Snapshot of Ethiopia

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to share a little excerpt from one of my most memorable experiences during my time working at the Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The following story describes a soccer tournament that we put on for the elementary-aged children one Saturday morning. To me, this story encapsulates the heart and inspiration behind Sports That Serve. It was experiences like this that taught me how the Lord can use something as small as a one day soccer tournament to express His love to children in need.

"When I walked in the doors….there was this vibe of excitement running through the whole place. ..come 9 o’clock when it was time for the first game between the two first grade classes, the stands were filled with kids, cheering on their classmates. Some of the workers even brought out the 1 and 2 year old babies and sat them down on the rows to cheer. Unbelievable. The next four hours was like a tornado. 8 teams, 6 games, 200 1st – 4th grade kids, 5 volunteers. But God made it work. We found a system and it ran so well. We barely have enough jerseys for four teams of 20, so while two teams were playing, two more were getting dressed on the sidelines for the next game. 4 of the 8 games went to shootouts. It was hilarious b/c most of the time during the week the kids score 4 or 6 goals a game, but today everybody (even the girls that never play) was so excited that they ended up being straight defensive battles. I mean they were into it. The shoot outs were awesome. At the end of regulation, each team chose 5 of their best players to shoot. Everyone else crowded around both sides, essentially making a tunnel between the shooter and the goalie…we had to keep pushing kids back they were so excited to see. It was priceless to see half the kids who were shooters make the cross motion across their chests before shooting. One kid was so focused on scoring that one of his teammates took his hand and did the motion for him as he just stared straight ahead, his eyes locked in on the goal.

The last championship game was between one of my best younger classes and one of my worst older classes attitude wise….so lets just say I was a little biased as the referee. I mean it was just one questionable call….it could have gone either way…I just made sure it went to the underdogs…..and I may have extended the game twice its normal length until they could tie the game at 2 all. So the last championship game came down to a shoot out too. This was story book stuff. By this time the attention spans of the little kids watching the tournament had been pushed to the max, so we had little 4 year olds running around all over the field. After 4 rounds of shooters, the score was 3-2 in favor of the younger underdogs with the good attitudes, and it came down to my boy Chalacho shooting for the underdog team (pronounced just like it sounds). If he makes it, the good guys win. If he misses, the other team has a chance to tie, and potentially send it to another shoot out. The whole crowd held their breathe as he kicked it, and when it went into the net, the team erupted. I had the trophy in my hands for about 2 seconds until it was lost in a sea of shouting kids, all wanting to hold it. I even got water poured on me in the celebration, which made me feel like a real life coach.

All in all it was an unbelievable day. So much good came from such a simple sport. "

-Rob

New Partnerships & Exciting News

Hey everyone! We've had quite a few exciting developments the last couple days. Here's a note from Rob Shields, founder and Executive Director of Sports That Serve, giving you all an update on what God's been doing in our ministry lately. Enjoy!

The past several days have been very exciting for our ministry. Yesterday I spoke with the heads of Cherokee Gives Back and Children’s Hope Chest on a conference call to discuss how our organizations could partner together. While I am always cautious about another organization’s eagerness to join forces for monetary gain, Children’s Hope Chest comes very highly recommended from my friend and mentor, Lyston Peebles of Cherokee Gives Back. The conference call merely started what I’m sure will be an ongoing conversation with Hope Chest, and it’s my hope that we can further the impact of Sports That Serve by teaming up with an organization like it.

But the most exciting outcome of the call came later that night, as I was able to have dinner with Lyston and a new addition to the Cherokee staff, Scott Steele. Scott spent 11 years living in the Dominican Republic and has a huge heart for the poor. He was excited to hear more about what Sports That Serve is doing, and as always, I was ready to ramble about our ministry. It was so encouraging to be able to sit down with two men that I respect and get to discuss ways we can expand upon what we have started in the past year.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with my friend Andy Andrews, former Mrs. D’s All Star and local accountant, who will be taking a look at our “books” and offering helpful advice for how to manage ministry finances in the coming year. This will be a huge help for me, as finances are not my favorite pastime.

We have also begun to receive response to our first wave of fundraising letters that were sent out last week. Asking for support has been a valuable lesson in learning how to walk by faith for me personally, especially considering my circumstances. I will be starting a part time job in early September that will not cover all of my expenses, so I am stepping out in faith and trusting that the Lord will provide the additional money I will require in the coming months. While this can be an unnerving thought at times, I am actually really excited to have it work this way. I would much rather take a leap of faith and rely on the Lord to provide than to have already raised all the money I need for the coming year. I have seen the Lord honor my circumstances when I have chosen to take similar leaps in the past, and I am confident He will do it again.

Please pray specifically that the Lord would continue to open doors for Sports That Serve and provide in His timing.

-Rob

Welcome!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the official Sports That Serve blog! We are so excited you stopped by to check us out. The purpose of this site is to keep our supporters, friends, and family updated on the latest news of STS, to share how you can be involved and how we see the Lord moving and working in & through our organization. Stop by frequently and share our site with your friends!

This summer has flown by and we can hardly believe it's almost over. We are really pumped about some upcoming changes we've made at STS and how the Lord is continuing to shape our vision.

First, we are excited to announce that we are taking our first step towards building a staff by hiring our first paid part-time staff, Rob Shields. Rob is the founder and Executive Director of Sports That Serve and is fully committed to all that we are about. As apart of bringing Rob on paid staff, STS is working to develop a solid support base this Fall in hopes of eventually expanding to bring on more paid staff in the future. We are really excited about taking this next step of faith!

Second, STS has focused its vision to concentrate on providing excellent sports camps right here in our local community, in the Triangle area. This will enable us to reach out and serve the people we interact with every day, to truly love our neighbors next-door. We are ready and eager to raise awareness for the cause of STS here.

Third, I'd like to share a story of how we've seen the Lord working recently in STS. Since we've been working on expanding our support base this summer, we've been printing alot of letters, updates, etc. to share with our supporters. We recently headed to our local Kinko's to print off our latest flyer, sharing news about our camp in Kinston and our first sponsored orphanage, Berket Orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While the cost was a little more than we were hoping to spend, we wanted to ensure quality both in image and color, so we decided it was best to use Kinko's. We explained what we wanted printed to the Kinko's employee, debated with him over paper type and quantity, and finally settled on our product. To our great surprise and joy, when the Kinko's employee rang us up, he told us he had a surprise for us and rang us up for HALF the price it should have been!! We could not believe it--we had not even explained our cause to him and so are assuming he read our flyer while it was printing, or that he just randomly decided to cut our cost in half. Whatever the case may be, we are fully confident this was from the Lord and are so thankful for Him encouraging us in our cause through this tangible example of His provision.

Let us know how we can help you or if you want to get involved! Blessings to you all and we'll talk to you soon!