In the Holy Land

Hey folks, I dropped in on the Holy Land on January 9, for a two-week excurision of the nation of Israel. To see the land of my Savior is a pretty big deal for me. I got in late last night to a round of questioning from security (seeing that I came alone, oh boo hoo hoo!) and now I am here in the port city of Jaffa.

I'm so tired. But today, I woke up somewhat refreshed (jet-lag), so I took a stroll around the sea in Jaffa and near the port. The sounds and the people are fresh, so are the smells, the sights, and the landscapes, everything is back to square one. Not knowing the language and trying to order something is quite intimidating, but the cool thing is that most Israelis know English.

Its definitely culture shocking to begin with. Every trip I take its culture shocking. From Japan to Taiwan to China there are some nuances to be noticed and the unfamiliar can always be daunting. Yet this is Israel, nowhere near the Far East. The energy of this place is very different from Asia. The Jews here are a very animated and experssive people. Their hand gestures, the volume of their voices, and their behavior seem much aggressive. However, they seem very genuine and heartwarming to one another. Coming from a nation where people are naturally reserved, its definitely tough when I experience another new culture.

See, this happens to me every time I go to a new country. I come off the plane, I am exhausted, I'm culture-shocked (I miss Korea), then I after a few days I get used to the pace of life of the new country and get into a groove. That's how I roll. I guess travelling alone it will have that effect everytime I go somewhere new, but going solo does have its benefits as you can spend more time in reflection and peace at certain sites.

Today, I went to Simon the Tanner's house. Do you remember Simon the Tanner from Acts 10? When Peter invites the Roman centurion Cornelius after the Lord revealed Himself in a vision to him? Simon hosted Peter during that time when Cornelius and Peter discussed how the Lord brought them both together. It was neat that this would be the first Biblical site I would see in Israel, as this event paved the way for Christ's message and salvation to be spread among all peoples who feared the Lord and wanted to walk in His ways. It was cool. I read the story in my Bible while I sat in front of Simon the Tanner's house. Too bad I couldn't go inside.

Other fun events today was I saw a camera crew shooting a music video for an Israeli music artist. This 17-year old Jewish kid might become a pop idol. The kid was really nice as I got to see them produce some of the vid.

Another sign I was in Israel was when a platoon of young Israeli Defence Soldiers (IDF) came round yonder, M-16's in tow. These Jewish homies don't play any games! Its pretty amazing that 20 year olds, both female and male, have to join the military. Talk about patriotism and serving your country. Many of us in the United States don't want to serve.

So I will be in Jaffa/Tel-Aviv for a few days before moving on to the City of Zion to see places where my Savior preached, died, and rose again. In the meanwhile, I need to take a nap.

Soni Declares For Free Agency

25-year old Kingdom of Heaven player Mark P. Soni has opted to become a free agent this upcoming offseason.

Soni, who has averaged in 5.5 Making Girls Cry Points Per Class (MGCPPC), has opted to go into the free agency after not signing with his current school, Hakik Girls High School.

"Its time for a change, the Lord is willing it on this one. This is one of the more hard decisions I have to make, but at the same time its the obvious one," said Soni.

Asked for particular reasons on his decision to go into the free agent pool, Soni reiterated its not the program, but a time for someting new.

"Its not like I have something new to do after I'm done. In fact, no teams have been calling me to sign me up. I'm taking the market slow because the market is actually slow. I think its time for a new voice to come to Hakik Girls High School, because I believe I done the best I can for this school. I will miss my students, my teachers, and the great people who supported me in this effort."

Mark has cited numerous achievements during his time as a full-time teacher on the HGHS team. One of his students is going on to Koryo University next year, as well as successful teaching year, and of course, the free-agent signing of Fae (정별) to the Kingdom of Heaven squad.

"Only the Lord knows how many seeds been planted. I know I'm not always the perfect teacher. In fact, I'm not a trained teacher. I just know people. The Korean people need something fresh when it comes to the English language. I hope that I brought that to the table and they ate from it," contemplated Soni. "Its going to be sad to move on, but His Will keeps me going."

