Today is my first day in my actual Home. It is wonderful to be back--and I couldn't ask for better weather. Initially my plan was to ground myself at my house anyway for a few days once I returned, but having a lovely case of the flu yesterday has actually made me stick to my plan. The wasp sting earlier today was also a nice prompt to lay low. This may actually be the first day all summer I haven't left and it's been quite nice...
As long as you don't count all the boxes and suitcases from school that I still need to unpack, or the video I want to create to send to friends and family about this incredible trip, and perhaps if we disregard the list of chores I still need to accomplish...
Still, it is lovely to be home and I am very much looking forward to roaming around Henderson County over the next few weeks as I wait to figure out the next step. Latest update: waiting on written contracts from European teams for professional basketball overseas. I promise an update once I know where I am headed!
But first, some notes on this Euro adventure:
CROATIA - Week 1 of 3
- Location: Slavonski Brod -- aka inland, not the coastal tourist region
- ICE CREAM -- "sladodad", soooooo good. Definitely ate too much of it. If that is possible.
- Coaches' Tour for News Release Basketball. I was one of two coaches. The other was Joya from PA. We were in charge of running the basketball camp for the week. Three hours each day. We worked in partnership with the nine other members from the Bless team to run a kids' camp in the mornings, followed by basketball camp in the mid-day. We had around 65 campers attend the free camp and I was in charge of the 14-18 year olds in the big gym.
- Every evening we would build relationships with the community members, particularly the kids, by gathering at the popular water fountain on the korzo, or town square. There the kids would play with our toys, ride bikes, and hang out with us. One evening on the korzo a Christian worship band performed as people sat outside to eat their dinners and kids played.
- Every afternoon we took a "cleansing" swim in the river separating Croatia from Bosnia before getting in a quick nap. Gemma, the women's Bless team leader, had a great schedule set up for us and even with 17 people staying in one house, everything went really smoothly. Joya even cooked an amazing Italian dinner one of the evenings--delicious!
- Abbie "Red" and Ben played the guitar and banjo, and Chez played percussion--they were so good that when we were having worship at some old fort ruins, this couple wanted them to play in their wedding photo video--right then!
- Gemma and Chez (Jonathon Cherry) are getting married on August 26th!! Joya and I bunked up with the Gemma for the week and she soon had quite a few nicknames. It was a joy to work with young adults who are rooted in their faith and want to act it out in their daily lives. The two lovebirds drove Joya and I to the airport to the sound of Ben Howard's music (look him up...new fave). And with a lovely farewell in their British accents, off we went!
- Traveling! While the NRB Players' Tour team attended training camp in Dallas, Texas, I had four days to travel around Europe. Thanks to the NRB organization, especially the director Steve Sorensen, I had seamless travel and a great experience. We left Slavonski Brod at 4:30am, I flew out of Zagreb at 6:30am, and headed north. From Zagreb, Croatia to Berlin...
- Berlin: AMAZING. A must see if you ever get the chance. Incredible history, art, music, food, color...absolutely the coolest place I visited. I stayed with the NRB Berlin host coach Denise and her family. She was kind enough to give me a tour of the city and a bed to sleep in. The next day she shipped me off on the train. From Berlin to Hanover...
- Hanover: or Wundstorf, depending on how technical you want to be :). Wundstorf is a beautiful town about a 25 minute drive west of Hanover. The center of town was just how you would want a quaint little town to look. We walked over to the bakery in the morning to pick up breakfast and stopped by the butcher in the afternoon to pick up dinner. There were cornfields and tractors--I felt right at home. The NRB European Director, Ollie, and his family were my hosts and they were a delight. We went into Hanover for a variety show--there we watched an acrobat, a juggler, a ventriloquist, and a live band. The show was all in German, so my laughter was delayed by translation a bit, but still a very fun evening. Next stop was to visit my pro ball agent. From Hanover to Bonn...
- Bonn: My agent lives in Bonn with her family and it seemed like an invaluable opportunity to meet with her face to face. I stayed with her for two nights. Her agency was also putting on a basketball camp, so during the full day that I was there I helped out with camp and spoke to the group during the mid-day break. We had a question and answer session, with two of the helpers as translators. It was great to tell them that I was traveling in Europe on a missions trip, because especially in Germany, that is an uncommon occurrence--there is not a trend there of sending out missionaries to share about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm sure there is some sociology experiment in that. Fun fact: Bonn holds claim to the home of Beethoven--which we visited. From Bonn to Frankfurt...
- Frankfurt: I was only here for a short time while I waited to meet up with the Players' Tour team coming in from the States. A men's team and a women's team of mostly college basketball players were working together to run camp in Lorrach, Germany, which is just across the Rhine River from Basel, Switzerland. In Frankfurt, I met up with my Harvard 2013 teammate Victoria Lippert! :) From Frankfurt to Lorrach...
- After meeting up with the women's team in Frankfurt, and a train ride to Lorrach, we had our group meeting with Marian, NRB Finance Director and host in Lorrach. He and his family are wonderful people dedicated to bringing the news of Jesus Christ to their city. Marian himself accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior while attending one of these camps ten years ago.
- Victoria and I stayed with our host family, Barnard and Judy and their two kids adopted from South Africa, Ben (13) and Michelle (11). They loved music, futbol, and food--Vic and I were happy as could be :).
- On Saturday we had a free day, so the two teams went over to Basel, Switzerland for a scavenger hunt and some sightseeing. While there, some of us also took the opportunity to get propelled down the Rhine River although unfortunately we did not have the much needed accessory of a floatie. We lived, but especially since I am not a huge fan of swimming...I'd recommend the floatie. We also climbed up into the highest spires of a church and rode a ferry across the Rhine. That evening we took a tour of Lorrach's local castle and ate in a beer garden. Two things Germans like: beer and sausage.
