Callie McKinney's Trinidad and Tobago Blog

This summer I decided to play for a team out of Charlotte, North Carolina called the Charlotte Lady Eagles. The Charlotte Lady Eagles is a soccer team made of up girls from various universities that come together to grow in their faith with Christ while playing soccer in a competitive environment to get better at their game.

The Lady Eagles mission is "To glorify God and see lives transformed by communicating the message of Jesus Christ through the global environment of soccer." The vision of the Lady Eagles is "Generating teams that cultivate influential coaches and players who inspire people to flourish in and for Christ wherever they are planted."

I made a bucket list when I was young and the only thing I had on the bucket list was to go on a mission trip. I was able to fulfill that this summer and it rocked my world. After our first two weeks of coming together and practicing, we set out on a mission trip to Trinidad and Tobago at 4:00 a.m. on May 27, 2017. We went on this trip to spread the word of God by using soccer as our platform to reach the youth of Trinidad and anyone else who was around to witness. While doing so we also played games against local teams and then against the U20 Trinidad National Team and the full senior Trinidad National Team.

We played four games and were very successful. We won all four games and didn't allow any goals. Going in we were supposed to play three games but the coach of the U20 National team is also the coach for the full National team. Having seen us compete against the U20's she asked for a game against the full team. In the U20 game we won 3-0 and in the full senior game, we won 2-0. After both games, both teams came together to talk about our mission and vision as the Charlotte Lady Eagles and share some of our own personal testimonies. We shared that we cared about them as people not just players or opponents on the field. One of the main focuses of our message during the talks after the games was that our identity is not in the game of soccer but in something much bigger, which is Jesus Christ.

I had three encounters that I left with that were dear to my heart. The first one was at our first clinic we ran in the city Port of Spain in Trinidad. We hosted a clinic for the Step by Step ministry. There were roughly 100 kids that showed up for the clinic boys and girls. There I would meet Destiny Phillip who was nine years old and the sweetest little girl full of joy. The way we introduced ourselves was unique. I was dancing with a group of girls that arrived at the clinic early and she ended up joining.

Destiny was quiet at first but then she introduced herself. I loved her name from the beginning and it was the first name I remembered. From that moment on we connected and she never left my side during the clinic. I shared my testimony with the group of girls and after Destiny told me she wanted to be like me and love Jesus like I do. Later when we had to leave she was crying about never seeing me again so I gave her my lucky hair tie to hold on to.

My next encounter that's dear to my heart was the next day we visited the girls from the Step by Step ministry at their school. As we walked into the school, their joy and laughter erupted and filled the air. Little did I know Destiny was going to be there and I was going to see her again. Destiny found me and she was grinning from ear to ear and greeted me with a long and tight hug. I then found myself swarmed by a bunch of girls asking me to come into their classrooms. During all this chaos, my team was meeting the principals while I was in a classroom with about 20 girls all around me giving me no personal bubble room. They were asking questions one after another intently listening to what I had to say next, trying to hang on to every word I was saying.

I was able to share the gospel with them because of my tattoo on my arm that reads 2 Timothy 1:7, which says, "For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us love, strength, and self-discipline." The conversation came to a quick end when one of the school girls came to the room and told me I was missing a meeting.

As I went to make my way downstairs to the meeting, a little girl approached me with a pen and paper and asked for my autograph. Then another came running up and soon enough I was swarmed by a bunch of little girls and my teammates were walking out of the room where the meeting was that I had just missed. As my teammates walked out it didn't take any time for all the girls in that school to get to each of us with pens and papers to get our autographs. At one point, I was sitting on a bench with girls swarming me and papers so close to my face I thought I was going to get a paper cut on my face.

Destiny was there with me the entire time sitting right beside me holding onto my arm. She never asked for an autograph, which would lead me to later write her a letter and have it given to her before I left. The bell rang and all the girls had to go back to their classes, which means Destiny had to leave too. That would be the last time I would hug her and see her bright and vibrant smile.

My last significant encounter was on the last day in the city of La Brea, which was in the country/village part of Trinidad. It was an early morning to run a clinic for the kids in the community. It was a monsoon about the whole time but it didn't stop the kids from having a good time and enjoying our presence. As we were leaving that last clinic we were going to do in Trinidad it was like one of those cliché moments in a dramatic sports movie. The kids were running beside the bus as we were leaving smiling, laughing, and waving at us. Some were just lined up standing by fences waving and smiling as if they didn't want us to leave but were happy we had just played soccer and spent our whole morning with them and they had just been given food. We would end up doing a total of four clinics and visited four different schools.

Concluding the trip, I can't wait to see the way God has used each and every one of my teammates and myself to reach various groups of kids we were in contact with. It's going to be amazing to see the fruits of our impact on the kids. We already saw part of that from Allister who is the manager of the Step by Step ministry. Allister was planning on going to Barbados to start up another club there because his ministry in Trinidad wasn't doing that well but when we put on the clinic for his ministry the parents that had their kids participating loved it and decided to invest in his ministry and make it grow by putting their children in it. Now, Allister is so busy with the Step by Step ministry that he can't go to Barbados. As I mentioned earlier, I wrote Destiny a letter that I had Allister give to her. I got a phone call from her after we had arrived in America on Friday June 9, 2017. The trip to Trinidad changed my perspective, furthered my growth as a player and with my walk with Christ.

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