Soni To Apply For Free Agency

Maryland native Mark P. Soni will apply for free agency at the end of his contract with Hakik Girls High School, which ends in 2010.

The 25-year old kid has been in the Incheon Native Teachers' Program for three years after making a big move to his mother's native Korea in 2007. The free agency looms for Soni as he will most likely opt out of his current contact after it expires in 2010.

"Its time to test the free agent waters and see where I'm going next," said Soni, during an interview at a local PC Cafe where he was not giving away turkeys to local people, because the birds do not exist in this country.

"Its pretty daunting because I was pretty secure in this job and I felt I could do the best at the highest level, but I know its time to move on...but to where to next? Who knows."

For Thanksgiving, Soni will spend time with local expat teachers in Incheon in fellowship.

On Sunday, the mercurial player from Maryland will have a speaking engagement at a local church, emphasizing highlights from his career here in Korea and how God changed his life.

"My testimony is important to me, and since Christ changed my life, its time for me to share with the community how God saves souls from sin," said Soni, nothing that this will be his first speaking engagement in the Korean language. "Its pretty scary, doing it in Korean, but I know that He was willing to help out young Moses when he faced the Egyptians, so I know that I walk in confidence in Him."

As we head into the winter season, Mark Soni will be testing the Free Agent waters soon. Who will we sign with next? Time will tell for the young man hailing from the state of Maryland.

Marcio Silva
Reporting from Incheon, ROK

The Beautiful Game Has a Black Eye

With all the hype coming up for the World Cup next year in South Africa, one might become excited as the final teams finish out the qualifying stages to see who is going to the Prom of Soccer.

Los Yankee Boys will be joining their Mexican and Honduran qualifiying partners as they take on the rest of the world in their next World Cup Challenge. We have a great and talented team this year, considering they almost defeated the Brazilians in the Confederations Cup this past summer and upset defending Euro Champs on their way to the finals. We got some evidence to back it up.

Heck, the All Whites, aka New Zealand, a country known for its fearsome rugby thugs, the All Blacks, will be joining their Down Under cousins the Aussies in WC 2010, and both Koreas will be in the same competition, adding more spice to the Footballing Stew.

Then there's the French. O Boy. Their November 18th qualifier will be probably one of the most controversial in history, a huge "*" goes on the side as the Hand of Thierry bats the ball...twice...to help keep the ball in play and narrowly escape defeat at the hands of the Irish. No luck of the Irish on this one, they got a load of garbage on their doorstep for this one.

The Irish fought hard both games, but they came up short. For their efforts, they got robbed, like someone passed GO on Monopoly and not only took $200, but they busted open the jail and got everybody out robbed. And those thugs took everybody else's $200. It must be really awful how the Irish got robbed on that one.

See in professional basketball and in American football, refs can look at the plays and they can check if someone goofed up. It's not that hard. Its called "pause," look at a camera and do your best to make a call. Its pretty blatant when THE ENTIRE WORLD can see a handball and the whole Irish team are in your face if they saw something.

Its like if someone told me that I had a big zit on my face the day I have to give a press conference to release my new CD, and they are pointing to me and showing me exactly where to crush the manifestation of oil and skin suicide. But I refuse to look at a mirror. Because someone says something to me, I don't have to believe them. They can make all the hand motions they want and say I have a zit, but I can ignore them all they want. But doesn't make sense if there are a whole rack of people seeing a target market on my face, wouldn't I want to check?

Henry, I felt bad for the guy. I probably would have batted the ball with my hand too. But I would also expect the referee and his team to do their job and make the right call too, and Henry wouldn't have been in this predictament.

Thanks to this incident, even though I am big fan of soccer, I am a little bit sore at FIFA and in the game in general.

This plate of "missing the point" mixed with unfairness feels like the game that people can get away with stuff.

Until the WC, I'll be paying attention to the NBA for a while.

