Aug. 17, 2007

Perth, Australia - (EDITOR'S NOTE: For second straight year, Irish rising junior center/forward Luke Zeller from Washington, Ind., is traveling and touring with Athletes In Action (AIA) and a group of Division I basketball players. From August 10-23, he will be in Australia and will once again provide a diary of his travels as his squad will play games against the top NBL clubs -- the Sydney Kings, West Sydney Razorbacks, Wollongong Hawks, Perth Wildcats, as well as a Tasmanian All-Star team.

Joining Zeller on the team are: Josh Carter (Texas A&M), Jimmy Graham (Miami), Matt Hall (UT-Pan American), Jason Holsinger (Evansville), Wes Johnson (Iowa State), Michael Niemi (SMU), Whitney Robinson (Central Michigan), Ray Schafer (Oregon) and Jay Watkins (San Francisco).

In August of 2006, Luke was instrumental in helping AIA capture the gold medal at the William Jones Cup in Taiwan.

This is Luke's second entry, covering his time from Aug. 11-13.

Saturday, August 11, 2007
This morning I woke up and was bright eyed at 5:30 in the morning. It is 3:30 in the afternoon at home, so I tried going back to sleep and then realized that Wes was already awake so I just went ahead and got up. The birds that I heard this morning were kind of crazy. It's been a while since I heard birds chirping in the morning, but they didn't sound anything like the birds back home in Washington. They almost sounded angry and one of them was right next to the door and had a red Mohawk. I'm sure it was just different, but the fact that it was different was not too soothing to go back to sleep. Wes and I just kind of hung out and tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work. Our billets (host family) got up and we had breakfast at about 8. I had weet bix that were what they put in their cereal. They looked like granola bars and I put four of them in the bottom of my bowl per their advice. Then I put a little bit of cereal in there as well. I put milk in and it ended up being kind of like wheaties but with much less flavor. Then Careem the girl in our host family put what is called Vegemite on her toast. Vegemite is yeast extract and the closest I can compare the taste and the texture to it from my experiences in life - is axle grease. Everyone here absolutely loves it though. I had crumpets and some really good rolls this morning. The jam here is really, really good. The Australian people are awesome here and very welcoming. One phrase that the Australians use often is the phrase "no worries." I think that is the mantra of the entire culture here. Walking around downtown seems like a good sized city in the states, but it doesn't feel like it at all. The difference is the people here are so much more relaxed and just go with the theme of "no worries." I love it because it has everything to do in a big city, but has a small town feel to it.

We went to meet at the church and riding in a car is an experience here because the steering wheel is on the right side and it just kind of freaks me out right now. I might get used to it but it's going to take me a while. We left the church and headed on the two hour journey up to the blue mountains. The people here related them to our Rocky Mountains. They were beautiful. We saw the three sisters. They were three rock formations that were close together and looked sweet. Then we had team time in the mountains at this chocolate shop near the top. We had real hot chocolate. We put the chocolate in a metal jar with a fire underneath and then put milk in and it was pure sweetness to have that kind of experience. Team time was really good. We talked about being God's man on the court and how being a Christian who is an athlete instead of an athlete who happens to be a Christian. We talked about how this is a calling to a higher purpose and how we are called to something higher than just being an athlete. Being God's ambassador on the court is a high calling to respond to. We talked about what that means to us and I thought it was really good. It's something that is tough to do when it's definitely not the popular thing to do, but it is something that I have been continuing to work on. After coming down from the mountains we went straight to our game.

We played the West Sydney Razorback tonight. They were very good and played well together. We were all really feeling our legs from the travel and trying to adjust to the time difference. We got beat pretty badly. They were good. We played against Troy Devries who just signed with the Razorbacks. It was great to see him as he was on the trip with me last year to Taiwan and I have been keeping in touch with him since then but haven't seen him in a long time. I gave my testimony at half time and was nervous about sharing about Jesus and what he has done in my life in another country but once I got out there the words just kind of flowed and I was good to go. It is amazing to be privileged enough to share the good words of the gospel of Jesus Christ with people all around the world. Tonight I just want to thank my family for all they have done in my life and have always been there for me wherever I am at, but loved me too much to stay there. They have always pushed me but never let up on loving me. As the Australians say "heaps" of thanks to my family!! I love you guys so much!

