to do, and the people of the Dominican as well as our team was blessed by them being here.

This group did the usual group activities of hosting a few VBS’s, visiting the hospital and the dump in Puerto Plata, and completing a work project here at Manna Christian School.  But in addition to all of the typical activities, this group got to be a part of the first ever Manna Christian School football game!  It was an event for the history books to say the least.

Several months ago, the students at MCS asked Evan about learning how to play football in P.E.  Since all of us are football lovers, he immediately agreed.  Now picture this...18 kids who have never played football or even watched an entire football game learning how to play for the first time in their lives.  As you can imagine, it’s been an interesting few months.  The kids learned the rules, the terminology, and they even learned different plays.  To put the icing on the cake, they made up names for their teams.  They’re precious.  :)  Evan told them they would have the opportunity to show off their mad football skills with the TN Tech group.  

Now, I love our kids and I think there are a lot of things they are really, really great at.  But I was pretty certain that football was not going to be one of those things.  However, bless them, they were not going to go down without a fight.  They talked the game up all week long with the group.  They practiced every day after lunch and any moment of free time they had throughout the day.  There was even some smack talk going down.  It was all pretty amusing.

The day of the game arrived, and the kids were pumped!  The first game was between the group and the kids, and like I said, our kids were certain they were going to crush the group.  Well, the kids didn’t win, but it actually wasn’t a complete devastation.  The kids never scored, but the group only scored two touchdowns on them.  That either says something about our defense or it says something about the TN Tech group.  I’ll let you decide.  

But do you know what the best part about the day was?  Our kids had so much fun!  Everyone got to play.  Even all of the girls made an appearance on the field.  When they weren’t actually in the game they were on the sidelines cheering for each other and doing cheerleading stunts.  They learned more about what it means to work as a team, and they were able to learn from some pretty awesome examples with the TN Tech group.  

So did their smack talk come back to slap them in the face?  Maybe so.  But did they have a great day playing a great sport with some great people?  You better believe it.  

We don’t have a mascot, so I’ll just say, “GO MANNA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL!!!”