Click here to view the embedded video.

for those who haven’t given time to their community…

for those who haven’t heard his call in central america, asia, or africa…

why not?

this video – a thousand questions - is from a recent conference at willow creek…

aqui estoy yo…mz

1. Mark Geissbauer is the GM of the City Stars. He came to Cleveland by way of Stuttgart (and Brazil, another good story for another day…). When I first interviewed him about his USL-2 expansion franchise 2 years ago, I asked him what his goal was. He said, “to make the playoffs.” They were an expansion team, but I thought, “OK…”…and then they made the playoffs. Year 2…”Mark, what is your goal?” “To win the USL-2 championship. Uh-huh. And of course…they did. I’m almost afraid to ask him his goals for this year, especially now that “City” has moved up to USL-1…a step below MLS.

2. I like their makeup. The team is run by Ambassadors in Sport, and has a distinctive “character” component. The City Stars spend regular time in the city of Clevleand, bringing soccer to kids who otherwise would never be able to play the game. About 50% of the players are Christians…and although that fact isn’t shouted from the housetops, it shows up in the way they handle themselves, on and off the pitch. The team tagline “Serving the City, and Changing the World” is an important part of the team’s identity.

3. I like the game. Never thought I’d ever say that…but…being from Cleveland, the most I knew about “the beautiful game” came from the Force and Crunch. Needless to say, the outdoor game makes the indoor game look like…what it is…human pinball. I went to the City Stars’ opener in 2007. I saw the speed, endurance, agility, athleticism, and guts it takes to play the game…and I’ve kept coming back ever since.

Mark interviews Musa Otieno after the City Stars won the 2008 USL-2 Championship Match vs. Charlotte

4. I like Musa Otieno. Musa is from Kenya, and is the Captain of the Kenyan National Team for their World Cup Qualifiers. He runs a ministry for street kids in Nairobi, and brings Kenyan children from different tribes together – diffusing potential inter-tribal warfare with futbol. He plays defense, he’s 6’4”, has a smile a mile-wide, and I can’t wait to take him to Ohio City to meet the African immigrants who worship at Trinity.

5. I like the price. “City” has priced the tickets so that families can get out and enjoy an evening together. Plus, they’ve created a kid-friendly atmosphere that includes getting the players lined up under a tent for a post-game autograph session after every match. The players keep signing until everyone is happy…great PR.

6. I like the “Green Army.” Having come out of “Section A” at the BGSU Ice Arena, I’m always attracted by fans who kick it up a notch. When you come to a match, sit by the “Army”…it’s loud, and it’s a lot of fun. One thing I don’t quite understand, though…if all these guys are from Ohio, how come they chant, cheer, and sing with British accents? Michael Card once told me that he was amazed at the “power a dare has over a weak mind.” This all basically came about because I “dared myself” to do it. I did baseball and hockey play-by-play at BGSU, worked with Joe Tait & Bruce Drennan as the AD for Tribe games in the early ‘80’s at Channel 43, and some football sideline reporting/high school hockey PBP with Viacom in the mid-‘80’s. (I’ve been away from it for a while…go ahead…do the math).

So…I dared myself to try out. And now they’re stuck with me. I am not a soccer expert, but I am a fast learner…and I have a good partner (and former player) in Glen Duerr. The season begins, on the road, in just a couple of weeks. The home opener is May 1^st (Fox Soccer Channel). First match on STO will be Saturday, May 9^th…they will generally be tape-delayed, and follow the Tribe games. (make sure you have some caffeine!)

So remember:
It’s a “match”, not a game.

It’s a “pitch” not a field.

You don’t guard your man, you “mark” him.

He’s not a goalie, he’s a “keeper.”

I think I’ve got a handle on this.

