Do You Get It?

Finally! I'm finally finished with my Sport Law class that took up the last 4 weeks of my life. I can honestly say it was the most difficult class I've had to take since I've been back in school. It takes everything related to law and applies it to a sports setting. So, dealing with contracts, legislation, stadium financing, sexual harassment and everything else you can think of. I actually enjoyed it, but it was tough.

So that has kept me from blogging because most of my time has been devoted to reading and writing. All that said, I did finish with an A and a 4.0 in summer school. I hope my parents are reading this. Yes, I got a 4.0. If someone is around my mom and sees that she's not breathing after reading this, it's probably because she's had a heart attack at me saying that.

Since I've been "away" from blogging, a lot has been going on. God has been moving very much in the McGoo's lately. I recently was thinking about all the things in life that I love. When I say 'things' I mean 'stuff.' The stuff I love is UK sports, Memphis sports, watching good tv shows, listening to good music, having a nice stereo system for the house, and other senseless stuff. I talked a while back about how God was stirring me to get out of my comfortable life. Well, that's about to happen...

God really got a hold of my life while I was in Ethiopia working with the street children and has been stirring in me ever since. Since I've been back in the states, I've seen life in a different perspective. Yes, I do love some of the things I listed, however, I've since realized that I cannot take these things with me. They are all finite and lead me nowhere. Our pastor Ernie Frey is very passionate about sending people out to preach the Gospel. I can hear him now saying, "Do you get it? Do you get it? Do you get what Christ wants of you?"

I realized that when I'm long gone, do I want people saying at my funeral, "That Kelly was a great guy. He sure did love those Wildcats and was a heck of a fantasy football player. And boy, you should have seen that stereo he had." I realized that there are more important things that God wants with me than just sitting on idle while I live the comfortable Christian life. So I decided to, for the first time in my life, allow God to direct me.

With God's direction in mind, I have accepted an internship position with The Forsaken Children organization to come on board and design and implement a sports ministry program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is something that I am extremely excited about. I pitched the idea to Joe Bridges, the director of the organization, and he really liked it. Basically I will spend the next few months in the fall putting together a strategy for a sports program that can minister to the children that live on the streets of Addis Ababa. I will then travel to Ethiopia in December for four weeks and spend a week initiating a sports camp for kids and then the rest of the time networking with local organizations and churches to see about developing recreational leagues. These are my ideas for the program and what it could do:

1. Potentially start sports leagues where street children can attend, be kids, and have fun
2. Through the league we can identify children that could potentially come into the Forsaken Children organization (Onesimus/Children's Home Ethiopia)
3. Share the Gospel to the children
4. Provide a place where families can be actively involved in their children's lives

That isn't in any order, but just a small sample of what my brain has been spitting out over the last month or so.

My hope is that through a lot of time, love, prayer, support, and lots of networking, that this is something that we can revisit with TFC in January and continue with them in a full-time capacity. I've had a few folks that I've told ask me how am I going to do all this. Yes, my life will be quite busy in the fall - 18 hours of school, full-time work with the Memphis Soccer team, developing this program, fundraisng for our trip, started a new bible study with some of my best friends, and still trying to be a Godly husband and spend time with my wife. Yeah, it will be pretty busy. But I'm confident that the Lord has not put all this on my plate thinking that I couldn't handle it. He isn't like that.

It is really exciting in knowing that the things God has planned for me are bigger than me. They are things that I cannot do on my own or lean on my own understanding. And for the first time in life, I'm OK with that. More like, I'm embracing that. Maybe one day, at my funeral, they won't be talking about the senseless stuff I couldn't take with me, but the lives that were saved. Not because of me, but because I allowed God to be more than someone I talk about on Sundays. Maybe one day, someone will look back and say about me, "He got it."

I aim to try