It's A New Season

It's a new season, it's a new day.

A fresh anointing is flowing my way.

It's a season of power and prosperity.

It's a new season coming to me.

That's from Israel Houghton's song, New Season.

How I wish that while I sing this song, a new season, a good start for me, a perfect season to step out into new level is coming to me.

But nope, I indeed made a step into a new level, however with a "not so good" start.

Here's the story, I was given a privilege, to play for an International-level futsal team, called Leonis (only one time, one golden chance. See the reason why I desperately wished for a good start?)

We won 11-5, it was okay, but bad for me as 2-3 goals were my silly mistakes.

Ironically, it's enough reason for me to feel really down.

Before going on, some of y'all might wonder how come I was asked to play for this Leonis team.

I have a connection, a friend, a great futsal player with many haters (soalnya muka n gayanya sengak), Vedo Irawan.

We met in 2010 in FGCC, and played futsal together, although he joined another team called Sunesia (I was in ISCF) that time.

Iseng buka foto2 lama, gua aja lupa ada foto ini

This guy has been pursuing his passion and love about futsal, until he reaches international level, which is rare for Indonesian students like us.
He is also the guy who introduced me to Monash Futsal Captain, Shafiq and so I was invited to join Monash training since last year. Such an honour indeed, I started to meet and get to know Monash players, Coach Kevin Yee, RG boys, and even some of Malaysian-league futsal players (from PKNS and Selangor FC).

Shaf is the middle guy standing behind me, with a bitter facial expression, and there's Zec with his intimidating aura

While I thought I'd reached a university level (which I still need to learn a lot), Vedo had played in Leonis for a quite long time. Yes, I'm saying that we are in a different league.
This year, I was privileged to play again in Monash team, and we lost at the group stage #justsaying

I think we tried hard to smile, that's what I think though... btw ada Yudhi di kanan bawah, huoo

At the same time, I was invited by Vedo to come to Leonis training.
So I'm like "oh okay, this is a great chance for me to LEARN."
You can imagine how it goes for me, a newbie, self-proclaimed Goalkeeper, just barely played at university level, now trained with a semi-professional team.

Sounds humble? No, I just lack of confidence.
As Pastor Steven Furtick said, "preachers tend to be one of the most insecure groups of people on the planet" (Crash the Chatterbox)

Pamer foto lama doang sih ini bro

That's not a solid reasoning, but I'm that kind of people that often lack of confidence.
It might not seem so, yet my close friends understand this the most.

Back to my third paragraph above, I played bad during the game, I realized that I did uneccessary mistakes and felt unecessarily timid.
During evaluation, Vedo and Valiant (a futsal player from Sunesia, who has been going through almost the same portion of futsal training in Monash as me... My bad, he is even worse, he's a futsal maniac) gave their honest opinions and I learnt a lot from them.
Vedo added, "you set your goal too low, you need to set higher goal for yourself."
This hit me, y'know, because what he said was true, I was satisfied for just being able to training with Leonis, that's all.

One point I want to make clear about, if you wonder, of how three of us became really close.
It's really simple, it's just because we found similarities among us: We are passion and purpose driven type of people. (in this case, futsal)
Honestly, in regards of passion, I think I am the least driven compared to them.
That's why I'm really grateful for meeting them, they helped me a lot in pursuing my passion (as well as to remind me again about my purpose in Church, community, calling, and study)

Ceritanya abis maen buat RG Junior, I posted this on IG before. Btw belakang itu Yassin ya, Val?

Still, I thought of things like "I don't think I'm ready to play in (adult) International level yet" and "I suck, dude. I don't know what happened."
Then I remembered what my late American Football coach, Mr. Jeff Pelland said to me after I told him the same thing I thought of back then, "If you know that you played bad, then it's good. Why? Because you know what your mistakes are, so you will not do the same mistakes again."

Sunway Storms and Sunway Titans

The next thing I knew, I was remembering what Sidney Mohede shared in FGCC pre-Christmas celebration, 2009:
In Indonesia, he had become well known for his works, it's like there was no single person who did not know his name (even my old-school parents heard of him, no kidding, man). He was like, "I'm starting from 0, and I keep improving, now I'm at 9".
Then he was invited to lead worship in Taiwan, where he was needed to do that in mandarin, he can't even speak mandarin. So, he admitted that he felt so nervous as if he went back to 0 again.
But he then realized, he wasn't at 0, he was at 10, because as for that time, he had gone to International level. He said to himself "welcome to international world, man".

That's just a portion of his sermon, he wasn't showing off his fame or whatsoever, you can check his full sermon by ordering The Chronicles DVD from my friend, Sandy Ijaya through this number:
016 - 9968019.

"Worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have" - Joyce Meyer

I kept worrying especially after the game, and found no good thing resulted from doing that.

I felt like I messed up the game, but in case I forgot about it: I was playing for a semi-pro team, I SHOULD be thankful for that.
I know I'm not good enough to play a quality game in international level yet, but I've just arrived.
I'm stepping on it, I'm just starting.

(The funny thing is that Leonis players don't really make a big deal out of this, they don't show off their "international level" skills, they aren't confused, they aren't timid under the pressure. They are simply calm and confident, that's how they show their class.)

It took me some time to realize this again:
In the middle of our journey, we need to take a break and thank God for everything we have until now.
I'm not saying that we can feel satisfied and settle down from giving your best, that's arrogance.
I'm saying that we tend to catch up with this high pace world and competitive trends around us until we become discontent with everything. Yes, everything.
Arrogance starts when we stop being grateful (say "Amen", somebody).

I believe that when we forget to be grateful, we'll start taking all the credits for yourselves, that's arrogance.
We forget to thank God, our friends, our colleagues, or family as if we do everything on our own (if you feel that  you've been fighting alone all your life, I think you are wrong).
So, sometimes we just need to stop and say Ebenezer, thus far has the LORD helped us.

I had a bad start, but it won't stop me from learning and improving further.
To make it even further, I wanna thank God for everything before I go on.

I thank God for rare chances given to me and for He has led me thus far, I thank Vedo and Valiant for their supports and advice regarding my passion, I thank Kevin Yee-Bryan Lee-Pep Chia for Monash futsal, I thank ISCF for giving me such solid foundation before I ever moved on to another level, I thank Coach Yaser and Leonis whom I just met several times, I thank my close friends for being my "Lighthouse", I thank people who read this post in advance to check anything.
(I'm sorry if I'm gonna stop here, too much to be grateful for).

Now, I'm telling myself to move on and keep on learning from the opportunities given to me.
Imma keep walking on without leaving my gratitude behind.
It's a new season!