Let’s PLAY BALL! (no…wait…ohhh, man…)

Click here to view the embedded video.

since the first 1 night on the street in november 2007, i’ve been trying to track the results.

but with an event as essentially organic as the one we pulled off, it’s been a little difficult. after the event, we tracked over 200 people who made a commitment to come volunteer with ministries in the city of cleveland.  within 2 months, phone calls i had received led me to believe that number had grown to over 400.  this info came back to me through partner ministries that were reporting what phone calls that came direct to them was generating.

feeding the folks in ohio city

then, in late february 2008, pastor robert powell invited me to an event at the lonnie burten rec center on the near east side.  lonnie burten is the centerpiece of what was one of america’s original ‘projects’ from the 1930′s.  it’s a tough neighborhood, to say the least.

when i walked in the door, i was greeted by people who had set up a clothing distribution station.  pastor powell took me to the kitchen when a huge meal was being prepared.  dozens of volunteers were making this old rec center buzz.  then came the best part: i was told that the volunteers i saw had come together from at least 12 churches from 3 different counties.

wow.

if i could have had a wish from the genie before the event in ohio city, i would have wished for what i was looking at. and so, if you ask me how many people have become a part of volunteering in the city as a result of 1 night on the street, i must admit…i haven’t got the slightest idea…and that’s ok…right?

african immigrants barbq-ing goat (it tastes like chicken @ trinity

in the late summer, i was asked to speak to the city mission’s ongoing series of community engagement (and networking) called toward a greater cleveland. i felt like a bit of an amateur in front of a gathering that had sunk their lives into joys and challenges of the city.  i was hopeful that what i would have to say wouldn’t fall flat…the question / answer / comment time ran so long the lunch was getting cold. there is great passion for a ‘greater cleveland’.

so…where do we go from here?

in 2009, i am planning for the return of 1 night on the street. one event will take place in akron…another city that has been hit hard in the last 18 months, and another city that is filled with ministries that have been slugging it out in the trenches for a long, long time…and could really use the volunteer help.

in cleveland, the effort could take more of a ‘big event’ form…i have something in the works that i’m hopeful about, we’ll just have to see how things develop.  as they say in my business – ‘stay tuned.’ my gratitude to all who have discovered the joy of the mission field…in their own back yard.

onward…mz

why is it that we americans think everyone else is speaking a foreign language?  i mean, since we’re over here, aren’t we speaking the foreign language?

so many of the team fell ill at various points of the week…still they battled on.  it’s a privilege to serve with such selfless people.

i’ve using a great card trick all week to engage the kids…it has worked like a charm every time!  with that, credit must go to where credit is due: many thanks to long-time christian magician jim church from parma heights baptist.  long ago, i worked with jim at wuab-tv.  in 2005, jim and his wife came on our shoes for orphan souls trip to guatemala.  jim did the trick all week and wowed the kids.  this year, at our shoes for orphan souls collection day at wcrf, i asked jim if he could show me the trick…he did me one better…he gave me the deck he used in guatemala!  a little practice, a little patter development…and the tradition continues.  many thanks, jim!

today in valmiera, we visited a crisis home – boys and girls who have been removed from homes with crisis situations involving themselves, or all their siblings.  i could have stayed there all day.  such respectful, engaging, talkative young boys…i wish i could have found out why they were there, and how i could pray…but those were questions that were not for us to ask.

playing the card game “uno” is a great conversation starter.  let’s just say that ‘boys will be boys’, that the concept of ‘trash-talk’ among young men is universal, and that the games were rather ‘lively.’  i’d say the games were fun, but i always seemed to be sitting next to one of our interpreters, an 11th-grader named elina.  this young lady collected every +4 and +2 card in the deck and pounded me with them…except for the times she played the ‘skip’ or ‘reverse’ cards.  i’m coming back to latvia, elina…and i’m bringing my ‘special’ uno deck. (modified by jim church…see above;)

aija is elina’s friend.  she’s in the 9th grade, and i helped her with her english homework tonight.  (those of you who have heard me on the air…stop snickering)  aija, if your english teacher doesn’t like some of my vocabulary answers, give the teacher my email address…we’ll work it out.