- Sunday we went to church services with our host family and then we had an afternoon at a water park on the Rhine. I don't have many pictures from there because Vic and I were having too much fun with Michelle. There appeared to us to be no lifeguards and no rules. We whipped down slides time after time, however and whenever we wanted (face first on my stomach was a bruising, I mean not so good, idea). There were two diving platforms into the river and these people could do AMAZING tricks. Michelle was doing all sorts of things. Vic and I, of course, went off the highest platform first side by side and got ROCKED. The second platform was better but still a lot more shocking than fun in our opinion.
- Sunday evening we had our first game! It was camp kick-off night where the kids could receive their t-shirts and see the players in action. The evening started off with a memorial service for one of the pillars in the YMCA in Lorrach and the main administrator of the camp, Gelinder (pronounced guhlinduh), who was tragically killed in a hiking accident just the week before. Special music was performed and a moment of silence took place before tip-off. The women's team played first and Vic and I suited up in our News Release uniforms. We went on to win 104-33...yep. That happened. The team we played was a German professional team, but in the lower division four level. It is also totally out of season for them, so we were catching them at a bad time. The men's team played after us, and although they did not win quite so handily, they did come out with a solid 30 point victory.
- Monday-Friday we had camp from 9am to 4pm every day. I have never had so much lemonade soda stuff in my life. There were 150 kids signed up for camp this year! It was the largest group they have ever had and usually they only have the men's team to help out. This year they were extremely thankful for the women's team! Every morning started out with a leaders' meeting and then worship time. The kids would come in during worship and then get divided into two age divisions. Then the older kids were split into small groups for Bible study. Vic and I led a group along with Marian and Sandra (an awesome translator and main admin for the camp). The youth pastor at a local church also gave a short sermon to start off the day. Then in our Bible study groups we had questions to ask the kids. Our small group consisted of 16-18 year old girls who had some deep questions. On Thursday we asked them to write down a question that they had about God, Jesus, Christianity...anything. The questions they came up with were tough! We should have done that exercise at the beginning of the week! We ended up giving each of them a German New Testament, and on the inside I wrote them a note along with all the questions and some Bible references to help them remember what we had talked about during the week.
- Tuesday evening the men played a game while the women's team roamed around in the bleachers. As players we were given free passes to the concession stand, and of course, I ended up over doing it with candy bars, Haribo (gummy bears), and mineral water--I felt the effects all through the night and into the next morning. We yelled and hollered and brought the men to another victory.
- Wednesday we had the "Showmatch" in the town square: a dunk contest, "bump" or knock out contest, some special songs, a testimony, and free ice cream coupons for the NRB camp kids. While wandering through the crowd, I happened to meet a Cornell University graduate who now works as a geologist and travels around the world. His son was with him wearing a Cornell shirt. Pretty cool :). I of course tried my best to persuade the kid to apply to Harv. Also after the show, we celebrated Switzerland Independence Day from across the river: while we sat up on the hillside we were able to watch simultaneous fireworks on both sides of the Rhine River in Basel. It was awesome to see fireworks go off across the whole city for hours! The show itself lasted from 11pm to 11:20pm, but fireworks didn't stop throughout the night!
- Thursday evening we played again and this time we won 106-26! These girls were better than the first team, so we stepped our game up a bit. Victoria had a gagillion points, and I held my own with 8 blocks, 2 blocks away from a little triple-double action :). The kids and crowd loved us. We have one girl on the team from Kansas State--unreal passer. And great defender! We had a really fun group of girls to play with and our joy showed out on the court. (As of now the players' tour is still going in Germany and they are 7-0! Vic had a 42 POINT GAME the other night!!!)
- Friday after the morning session the women's team was all packed up and ready to head off to their next destination. I was leaving the next day to fly to Minnesota to meet up with my dad's family for a big lakeside get-together for my Grandma Joyce. We said our farewells at the train station and they headed off to Wundstorf (and eventually to Berlin) to stay with the families I had met the week before. I walked back with Marian and spent most of the afternoon writing the notes to our small group. Later that evening the men's team had another game against a really good club team. Unfortunately the club team had a few guys that were sick, but even with six players they put on quite the show. NRB ended up winning by 20 I think, but it was competitive.
- After the game, a young man from camp wanted to talk with me. Turns out my Camper of the Day challenge to him earlier in the week (every day we would pick a camper of the day who would receive a NRB t-shirt, I picked him but challenged him to let God use his talents and abilities to lead others to be not just ok, but great) really got to him. He wanted to know what he needed to do to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. SUHWEEET! :) So I talked with him for a bit, then grabbed the NRB men's team leader to come over and talk to him some more. The evening ended with this young man committing his life to a different path than what this world would have in store for him, and I couldn't have been happier.
- The next morning at 4:30am I left my host family's house and was given a ride to the airport in Basel, Switzerland. Fun fact: we drove through France on the way there! So cool. From Basel, I flew to Frankfurt, and from Frankfurt I flew to Chicago. From Chicago to Minneapolis, and from Minneapolis a five hour drive to Turtle Lake. A few days of jet lag, a hard drive crashing nap, and I was good to go for fishing and card games with the Rutzen/Albjerg fam.
And now I am home. And ready to clean, sort, clean, organize, clean, and play around/work out, while I wait to hear from my agent about a deal. We shall see what happens next, but I have a feeling it will be yet another adventure!
Thank you for joining along and may you have a blessed rest of the month! To those of you with kids starting school, hallelujah ;). I look forward to checking in at West Central in the days ahead!
O&O,
M
P.s. Stay tuned for a video about the trip with live footage! :)
Beethoven's house
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