Soccer, Smiles and All Things Wonderful

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort” – 2 Corinthians 1:8-11.

Reliable internet is hard to come by here. So hello again!! I have been overwhelmingly comforted by the Lord for the past week on my own. With each passing day I find myself running to Him and finding Him with each passing smile or wave.

Soccer started on Tuesday and let me tell you, it is already quite the adventure! The girls love the freedom of leaving campus. They love it so much that they don’t even realize how far we are running… It makes me laugh every time. The Sonrise School does not have a field of its own so we trek a solid 2 miles or so to our field. We laugh, talk and take many rests along the way. Since most of the girls trying out rarely get exercise we are starting from square one. We started easy at first with a walk/jog to the field. Once there we did two sets of five push ups… They looked at me in disbelief when I told them we were going to do push ups on the wet/muddy ground. There was a bit of complaining and bickering about our big set of push ups but once again we laughed through it. Introducing sit ups was a whole different story. I managed to get 10 sit ups out of them and that was a huge deal. They are warming up to the idea of “exercise”. Some even told me they love running and working out! That is progress!

I’m learning so much from all these girls already. They tell me about their families, where they're from, how much they miss home, how thankful they are for Sonrise, how confined they feel at times and so much more… This is only the beginning after all : ). They are mesmerized by my life. They always want to know about my family, what I do on weekends, what my favorite music is, what the weather is like, what having a boyfriend is like, my long hair, my tattoos, my rings… Literally EVERYTHING! They love touching my hair and staring at its blonde color as they are not used to it. They constantly look at my eyes and eyelashes. They are blown away by the fact that my eyes are not brown. The girls all tell me how much they miss their hair and would love to have the opportunity to grow their hair long. They are my constant reminder of thankfulness. I love them. Names are hard to pronounce and even harder to remember. Otherwise I would be throwing out names for everyone! At first they have a hard time saying “Brittany”. So I get anything from Brittan and Brittaning to Whitney. It brings me lots and lots of laughs. Most of the time it dawns on people that my name is the same as Britney Spears and we seem to work it out. Around the time they realize we have the same name, they proceed to call me Britney Spears. They tell me I look like her and ask if I shaved my head like she did… I just smile and say “not quite”.

As you all can see life is an adventure and I am just diving into it. I hope I will be able to update everyone very soon!

God Bless