by the way, elina and aija were kristine lukstina’s youth group (see monday posting) …and the tradition continues…

o.k….so maybe i’m an ‘ugly american’, but i can’t wait to get back home to something other than soccer, team handball, swimming, and auto rallies on the euro sports channels.  (by the way, when i talked hoops with the boys, they knew lebron from the olympics…good thing…they weren’t going to learn about him watching the euro sports networks)

now for the ‘euro plus’ portion of my rant: gas prices here are between $4.50-5.00 a gallon.  a lot less cars, a lot smaller cars, buses running on electric from the wires above the street, trams and trains everywhere…bravo, europe!

i love latvia.  the history, the perseverance, the pride they take in the simplest things.  it reminds me that if i do the simple things right, the rest will take care of itself.

how can a city with over 500,000 with a river and a large body of water nearby stay so clean?  (wait…who is he complimenting…a city in latvia, or a city in ohio?)

many thanks to all who gave 10-12,000 pairs of shoes this summer.  many thanks to the families of those who are waiting for their loved ones to come home…thank you for sharing us with these children.  many thanks to the staff and volunteers from buckner – in dallas and latvia – who made this week so easy for us.  and many thanks to you, dear reader…

so…when are you coming on a mission trip with us?

mz in lv packing up, getting ready to shop…and signing off

at today’s stop on our shoes for orphan souls mission to latvia, i met a great kid.

mariks is 12 years old, full of questions, and trying to be as full of english as possible.

this young boy, living in an orphanage in the latvian countryside, is actually quite a “man of the world.”

mariks has already been to the USA thanks to an agreement between the latvian social service agencies and an atlanta, georgia-based ministry.

athough buckner isn’t involved in this kind of program yet, it is an opportunity for children to travel to the USA for up to a month, and stay with an american family.

mariks is going to atlanta for christmas.

and…mariks was soaking up all the english he could today.  during our jenga and uno games, he was asking for words to be repeated, listening to the sentences, counting in english, and always with a smile.

what does the future hold for a boy like mariks?  adoption?  big dreams that an american family with means could help fulfill?  spending time in a christian atmosphere that could jump-start an eternal relationship with his savior.

it could be “all of the above.”

how about you?  has your “adventure” across cultures started yet?

a year ago, we tried to jump-start dozens of inner-city ministries in cleveland with an event called 1 night on the street.  check out some of the other posts on the sidebar…we’d love to have you check them out, and some of the ministries listed there as well.

for me, the “adventure” has included trips overseas…like the one i’m on this week.  according to a recent survey by george barna, only 11% of american christians have ever ventured outside the united states for ministry purposes.  why is that true?

fear?  uncertainty?  or worse…ignorance?

when you journey outside your culture and comfort zone, you find that you’re not going to visit “foreigers”…you find out that you are the foreigner.

and that’s o.k.

as my friend shane claiborne points out, “americans didn’t invent christianity, they just domesticated it.”

atlanta’s welcoming mariks for christmas.

who will welcome you in 2009?  a ministry at home…or a chance to minister that will take you outside the country?

either way…if a 12-year-old latvian boy can step outside his comfort zone, i think we can take some steps like that, too…right?

mz in lv

spongebob in german

the translators told me that these young men and women were into everything.  yes…everything.

later in the evening, i went upstairs to spend some time with the 9-12 year-old boys.  the difference was staggering.  the translators for buckner visit this orphanage multiple times per month…and they began one year ago.

they admit that they may have come to this place too late to have a lasting effect on those 17 and over…but they are determined to break the cycle in these understaffed, secular city orphanages in latvia.  that cycle, as you can imagine, includes everything from alcohol, to drugs, to promiscuous sex…etc, etc…

the work with the young boys has already produced the kind of fruit that gets them to church and sunday school on a regular basis.  the regular visits by these latvian volunteers for buckner help reinforce the seeds the local church (and the american visitors) plant.

keep them in your prayers.  long after we have gone, these young beleivers – many of them in high school – will still be doing the lord’s work in these places where children don’t have the most important factor of all to stay strong in their faith…

