Almost There

Last night the best soccer team in the world played the first game of the finals of the Libertadores.

We went to Mexico and played a team called Chivas.  If we won last night and then win or tie in the return game next week here in our city we will be the champions of all the club teams in all of South America.

I'm sure some of you don't care (at least that's what my wife keeps telling me). That's okay. My soccer blogs will now mainly be directed towards my Inter daughter who now lives in U.S.

First things first. We won last night. It's a huge deal.

The game started at 9:50 our time. We are all usually in bed or are close to being in bed by then. That changes on game night. It's like a shot of adrenaline.

Although we played better for the entire first half, Chivas scored on the last play of the half.

We came out in the second half and played just as good as we did in the first half if not even better.

With about 17 minutes to play in the game we tied it.

Here is what a 13 year old boy does at 11:30 at night in Brasil when his favorite team scores in the finals of the biggest championship in South America (sorry for the darkness in our house.....it's mainly the sound that matters).

I love his little Napoleon Dynamite "yes" towards the end. Classic.

Anyway, that vuvuzela blowing on our front porch woke up his 6 year old brother (the 11 year old sister who was about 3 feet away from the noise just slept right through it) who then wanted to watch the rest of the game. He got on our bed and watched the rest with his friend.

We then scored again. Everybody went crazy.

One thing you need to know about Brasilians. They love soccer and fireworks.

When your team scores, you shoot fireworks.

When your team wins, you shoot fireworks.

You even shoot fireworks when your rival team gets scored on or gets beat.

All of that is magnified by 100 in a big championship.

It's a lot of fun to be around.

Here is a brief example of what happened in our neighborhood right after we won the game. This was around midnight and it went on for about 30 minutes.

We love it. Fireworks still periodically went off through the day today.

Now we play the final game here next Wednesday.

Our team sold every ticket for that game, online, in only 90 minutes yesterday. I had two computers going trying to buy tickets and I had a friend who had three computers on trying to buy tickets for us. He was able to get us one.

We are still trying to figure out a way for us to get one more ticket so that Garrett and I can both go.

The Bible says pray about everything. Do you think He means even tickets to a soccer game? We think He does so we've been praying for a ticket miracle. Feel free to pray with us. Honestly it's one of those father-son moments that I hope Garrett and I can share together. I was blessed to experience that same kind of moment with Bronwyn 4 years ago and it's something we still talk about to this day.

We hope to share some championship video next week. We are optimistic about our chances.

For those that want to see the best moments from last nights game (sorry Machado) just check out this video.