By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
           
Driving through the deeply impoverished township of Kliptown, Owen Rogers was hoping the bus wouldn't even stop. There was a stream of sewage running through the street; shacks and tents instead of permanent housing; and the only electricity is hot-wired from the nearby railroad tracks.
           
"I'll be honest, I didn't want to get out," said Rogers, a senior linebacker on the Baylor football team and one of the 21 student-athletes on the Baylor Sports Ministry team that visited South Africa last month. "I was like, 'The people here are probably miserable. It's going to be awful.' I just wanted to get in and out of there as fast as we could."
           
And then, he didn't want to leave.
           
"Just hanging out with them, having fun with them, I saw how grateful they were for what they have," Rogers said. "When we were driving around, I didn't want to get out. And then right before we left, I remember I was so sad to leave. I just wanted to spend more time there. It was so awesome. That was probably my most impactful moment of the trip."


             
On an eight-day trip that included campus visits to the University of Johannesburg and Wits University, it was that joy in the moment – no matter the circumstances – that resonated with the Baylor student-athletes and leaders John Maurer, Cori Pinkett and David Wetzel.
           
At the Villa of Hope orphanage in Soweto, Jazmine Hall from the national championship Acrobatics & Tumbling team remembers sitting in a circle with the children "sitting in our laps, some of them were holding our hands."
           
"I just looked around the circle and was like, 'Wow! This is beautiful!''' she said. "They stood up and sang a song to us, and they were just so happy. I think that moment, sitting in that circle, holding their hands and just loving on them, really changed me, changed my view, made me open my eyes to a lot of things and made me realize that I'm selfish about a lot of things. I need to grow my relationship with God, because they literally have nothing."
           
Pinkett, Baylor's Assistant AD for Character Formation, said the visits to the orphanage and Kliptown were good reminders "of how you can see God in everything."
           
"You challenge yourself, like, Wow, I sit and complain about the air-conditioning not being on or things that I don't have, or the meals in the BANC that you feel like are repetitive every three weeks," she said, "when people are living very full lives with little to nothing. That experience really shifted perspectives for all of us.
           
"Just the narcissism that some of us have and the lack of appreciation we have, but also how blessed we are as Americans. We have so much to be grateful for here in America. But also, how can we use what we've been privileged with and blessed with to do for others, whether that's globally or right down the road in Waco?"
           
While this was the first visit to South Africa for a Baylor Sports Ministry that has previously been to Kenya, Namibia, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Guatemala, this was the fifth visit for Maurer, Baylor's second-year Director of Sports Ministry.
           
"It's such a unique place. I love it for so many reasons," Maurer said. "Language is no barrier, which is huge. When you're going for a few days, if you're having to use translators, that's really hard. And just the racial, economic mix and reality there is kind of eye-opening for us as Americans, even as we consider our own situation and culture and how it's changing. It's kind of interesting to be thrown into another one and look at it maybe in a different way."
           
Visiting with fellow student-athletes at the two campuses through the Athletes in Action program was also something of an eye-opening experience.
           
"They're really willing to have conversations about anything," Rogers said.
           
"We literally knocked on doors, and they invited us in for 20 minutes. You would never do that in the U.S.," Maurer said.
           
Even on the Baylor campus, you wouldn't get that same kind of response and openness, Pinkett said. "I guarantee you, had we done the same thing over in University Parks," that would not have happened, she said.
           
"It was a completely different level of openness and willingness to just have conversations, get to know people and build relationships," Pinkett said.
           
For the door-to-door ministry and for other outings during the week, the group was split into four teams. Each of the four groups included one football player and a sprinkling of representatives from the equestrian and A&T teams.
           
"We were trying to be as intentional as possible with how we blended the groups," Pinkett said, "because we wanted them to create relationships with each other, across sports."
           
Being an introvert, Hall said she would never go up to people and say, "Hey, I'm Jazmine. Nice to meet you." But, being in the group of 21 student-athletes, "the relationships you build with them in 10 days is amazing."
           
"I feel like I could go to any one of them and be comfortable talking to them now," she said. "Whereas if I had just seen them walking down the hall before the mission trip, I probably wouldn't have said anything. We are all out of our comfort zone, so just knowing that you have those people there to depend on and listen to you, it really makes a difference."
           
At the same time, Rogers said he learned more about fellow football players Xavier Newman, Jalen Pitre and Johncarlo Valentin in one week "than I had in the past year and a half here."


           
"Like Jazzy said, we're all outside of our comfort zone. We're not in our own little world. So, we're kind of sharing that experience together. And I think we all got closer because of that."
           
Equally impactful were the team's visits to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and Mandela House in Soweto.
           
Pinkett had done a six-week study abroad in Cape Town, South Africa, and spent some time in a township with no running water. But, this was her first visit to the Apartheid Museum.
           
"It helped me get a better understanding of everything," she said, "What it looks like when you have this small percentage of white people that are literally dictating life for the other 85 percent of people living in South Africa. It was powerful stuff. It reminded me a little bit of segregation and slavery in America, but just on a completely different level. People being jailed for not having identification on you and the government determining what race you are. And to think, that was only 25, 30 years ago. It's crazy!"
           
Maurer, Pinkett and Wetzel split up the morning devotionals, with Wetzel speaking on James 1 the day of the orphanage trip.
           
"The last part of James 1 talks about what real religion is, when you take care of the widows and orphans," said Wetzel, Baylor's Associate AD for Football Relations. "But, we kind of tried to unpack the rest of it. 'Consider it joy when you face trials,' and what does that look like?"
           
Similar to the mountaintop experience you get at a summer youth camp, Wetzel said it was good for the student-athletes to get out of the college setting "where you're away from everything else."
           
"It's good to have those moments where you can kind of look back and remember, 'That was a time when I was really close to God,''' he said. "I think it's valuable to have an experience doing something other than the sport you play, because that's not why you're on the trip. I was very impressed with all of the student-athletes, but I know our guys all had some impactful moments and had some significant growth."
           
In conversations with Sdu Mthethewa, the South African National Director for Athletes in Action, Maurer said she was excited about the Baylor Sports Ministry team returning and "continue to kind of tweak what we're doing to help them locally."
           
"Sdu had not been to an orphanage before, and she said that was the highlight of the trip for her," Maurer said. "I think they learned some things moving forward, even about themselves and the way they do ministry. . . . Like in any good ministry, it's a moving target in terms of reaching people. So, she felt like they learned some things from our group that will help them moving forward, in how to really connect."
 
BAYLOR SPORTS MINISTRY TEAM
Leaders: John Maurer, Cori Pinkett, David Wetzel
Acrobatics & Tumbling: Alexsis Amrhein, Camryn Bryant, Olivia Felton, Alexis Fowlkes, Jazmine Hall, Caytie Jenkins, Kennedy Riley, Hannah Schumacher, Faith Spivey, DayAndrea Thompson, Ava White
Equestrian: Phoebe Alwine, Madison Day, Shannon Hogue, Samantha Howell, Danielle McIlquham, Carly Salter
Football: Xavier Newman, Jalen Pitre, Owen Rogers, Johncarlo Valentin