…a mom and a dad.

if you had them…be thankful.  if you have them now, be thankful all the more.

and pray.  without ceasing.  lord, we insulate ourselves so easily from those most affected by the evils in this world.  give us the boldness to walk where we’ve never walked before, and pull these precious little ones away from the flames…whether those flames are 5,000 or 5 miles from our front doors…amen.

mz in lv

at one time, this area had 23,000 red navy and army inhabitants, and was one of the most secret locations on earth (unless you owned a spy satellite or are tom clancy).

now, pastor sergei stands with buckner international trying to turn back the tide.

one little girl stole my heart today.  she’s about 9, with a wonderful smile, and a bubbly personality.  she threw herself into every song, being a helper, and all the crafts – she even made a little keepsake box (with glitter)!  when i left, we hugged…as i mentioned earlier, another of the dozens of ‘goodbyes’ we have to say on a trip like this.  it was a great day…and then we got to the restaurant…

that’s where i learned that this little girl’s mom had died six months before.  her father is unemployed, and abusive.  she now lives with her grandmother…who is verbally abusive.

and so i sat in this restaurant and cried.

how can a father have so little respect for their child?  how can a grandmother not embrace this precious, wounded life?  how come i didn’t spend just a few more minutes with her.  how can the poverty of the naval port breed such a disrespect for life?

earlier in the day, i had dace in my arms. dace is 11 years old and has severe down syndrome.  there was fun all around her, but she would not stop moaning.  them, i put down the 6-year-old who kept jumping on me, put down the stckers, put down the bubbles, and held out my hand…

dace grabbed it…tightly.

she sat on my lap for the next 40 minutes…holding my hand, and resting her head on my chest.  the pained look and moaning was gone, and her wandering eyes kept finding mine and focusing on them for a second or 2, when i whispered her name.

2 things occured to me as i’ve been typing here:

how often am i in a race to do the things i’m scheduled to do, and forget to see the one reaching out her hand?  i don’t need to ask what i should do to change in that regard…i’ve got a pretty good idea.

the other thing was something i’ve recently read from henri j.m. nouwen (i think)…he said that the best measure of the fitness of a society to continue is how it treats those in that society who cannot produce anything useful, or defend themselves.

…and election day is just 6 days away.

back to riga tomorrow…ciao for now…mz in lv

let’s start with the tough part of the day first…i gave it 3 good tries with the teenage boys at the liepaja city orphanage today. i tried 3 different paths to insert the gospel into our time together…it didn’t work well, and then they went out for their cigarette break. (did i mention this isn’t a christian orphanage?)

frustrating? yes. did they know that will, candace and i cared? i sure hope so. i know i paint a wonderful picture on the air of these trips…and they are. but sometimes, you can’t win a battle in a 4-hour visit. lord, help us if nothing else to have planted some seeds…in your name…amen.

before the orphanage visit today, we walked down the street a block to the sv. trisvienibas katedrale. (st. trinity cathedral)

…no, not a theology problem there…just a translation problem. anda, my translator, told me the more literal meaning would be “holy trinity cathedral”…

anyway, the church built in 1758, has an organ with 7,000 pipes, and beautiful gold leaf everywhere on the altar. even more remarkable…this place is still standing after the nazis and red army occupations. (yea, god!)

the best part was a short, translated conversation with the old lady at the donation table. holy trinity is a lutheran church, you see…and i had an idea, and reached for a hymnal.

i asked anda, “is this the communion service?” as i stopped at a certain page. she said that it was.

although the tune chanted by the cantor looked different, i asked if the old woman could read the first line:

“the lord be with you…”

i replied through anda’s translation “…and with your spirit.”

the old woman read, “make haste o lord to deliver me…”

and i replied, “make haste to deliver me, o lord.”

we smiled. not a fake american churchy smile, but a smile borne of knowing. of knowing the same words, the same faith, the same lord. i could walk into holy trinity in liepaja this sunday, not knowing a word of latvian, and have a wonderful worship experience. i know, liturgy isn’t “cool”…but on this cold, rainy day in liepaja, it felt good…to the depth of my soul. sola fide…sola gracia…sola scriptura.

my job in the opening of the orphanage visits, is to be the narrator of our little play on the story of king “nebby” and the firey furnace.

while being a little hammy (me?) in the first few minutes of the story, i looked over to the bench where the buckner folks were sitting…and there was kristine.

