Welcome to the Coffey Collection
Memories are incredible aren’t they? They can take us from below freezing temps to the beach in the blink of an eye. Memories can be so strong that they move our emotions, change our senses, and breathe life into us. But there’s only one caveat to memories… You have to make them.
Let me be the first to welcome you to the Coffey Collection! To put it as basic as possible, this is a blog of memories. To put it less basic, this is a blog that I hope inspires you to grow your worldview, become aware of how much LIVING you’re actually doing, and embrace everything about the time that God has blessed us with here on earth.
Summer 2013 with my dad (third from left) in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic prior to snorkeling!
I’ve been fortunate to have had some incredible experiences so far in my life. I’ve walked with lions, jumped with the Maasai, stood outside Buckingham Palace, chased waterfalls through the Amazon rainforest, partied with the Dutch in Rwanda, surfed under blazing sunsets in Costa Rica, and snorkeled reefs in the Caribbean. When I was eight years old, I chose the Dominican Republic over a baseball youth All-Star game. In college, I chose to live in Africa one summer and the Dominican Republic for another over playing summer ball. I will never regret those days spent sharing life with some incredible people. If anything, those mems push me to create even more. And in doing so, I’ve been able to live out some pretty awesome stories…
In 2010, the FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa and sent the entire continent into a soccer frenzy. Shakira’s Waka Waka could be heard on nearly every bus that summer in Kenya and Rwanda. I spent almost two months interning with multiple organizations during those summer months and part of that time was spent in Kigali, Rwanda with my cousin Josh (if you need a Wedding Film, you NEED to check out his business A Little Long Distance!).
Ain’t no party like a Dutch party… in Rwanda.
One night, we got a tip that there was a Dutch viewing party for a game at the Hotel Des Milles Collines, or more commonly known as Hotel Rwanda from the Hollywood movie. Some friends of ours told us that if we wore the color orange (Dutch national team color) then we could get free beer and free orange Fanta all night!
We spent the night screaming and cheering at a giant screen while grown, middle aged men wept tears of joy away from their painted faces each time the Dutch scored. What a night.
Fast forward three years…
In 2013, I was interning once again in Santiago, Dominican Republic with an organization called GO Ministries. I was helping coaching some young peloteros (baseball players) and helping with implementing some coaching strategies.
One day, we needed a few extra bodies to play a pick-up game so I decided to join. I figured it’d be fun to say that I played some sandlot baseball in the Dominican Republic. But it gets better…
Let me tell you… the nerves were real. The Dominican is essentially the Mecca of the baseball world. Everybody knows that Dominicans eat, sleep, and breathe baseball. It’s an incredibly vibrant culture that loves competition, trash talk and sports in general. So I had a lot to prove in order to keep my status as a respected coach! I mean, who wants to listen to the gringo that can’t hit a fastball!?
Well, I stepped to the plate for my first at-bat…
Ball one.
Wow, the blood was seriously pumping at this point...
Ball two.
Okay, at least I won’t strike out, right?
The sign, the set, and the delivery… A 2-0 fastball, right down broadway… I let ‘er rip…
*CRACK*
…going, going, gone.
Movies have been made from less… I hit a homerun on my first career at-bat in the Dominican Republic on sandlot field. It was the stuff of dreams. The place went wild for the oversized gringo.
Selfie with the Dominican coaches I worked with in the summer of 2013. (Camera phones have come a long way!)
Memories bring us back to something in our past. But they can also motivate us towards the future. I want to spend my life making mems happen rather than hoping they happen. I hope to have wild experiences that enable me to learn more about God, myself, and the world around me. As Andy Dufresne once said in Shawshank Redemption, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”