ProCase Sports

On September 8^th I received a phone call from the Dolphins wanting to talk about the details of building the case for the retirement ceremony. My first response to them was “I heard you gave the job to the other company”. They asked, “What other company? We signed your contract and faxed it back to you the next day!” My fax machine was out of paper and I never received their fax. What did I learn from this? I should have called them up and not just assumed they gave it to someone else, also that I will always make sure to have paper in my fax machine. They asked me if I could get the case done in time. I told them if they send everything for the case to me within twenty-four hours, I will get it done in time. I’ll build the case and personally drive it to Miami for the presentation which was nine days from away at that point!

I received the memorabilia from the Dolphins, and arrived in Miami two days before the presentation, the weather was beautiful. We had a day of relaxing around the pool and enjoying the warm Florida weather, but after that I grew anxious.

I arrived at the Dolphins’ stadium the day before the ceremony because I had to rehearse for the halftime presentation. I was in charge of showing the cheerleaders how to unveil the case… without knocking it off the easel.

Fast-forwarding to gameday, I got to the stadium in the afternoon because kickoff was scheduled for Sunday night. When I arrived, the Dolphins’ staff told me that a storm might be coming in. By the time the game started the storm hit.  It was pouring rain, and it didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon. The Dolphins told me they were going to shorten the ceremony because of the rain, and that they didn’t want to have the case out in the rain so my services weren’t going to be used. Once again I got angry, I went through all of this, built the case for free, and the case wouldn’t even be used!

I started to pray in the tunnel of the stadium, I asked God to help me. I believed he guided me through this entire project, and that he could stop the rain because he’s in charge of everything! I spent the first half of the game pacing back in forth in the tunnel of the stadium. Ten minutes before halftime, and the Dolphins staffmember came to me and said there might be a small window in this storm coming. Be prepared in case we decide to have your case on the platform, there was hope! A few minutes later the same gentleman came back and said, “It’s a go, be ready!” The rain had stopped just in time!

I had three minutes to get up on that platform and set up an easel with the case on it. I also had to make sure the case wouldn’t fall over on national television!

The presentation lasted about ten minutes. As I stood on the field in front of the platform, I was waiting for Dan Marino to walk over to my case so we could get a picture of him by the case. That was the whole reason I did this for free, but Dan never walked anywhere close to my case. As Dan was finishing his speech, raindrops started to fall on his shoulders. The rain poured for the rest of the evening.

Once again I was discouraged because I wasn’t going to get the picture I wanted.

The next morning I went out and bought all of the local newspapers, I wanted to see if there were any pictures of the case I built. Since Marino wasn’t anywhere near the case, maybe I could at least get a picture of my case on the platform? From paper to paper there was no picture of my case….until the last paper I bought. There it was, the perfect picture of Dan Marino standing next to my case while waving to the crowd with the cheerleaders standing next to it. There couldn’t be a more perfect picture, mission accomplished!

What did I learn from this? Trust God, he’s in charge and he always wants the best for his children. He stopped the rain just for me because I prayed for his help!