(for those of you who don’t listen to wcrf, kristine lukstina worked for buckner during our first trip 2 years ago…she is most famous for using the end of our “thank you” spot to listeners to invite them to latvia, and to “bring me some ice cream”)

we had some time to catch up during the afternoon, and then at our team dinner. kristine is now out of grad school, and trying to get her marketing company off the ground in a tough economy (here, too…). her idea is to use the web and be the link behind the comsumers testing a new product, and the inventor or company that needs feedback. kind of an “e-focus group” kind of thing.

the best part is that her focus hasn’t changed a bit from 2 years ago…

“i want to get rich,” kristine said, “so that i can use all that money to fund the ministries i’ve dreamed of starting here in latvia.”

hey, i’m not much on the prosperity gospel, but…you go kristine. aside from building a business from the ground up, kristine spends her spare time running a youth group, and playing guitar in her church praise band. (don’t call her…she won’t be home…)

my “latvian daughter” is busy about the lord’s work. and, to keep her sugar level up, I brought her the “order” she placed with me by email: 2 boxes of nerds, and 4 bags of differently flavored hershey’s kisses (they can’t get any of that here…how uncivilized!)

as i watched her drive away, and looked to my right down the town square toward holy trinity, i thought about what a good day the lord has made…and just how big, and how subtle, he shows himself in the everyday.

11:30pm here in liepaja…the last tram should be passing under my 4th floor window soon.

“the lord be with you…”

mz in lv

click to listen to mark’s audio blog – riga. latvia

when you’re so far from home, (4,399 miles if you drew a straight line!) it is so nice to hear something familiar…and so it was sunday morning at st. matthew’s church in riga.

the ability to sing amazing grace with our latvian brothers and sisters was wonderful.  what made it fascinating was watching our lips move in english, while right behind us, the latvians were singing in their native language.

it was a wonderful reminder that someday we will all be worshipping in a universal language at the throne…and that the things that seem to divide us, like language…really don’t divide us all that much.

we spend the afternoon at an orphanage in jurmala that i have visited before.  it was good to see that there have been some nice improvements since i was there 2 years ago.  new lighting, brightly painted walls in the kids common rooms have made for a much nicer atmosphere for the children.

every time i go on one of these trips, i always try to be in “guard my heart” mode, but it never lasts for long.  i always let me guard down for a couple hours, a kid steals my heart, and…well, you can guess the rest…

on sunday, it was ediys (ed-eez).  this sweet little 9-year-old grabbed onto me right from the start.  whether it was playing jenga or soccer, or the many times he just jumped onto my back, ediys is typical of so many of the boys we will see this week.

because the vast majority of these orphaneges are staffed by women, the boys who live there have almost no discernable male imprint on their lives.  and that messes up part of the equation:

all kids need a dad.

i played with ediys until it got dark, and then it was time to go…

the excitement of these trips is meeting the kids and spending time with them.  all kids that i’ve met around the world are just like mine…they want our attention…and they want to learn.  the holy chaos of short-term missions vbs is so much fun.  as americans, we are out of our element…and that’s a good thing.  it makes us just a little sharper, just a little looser than we are in the day-to-day button-down world.

the tough part of these trips…the goodbyes.  you say so many of them in 10 days, even the jet lag is better than hugging a little kid with an uncertain future…goobye.

pray for us this week…that the seeds we plant will find growth with the latvian volunteers for buckner who keep returning here every couple of months.

on to liepaja on the baltic coast on monday…more to come…

mz in lv