Sunday, August 12, 2007
We woke up this morning and went to the church that has been hosting us in Sydney. The service was very good. It was great to see all our guys there with their host parents and really feel like a big family. I just think it is neat when people stretch out their arms and welcome them like they are one of their own. My mom might do the best job of that and our host parents all reminded me of the way that she used to make us clean the house for a week anytime a visitor came home so I definitely have an appreciation for the sacrifice and work that they put into preparing for us to stay with them.

After church we had a great meal at this restaurant/pub that one of the host families owned. The meal was awesome - a great pasta meal before the game. The place got a little crazy because there was a rugby game on and rugby is nearly the religion of Australia across many places. It is amazing how excited people get about the game here.

We played the Sydney Kings today and they were very good. We played well, but came up two points short. We played much better and together today than we did in our first game. We still have some things to work on, but we have done a good job of coming together in the short amount of time that we have been allotted.

After the game a couple of guys that I have known for a while from Hillsong United took us out to their church. Their church is a big deal and it was sweeet to be able to go out there and see the church that I have watched so many sermons and worship services from. I have watched them and listened to them many times during the season on road trips and things like that. The service was very good and I got to see a couple of my friends from the band and talk with them for a while afterwards. The church and my friends from that church have been a huge blessing to my life.

Tonight, I just want to thank all of those who are praying for me as I am on this trip and specifically the people that woke up early the morning before I left to pray with me before I left on my trip around the world. All of your prayers are appreciated and those of you that woke up early your support for me means so much to me and I am incredibly glad that God has placed each of you in my life!! "heaps" of thanks to you as well!!

Monday, August 13, 2007
Today we woke up early and met at the church. We had a long drive ahead of us to the detention centers that we were going to visit. It took us about an hour to get to the detention center as it was quite a ways outside of the city and a fair ways up in the mountains. The detention center was quite intimidating looking more like a prison from the outside with the high fenced walls of about 10 feet and then the 3 feet of razor wire above that. We went in and had to drop off all of our identification, wallets, cameras, and everything else we had with us. Then we had orientation on the center. It was about how to act and what the emergency procedures were. The kids at this center ranged anywhere from car theft to murder charges, but we had no idea why each of the kids were in there. We headed down to the basketball courts that they had. They had no nets on the goals and the one goal was about nine feet high because of how far down it was bent. The court was also a tennis court as the tennis net had to be taken down before we could play. This court was the longest court that I had ever seen. It was about two and a half court lengths. Running suicides on that court would result in the best conditioned team in America. Our running this summer was good enough for me so I will just stay with that rather than trying to run the entire court length. These kids definitely did not learn much basketball growing up because we did lay up drills for a minute with one group and after four times they got up to two made layups. A few of the shots knocked off a lot of the paint chips on the backboard from the sheer force of the shots being put up. In the middle of some of the drills and games Brian and Jimmy told their testimony. Brian told his testimony about his journey of going out to Colorado Christian and realizing making his decision to follow Jesus. Jimmy told his story that is definitely a storybook type story to see how far he has come. Jimmy tells the story that he fell asleep one night and woke up and ended his mom dropped him off at a detention center. He stayed there for almost a year. Jimmy has come a long ways from then and is now playing at the University of Miami. The kids really related to Jimmy and he did great with helping them out and talking to them. He helped to show them that there is hope on the other side of the walls around them. Being with the kids from the center was a lot of fun and definitely eye opening to see how some people are living. It made me very thankful of where I am at and definitely will be something that will stop me from complaining when I get back to good ol' St. Edwards Hall at Notre Dame without air conditioning. We had lunch with them afterwards and they were very excited to get the toasters to toast their roast beef sandwiches instead of having them plain. It was just amazing to see them learn to appreciate the small things and definitely made me learn to appreciate the small things in my life.

After visiting the detention center we went back to have practice and had a good practice today at the gym in Sutherland that we will be playing at next week when we get to rematch the Sydney Kings. We fixed up some things on our press breaker as well as fixing up our zone defense a little bit.

After practice, we had team time for about an hour and then our host families came and picked us up. We went back to the house for dinner. Dinner was fabulous tonight. It was rice with a stir fry type of meal that was just awesome!! But I am tired. It's not very late about 8:30 but it's been a long day and we leave from for the airport at 6 tomorrow so it is going to be an early morning. I think I am going to call it a night.

God Bless and Go Irish!