Invictus

I finished reading this awesome book by John Carlin named Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that made a Nation. It is about democratic South Africa's birth and how Nelson Mandela emerged as president of a nation that was divided and almost on the brink of civil war after his election. To sum up this interesting historical novel that is now being made into a movie named Invictus, Mandela cleverly uses the power of sport to unite a nation where there are 11 official tongues and a myriad of races that have clashed throughout the RSA's tumultuous history. A rough man's game of rugby and the nation's victory at the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa brings delirium and a sense of identity to its conflict ridden people.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison as leader of the African National Congress, then a banned-political group which was deemed "Communist and terrorist" during the Apartheid-era. Apartheid was a political and social policy constructed by the all-white Afrikaner government of South Africa, a policy that means "separateness" in the language of Afrikaans. It was designed to protect white power while keeping the majority blacks and other minorities at bay with clear social policies and boundaries where no interaction would occur between the races. It was a humiliating time for black South Africans who had no ability to climb out of their poverty and were constantly being put down by their white overlords.

In this book, Carlin cleverly paints a portrait of how Mandela, from his time of being released from prison to his rise to power in 1994, uses his charm and innocent trust to gain the respect of Afrikaner officials to start building a new concensus for his eventual new government. The Afrikaners realize that with the riots, violence, and constant pressure from the outside world concerning their Apartheid policies, they will soon become more vilified and not be able to govern if social chaos continues. They knew that time was not on their side and that this Apartheid was digging their own graves.

Enter rugby. I particulary never cared for this game until I came to South Korea. When I met a few compadres from Australia and New Zealand in my teaching program in 2007, I started to learn about this game from them. They were absolutely big fans of this game, as we Americans are about football. In fact, both games are very similar but have an entirely different approach on how to play. It was not until the Rugby World 2007 in France that I started to learn and follow the game a little bit more and more. I learned about Rugby culture and history, a game that focues on brute power and quick ball movement, combining the elements of American football and soccer. Its actually a pretty neat game (the South Africans won that World Cup too).

For the Afrikaners, a race of peoples descended from Europeans during the migrations to South Africa in earlier centuries, this was their game. The Afrikaners enjoyed rugby as these young white boys grew up with the rough hussle and tussle of knocking each other and trying to score points through field goals or "tries," the equivalent of a touchdown. Meanwhile, soccer was the sport for blacks, who were mostly poor and all you need to play is a small ball to kick on your feet. Both races were worlds apart. In fact, the book mentions that blacks in South Africa would cheer for any opposing team that scored against the all-white "Springbok" teams (an African deer which is the iconic mascot of the national rugby team).

Yet Mandela had a plan. He had many choices at his disposal to gain power in the new government of 1994: why not take revenge and oust every Afrikaner politician who has brought hurt and pain to the African majority? Or perhaps violently oust the white minority like Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe (and look what happened there)? Or being a man of pragmatic nature and a forgiving spirit, why not reconcile and build all things new?

Mandela, instead of using the usual, sometimes backfiring policy of political reconcilation (because you can't please everybody), tried his hand at using a game that the South Africans were good at and uniting his people through sport: rugby. However, there was a problem: they were banned playing internationally due to the sanctions against them from the outside world. So Mandela gave the sport back to the Afrikaners and allowed them to take it on again, much to the chagrin of the blacks and other minorities who thought it was risky to give the Afrikaner minority a sense of legitimacy again.

Through meeting the players as they prepared for the 1995 World Cup, and with team manager Morne du Plessis creating a nation unifying team motto of "one team, one nation," Mandela constructs a plan to bring a new way of thought to bring both sides down on one issue: towards victory through sport. With their pragmatic captain, Francois Pienaar, a giant of a man who grew up in a more humble environment than other priveleged Afrikaners, the players and staff started to change their attitudes that by only through getting the support of the entire nation they could not only achieve victory, but also bring a violence-battered, politically-failing apart nation together. Meanwhile, Mandela throughout the book is meeting with political enemies left and right and simply appeals to their heart that violence is not the answer.

