Golazo

1.	golazo
	football/soccer expression referring to an awesomely amazing goal.

Worthy attended Grace Church's (Bath, OH) soccer camp a couple of weeks ago. A few days before it started, my sister-in-law, who coordinates the event, asked if I could be an emergency replacement for an assistant coach for one of the teams. Since I've never coached or played soccer before, the key word is obviously "emergency." However, it gave me a front-row seat to witness Worthy's heroics.

Monday through Thursday we spent working on skills and drills. Friday night was the tournament among the six teams. Worthy has never played in a game, so was new to all of the positions. He liked goalie the best, but required some personal coaching:




This is what I think was his favorite position:



Towards the end of the third and final game, Worthy was placed on offense on the right. He has never really played soccer, so the whole night he pretty much stayed planted right where he was assigned. He would move sometimes to make a mean slide tackle, but offense was fairly confusing to him, and the game just went by him from end to end while he stood there, no matter how much I encouraged him to move.

But then the ball was kicked to him in midfield by the goalie and there was nothing between him and the goal. He got the ball at his feet, dribbled all the way up the field, and slid the ball into the near corner. The assistant coach went nuts :) It ended up being the winning goal in a 4-3 match which clinched 3rd place for the evening.




Obviously he was inspired by Messi:






He glowed for the rest of the night and did not tire of mom and dad telling him all about how he scored his first goal.

Baptism in West Virginia

A couple of weekends ago, my whole family traveled to be together for my dad's baptism in the Little Kanawha River in his home town of Grantsville, WV. Our whole family was gathered together - a gift in and of itself. My younger brother and his wife came up from Florida and many of my dad's sisters joined us as well.

Our Family

and

Just the Grandboys

This was at a family friend's home right on the river. This house used to belong to my father's family, then he purchased it and completely renovated it. It belongs in Better Homes & Gardens kind of remodeling. Just beautiful. From here, we went down to the River and my dad was baptized.

It was a lovely time - gospel filled and almost ended in a stoning (thanks to all the great rock skipping...)

Great day, great family, great food, great Gospel.

Will's Medical Adventures

"Dan, I'm taking William to the ER," Jen breathlessly says.

"I'm on my way."

I was 20 minutes away when I hung up the phone, jumped in the car, and started racing from Wadsworth to Akron. I called back, because I had no idea why William would be needing a trip to the hospital. It turned out to be nothing severe; he had fallen on a rock and gashed his knee open. Eight stitches plus two weeks later, Will has this Voldemortian scar on his right knee:



One week after that first phone call, I get another. I'm at Worthy's soccer camp when Jen informs me that Will had pushed a rock waaaaaay up his nose. Fortunately, Dr. Emily, a good friend, agreed that we could bring him over her house. She pried it out, leaving us another souvenir of our summer in the States:

Farmhouse

We've been in the States a little over one month now. In some ways it seems like we never left and in other ways it seems like we've been gone a long time. The transition back has been virtually seamless. God has gone before us in every step along the way here. He provided a place for us to stay - without us making even one phone call. We're staying in Akron, Ohio - near some of my family which has been a tremendous blessing. Instead of calling our temporary residence "home" we call it the Farmhouse. We're so thankful for this wonderful place. We have an expansive yard and a kitchen 3 times as large as the one in our apartment. (And for the sake of our Vienna Friends, I'll try not to stress our happiness over Air Conditioning...) The house is great and we've quickly turned it into a temporary home. Once again, we're amazed by the generosity of virtual strangers.

Home Sweet (temporary) Home

My last day of school: a photo diary

Hi everyone! Dad thought he would take some photos of my last day of school. So, here we go...

...down the hall to the elevator...

...down the elevator...

...through the ground floor hallway...

...out the front door...

...up the hill...

...around the corner and down to the tram stop...

...here comes the "1"!...

...onto the Strassenbahn (I LOVE trains!)...

...underground...

...above ground...

...off the "1"...

...wait for the "6"...

...ride the "6" 2 stops...

...off the "6"...

...walk 4 blocks past the Turkish grocery...

...into the school and up the stairs...

...change into my house shoes...

...and greet Mr. Chris! He's pretty much the coolest person in the world. :)

...say goodbye to daddy...

...and spend most of my free-time with Sandro!

A group hug! My classmates will really miss me, so says Ms. Mary-Anne.

We call the playground "the terrace."

Our lunches are always very healthy. Surprisingly, we did not have soup this day.

I never nap during quiet time.

I've gotten very good at cleaning up.

Time to say goodbye. I would have liked to have said goodbye to Ms. Mary-Anne and Mr. Chris but they're in an important staff meeting.

But having heard that we left, they sprint down the stairs and won't let me leave without saying goodbye :)

New City Wien hymns

Tonight was the last night New City Wien's band played together; I'll be heading to the States for the summer on Thursday, and Melissa, our clarinetist (bassist, really!) will be returning to California at the end of the month, so I made a ridiculously amateurish recording of the band playing one of our originals, a re-setting of Philipp Nicolai's "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern."




Here's another hymn, "Es ist das Heil uns kommen her" by Paul Speratus. It was Martin Luther's favorite, apparently. We recorded it during the worship service, and, wow, it looks like I'll need to invest in some better monitors because I completely destroyed the tempo at the beginning.