Reminiscin'

I'm really excited about this one.

Continuing a sports theme this week, I wrote a column related to the 2010 World Cup. I took the opportunity to basically just ramble on and tell mission stories. I thought of all the examples I saw as a missionary in Argentina of how crazy soccer fans can get, and then related that to how important the World Cup is and why we should pay attention to it.

¡De diez! - Soccer stories from Argentina

Be sure to check out the newspaper page itself, either from a copy you pick up on campus or looking up the .pdf file on the Daily Universe website, so you can also enjoy the photos that go with my column. It's a good-lookin' page.

Something interesting: I was able to include every single one of my areas into the story! I was pretty proud of that. (The Nueva Córdoba example was the big screen TV showing the World Cup in downtown Córdoba. I wasn't actually there for that, but still, it happened in Nueva Córdoba.)

And here's another example of how passionate soccer fans are, an example I wasn't able to fit into my story: I remember visiting one family (I can't even remember which area this was, or if they were contacts, investigators or church members) who had the TV on. It seemed like they were watching a soccer game, but they were only showing shots of the fans in the stands of the stadium. I couldn't hear the commentators talking, but I thought maybe they were doing some sort of pre-match show. But then the family and my companion (again, I don't even remember which companion this was!) explained to me that the game was going on, but the TV station didn't have the rights to broadcast the game. So, rather than just show something else, they filmed what was going on around the game and broadcast that to go with the audio commentary. This TV station thought video of soccer fans was more important than any other video. Would you see that in the United States? With any sport?

Here's a picture I included with my article:

This was during Argentina's first game in the 2006 World Cup. Elder Bishop and I were walking through downtown Argentina and found these kids showing their Argentine pride. We asked if we could take pictures with them. A priceless moment and a great picture.

And here's a picture that I didn't include, but I do mention the event in my article:

This was one P-Day in Villa Belgrano, when I was a mission secretary. We were playing soccer, even during a thunderstorm. One of us slipped and covered himself with mud, and that's when we had an idea. We gave up the soccer game and had a sliding-in-the-mud contest instead. Good thing the mission home had its own washer and dryer! (From left to right: Chayse Myers, Ben Richards, Bernie Packard, Andrew Thacker, myself, Lynae Gardiner [now Unsicker], Jenna Engebretsen [now Mangelson], Jessica Penovich [now Gilbert], Karen da Silva and Nick Sharp.)

(For any Argentina friends: I'm thinking about maybe translating my article into Spanish so I can share it better with all of you. But we'll see if I have enough time to do that in the near future.)

(And, Eric Peterson, I'm so sorry I spelled your name wrong in my article! I was sure that you were the 'Peterson' who spelled his name differently, but when I looked you up on Facebook this morning I realized that you're the normal 'Peterson,' and the other one was 'Pedersen,' not you. Sorry!)

¡Feliz Mundial!