Our first full day in Tanzania was very action packed to say the least. Our day consisted around prepping for our big, advertised soccer match in the local stadium of Morogoro. This stadium (see picture below) holds up to 20,000 people. Tomorrow, we will be playing a local professional team called KMC Football Club at 4:30 local time (8:30 ct).
(I believe this game will be televised, so if there was any interest in viewing this match check out the livestream. Unfortunately, the livestream link will not be given to us until 3:00 local time (7:00ct). Please feel free to reach out to one of us about a livestream link if you are interested and we will do our best to provide that.)
Our day began with visiting Faith Baptist Church of Morogoro. The team helped Jerry Wyatt and the church family with some heavy lifting, loading up trucks, and different setup preparation for our match.
The picture below is a view of the main church sanctuary here at Faith Baptist Church.
After leaving the church, we found a 3 wheeled motorized vehicle broken down in the middle of the road. Eagles to the rescue! The team enjoyed stopping and pushing the trike out of the way to help the 3 elderly ladies who were using it.
We were able to tour the stadium in which we are playing in tomorrow and host a short practice session. Our next location took us to lunch where we had a great meal of fresh grilled chicken and fries.
After dinner we went advertising through the streets of Morogoro. We piled into busses and waved at locals. We advertised our game which was to be played in their local stadium tomorrow. Other members of the church (and also another local church mission trip group) helped pass out invitations to the game.
After advertising, we returned to the stadium to help setup for the match. We freshened up back at the hotel and headed to dinner in which we were able to eat with the opposing team KMC Football Club. Before KMC arrived, they messaged us saying they were going to be 30 minutes late. Brother Wyatt, took us up to an outlook over the city for a time of short worship and prayer. We prayed for the event tomorrow and also the short gospel presentation that was presented to the KMC Football team tonight. Here’s a look at what we were surrounded by during this time.
We were presented with a home cooked Tanzania meal at the Highland resort (a camp in the local area). The picture below was taken as they were departing, however, we made sure that upon arrival this team felt nothing short of a warm welcome. We made a line where we welcomed each one of them. Many of the team members spoke English. We connected with these players by asking them to teach us many phrases in Tanzania. We even learned how to “talk trash” to the opposition on the soccer field. “Hamna kitu” means “there is nothing here”. They said you can use that to say you’re opposition is nonexistent, he has done nothing today.
All in all, our day was very exhausting, but amazing. We were able to see many different cultural differences. The people are extremely friendly here. A smile and greeting are happily accepted here. There are many different religious beliefs in Tanzania. Catholics, Muslim, Baptists, and more. It is amazing that we can take the beautiful game of soccer and provide a way to gather these various religious backgrounds to hear the gospel.
As always, thank you for your continual prayers.
YOM Staff/Eagles Soccer