Several members of Union’s women’s soccer team traveled to Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, for a missions trip Aug. 3-10.
Lady Bulldogs Assistant Coach Julie Stauffer presented the idea to the team during the spring 2013 semester. Stauffer is a close friend of a missionary couple, Ryan and Emily Flunker, who oversee Windermere High School, located in the Bahamas.
The high school is similar to a boarding school.
Half of the team left Nashville International Airport Aug. 3; the remaining team members left the next day, flying first to Miami and then to a smaller airport, which took them to the Bahaman Island.
Cost per player was about $1,300, so team members held fundraisers to earn money and sought donations from sponsors by sending postcards asking for support.
Once on the island, the boarding school housed the team in rooms onsite, and the team performed various construction-oriented tasks at the schools and throughout the town.
The team also helped make repairs to the house in which the Flunkers live.
After breakfast together each day, players were divided into teams, including a projector team, a paint team, a cement team and a roof team.
The projector team was in charge of installing projectors in each of the school’s classrooms. Players mounted the projectors on the ceiling, ran the wires through the wall and adjusted the projectors after installation was complete.
The paint team was in charge of painting walls and ceilings in some of the teachers’ houses and cleaning houses on the inside.
The cement team was in charge of mixing cement and then filling potholes and cracks in driveways and on school grounds. The final team was in charge of painting the roofs of various buildings in the area.
On a few days during the trip, when their tasks were complete, team members enjoyed a “beach day” after lunchtime and visited a few different beaches on the island.
They also interacted with children who live nearby.
Whitney Moskovitz, junior cell and molecular biology major, said some of her experiences with the children were memorable.
Moskovitz mentioned playing soccer with children in a Haitian development on the island.
“We stayed in that development for two or three hours that day,” she said. “It was really cool being able to play our sport with them … and it was amazing how accepting they were of us. They didn’t want us to leave.”
Moskovitz said she also was touched by the actions of Brittney Presley, the soccer team’s manager.
“We were playing soccer with the kids, and a little boy said he couldn’t play because he didn’t have any shoes, so Brittney gave him a pair of her shoes so that he would be able to play with us,” Moskovitz said. “That really touched my heart.”
Every night, the team fellowshipped with one another, and on a few occasions, one of the players would play guitar and lead the team in songs of worship.
“Serving with the team was an awesome experience, and being able to grow spirituallytogether as a team was really special,” Moskovitz said. “Not many college athletic teams have the opportunity to do that with their team, and I feel like it brought us all so much closer as a team and as Christians.”
Emily Waggoner, sophomore athletic training major, said she appreciated being sponsored by her great aunt Dottie Lane, who was once a lifelong missionary in Japan.
“I knew that she was so excited for me to be going there and for me to have that kind of life experience,” Waggoner said.
Waggoner’s great aunt Dottie became a missionary after World War II, she said.
“She paid for my whole trip and God knew she wanted me there, and I know God put me there that week with my teammates for a reason,” Waggoner said.
The Thursday after the team arrived on the island, Waggoner received a phone call from her mother saying that her great aunt had died the night before.
Moskovitz said she feels that traveling to a place like the Bahamas and serving the Lord by lending a helping hand to those in need opened her eyes and enabled her to realize how evident the presence of God can be when a person is not distracted by everyday life.