The upcoming film is set for a December 11, 2009 release date and directed by Clint Eastwood, a renowned film director and starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as SA's rugby captain Francois Pienaar. It is something I look forward to seeing in the near future. The story I read in this book by Carlin was inspiring because a man used not further violence to make things right, but reconciliation to put a ripped-nation almost on the brink of civil war to become a new democracy where Africans of all colors could me made.

On a spiritual note, how much more does Christ reconcile us with God, when "all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath." (Ephesians 2:3) We could have been dead...forever. But Christ reconciles with God through His death and resurrection.

The Masked Men

So, its fall season, and today it plunged almost towards freezing. They cancelled classes for our 1st and 2nd grade ladies for three days due to the pandemic we all know as "swine flu," or how my friend Michael calls it, "Pig Flu." My friend Ryan's school shut down for a week last week due to several kids and staff catching the dreaded disease. Michael's school has a whopping 160 students out of action, and they still haven't shut down the school. Worldwide, people in many countries are stocking up on TamiFlu and going to their clinics to put needs into their arms.

Rewind three months to August. I just returned from the United States. Reports in the media circulate worldwide for an upcoming pandemic. "Get ready for the worst." The U.S., England, Spain, and other countries monitor patients who catch the disease early with the closest degree while the WHO tries to figure out ways to prevent the worst. Its something to keep their eyes on for sure.

But the funny thing about this tiny Indiana-sized country is that when a media report circulates, its usually inflated to degrees that are not necessarily true. Its only August.

Go back to last year, 2008. Reports come around this country that American beef is tainted and is prone to mad-cow disease. Some Koreans claimed that there was evidence that Koreans are suscepitble to "infection" of mad-cow than other races. Give me a break.

Since I came back from a country that had few cases of mad-cow disease, I got the best gift possible: an extra week of vacation, oh I'm sorry...a "quarantine." Which meant staying home, playing videogames, sleeping all day, going to my Korean classes, going to the bathouse, eating some more, and enjoying the hot summer sun. The problem is, who is checking my quarantine? Nobody was. I had a good time visiting my aunts by the way.

Thanks to the Korean government, I got TWO weeks of vacation, hot dog! Thanks to the scare, our school festival was delayed permanently. Thanks to the scare, I slept in all day.

Kidding aside, the panicky attitude of the Korean people got them into this mess, because when the real infections started happening late this Fall season, they were sitting on their hands and looking at each other and saying, "what do we do now?" Especially with the scholastic aptitude tests coming up November 12th, several of my senior girls are out cold because of the virus. If they were aware that infections pick up in the Fall, they should have focused their efforts for treating the disease and preventing it now rather during a time when hot weather kills diseases better.

So, I'm sitting in my office with classes cancelled. After several of my girls were hit by the illness, they decided to do the right thing and shut the place down. Let's put it this way, 37 girls in one room, and with Korean girls very touchy of one another and sharing each other's food...its about time they shut it down.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in office, with lots of valuable time on my hands. Let's use this time efficiently. Time to pray and ponder about the future.

My favorite moment of the Pig Flu scare is when one girl was walking with two of her friends. She is fanning her notebook in front of her, outwardly, not inwardly. Not because she was hot. "What are doing?" I asked. "Swine flu, I'm trying to blow it away." I could only laugh.

USA Is Going to South Africa 2010

Team USA is going to the World Cup in South Africa next year.

In spectacular fashion, the Americans went to the politically-embattled nation of Honduras to take a 3-2 victory in a hostile country.

In my opinion, after the Americans' disastrous campaign in 2006 in Germany, the Yankees have chances to make noises in Africa next year after doing well to reach the finals of both the Confederations Cup and the Gold Cup (losing in both).

New players like Charlie Davies, a speedy forward who plays in France and Jozy Altidore, another fast and skilled forward who plays in England, along with defender and captain Carlos Bocanegra and speedy forward Landon Donovan, we will have a great team ready for next year.

Its time to make some noise down south in the world. I'm just relieved we qualified in that tough group.