Futbol!

Our church has been planning an outreach program for the many Mexican migrant farm workers here in our area. It's a great idea...they come to a park in Aldergrove, play a game (or two) of soccer, and have a barbeque dinner. They've been announcing at church that they need people to help: to come play soccer, to come barbeque, or to come and help interpret for the men who speak no English.

Yesterday at church, Doug said that the Spanish-speaking gentleman who was going to come was now not able to. Now they were going to have a lady there who spoke Portugese but that's all. So I thought, okay, I haven't spoken Spanish in 25 years, but if I combine my 14 Spanish words with this lady's Portugese, maybe I could be somewhat helpful.

I talked Nathan and Dylan into coming with me. Nathan had two cadet friends over so the 5 of us went and we had a great time! The four younguns played some hard soccer (I got compliments later about how great it was to have Nathan and Dylan out there playing, because they'd actually, like, run after the ball) and I got a chance to interpret very basic conversations. Dylan said that he'd like to go again (we're doing this every two weeks through the summer) and Nathan will be inbetween summer camp and boot camp for the last game of the season.

7 of the workers actually come from Krause's, right across the street from us! We sat and had dinner with two of them, and Dylan found out that the other sport they love to play (besides soccer) is volleyball! So they're going to try to bump the ball around together at work if at all possible.

The turnout was so good that all the "gringos" decided we'd better hold back on eating any food until all of the farm workers had eaten first. More than 20 farm workers came out...almost double our projections! It turned out there was plenty of food for everyone! : )

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you'll see Nathan and Dylan in the very left side of the photo. As you can see, it was a beautiful evening.