William Eleazer and David Motamed are best friends and grew up serving at the Bay Area Christian Churches (BACC) E-Soccer program. E-soccer is an inclusive sports program for kids both typical and with special needs. It was founded by BACC minister Russ Ewell. In 2007 e-soccer was recognized by the local media with the Jefferson award for its positive impact on the local community through encouraging volunteerism. Now college freshmen, William and David share from their personal experience the impact of e-soccer in their own lives. In their own words (taken from excerpts of their sharing at our annual Shoreline Service) these accomplished student athletes make a compelling case for making e-soccer part of your family experience.
My name is William Eleazer and I’ve been a part of E-soccer for over 10 years now. I want to share with you from my personal experience, how peer influence at school, compares to the influence of E-soccer.
I started going to E-soccer when I was 8 years old, because my dad who was a Christian in this church (BACC) thought it would be best for me to do something productive with my time. Like most 8 year olds, my ideal Saturday morning had nothing to do with helping a bunch of kids who I had no desire to be friends with. I did not like pushing myself and I was not someone who liked hard work. I didn’t understand what was wrong with the kids with special needs at E-soccer and I was uncomfortable being around them.
This was not the attitude I was trained to have by my parents. They in fact always tried to teach me how to be as loving as possible. But eventually for every kid, the influence of peers at school will have a bigger impact than the influence of your parents at home. Of course there’s always the sex, drugs and alcohol at school, but I’m not talking about that; I’m talking about the things even more difficult to say ‘no’ to, for instance the pressure to look as good as possible or to fit in and be as popular as possible. From an early age kids are taught to put aside themselves and conform to what people around them want them to be. Peer pressure taught me that to get as far as I can get in life I’d have to strive for popularity, learn to do things on my own, and depend on my education.
So by the time I was 8 I was already being trained to think that no one mattered more than me, and like most kids are today, I was on the fast track to a selfish and lonely life.
I needed what God provided through E-soccer.
Since I started participating at eight years old, E-soccer has been shaping and building my character. While helping in E-soccer, a person can’t help but be changed by the relationships they build with the kids in the program. By the time I was in middle school E-soccer had taught me how to be patient with someone and how to have compassion on others who weren’t born with the strengths that I was born with. I began to realize that I had fewer differences and more similarities with friends who happened to have special needs. I came to realize that the success in life isn’t about popularity and fitting in, but about friendships.
Through E-soccer, the church gave me a way out of being another person who falls in line with the crowd.
Your kids have to go to school and they will be influenced there, nobody can change that. But E-soccer is a place where you learn to value the qualities God teaches us in the bible.
I can confidently say this church is a place you want your kids to grow up in.
David Motamed - When I first came out to E-Soccer five years ago, I had no idea that it would soon become a home for my family, and a family for my home.
I was in the 8th grade and my family was a time bomb about to explode if
something didn’t radically change all of us.
Personally, I was at that point where I was beginning to want as little to do with my family as possible. I was going through that “I hate my parents” phase, that many of us who still haven’t grown out of, should realize, isn’t just a phase.
My little brother Nicholas, diagnosed with autism at the age of two, became a target for my insecurity, and I even began feeling ashamed of him at home and with friends. I just wished my family was different.
While I was trying to create the life I wanted for myself, my parents were terrified and worried about how to protect my brother, cope with his autism, and find a community that would love and support him. My parents ended up arguing often, projecting their fear and anger onto our whole family.
But that all changed when my mom heard about a soccer program at Boothbay Park on a Saturday morning.
Acts 17: 26-27 – From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
My brother Nicholas is the reason my parents and I first came to E-Soccer, the reason we came to church, and the reason we ended up studying the Bible and becoming Christians. God not only set the perfect time for us to be introduced to e-soccer, but he also gave the perfect brother to inspire me to go.
Because of Nicholas, I saw God give us something we had not even thought to pray for, to find a home for our family with God as our security, and find a family for our home with spiritual relationships.
E-Soccer gave Nicholas the friends and support that he needed and the community of friends that we needed.
This year, I completed my freshman year at Cal Berkeley, and with the help of my spiritual family there, I was able to see a few of my friends from the dorms become Christians. This couldn’t have happened without my family coming out to E-Soccer and finding a real home.
When I look around and see what God has given me, it’s hard not to be amazed.