world cup

the world cup is finally here!
after 4 years of waiting we just have 24 hours to go.

i'm pretty pumped.
i don't know why exactly, but it's just... really neat.

i love how you can put a soccer ball between two people who can't speak one word of the other person's language and they know exactly what to do. i love how it can quell political unrest in honduras. it's like the olympics... except for sport that everyone actually really cares about more than once every couple years. :)

i think the world cup is a fuzzy picture of heaven... all these excited people coming together from so many different places for the same thing.
the main difference being that God unites rather than a game. (God will do an even better job i think)

anyways...
last time around was probably the best summer ever. it seems like every day was filled with soccer games and lemonade or altaer stuff. we made our own soccer goal out of spare pvc we found and mowed half of the elementary school's field next door so that we'd have a place close to home to play at. :) such sweet memories...

i guess we're all a bit busy growing up and working and whatnot nowadays... but i think watching the games will be no less exciting than it was back then.

a bunch of us made brackets for the tournament. mine is below.






















after much thinking i decided to go crazy and make the united states go all the way to 3rd. it will happen one day so i figured why not this time. :)
i will most likely get destroyed for this... but it's a risk i'm willing to take. if it doesn't work so well... meh. and if it does, i'm probably the only one who guessed we'd go so far. :)

for all of you american soccer naysayers... we do have a good team. certainly we don't compare to teams like brazil or germany every day... unlike most countries, most of our best athletes get pulled in a number of other directions. historically, soccer hasn't been part of our culture (it's growing i think though). it's not that we just suck at it... our attention and effort is just more divided. which is a good thing... football will never leave nor should it. (i think i'd be willing to trade baseball or basketball for soccer though. :) sorry if that hurts your feelings)

but...
we are better than most countries. for your information, we beat spain (ranked #2) recently and had a good lead on brazil (ranked #1) before choking last year. it is possible for us to do well in the world cup. so don't turn your back on the team and think "silly americans, they can't play soccer". we're a decent team and we're getting better. if i hear that you're supporting another country like pastor tim's kids, i will personally come hunt you down. :) and you better watch every american game you possibly can (and cheer) until they win or lose!