Community does make a difference.  Many times we never know it until someone tells us.  I recently read an article by BILLY WITZ in the NY Times that showed how much community and a small group of people can make a HUGE impact on a life of individuals and families. 

SANDY, Utah — For months now, the emotions have welled up whenever Andy Williams has left the field after games. Some of it has come from his desire to lift Real Salt Lake to a new place, the Major League Soccer playoffs. Some from knowing that at 31, he is in the twilight of his career.  Mostly, though, it comes from thinking about his wife, Marcia.

She received a diagnosis this summer of a rare form of leukemia and has struggled to find a donor match for a bone-marrow transplant. Without one, she is likely to leave behind her husband to raise their daughter and hers from a previous relationship, alone.

The time Williams spends on the field is an escape, a chance to exhaust his body and refresh his mind, to pour himself into something without so much gravity. When he prepares to return to real life, he empties his reservoir.

“I cry after every game, every time,” said Williams, who sometimes puts a towel over his head to hide his tears. “Every time I play, I’m not playing for myself. I’m playing for Marcia and the kids. When the game is over, it doesn’t matter if I’ve played 30 minutes or 90, I have to let my emotions go.”

As he spoke last week, he sat in a room overlooking the field at Rio Tinto Stadium with the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains in the distance. It is there that Real Salt Lake will play the Red Bulls on Saturday in the next round of the M.L.S playoffs, after eliminating Chivas U.S.A. in the first round. Marcia was at his side, often placing a hand on his knee.

Both possess charming smiles, the kind that make fast friends. But both are private by nature, and as they have traveled with the girls from city to city during an itinerant soccer career — first with Shai-Ann, who is 14, and then with Alexia, 5 — they have preferred to think of themselves as a unit.

Their families were back in Jamaica and their friends in Florida and New England, so they would count on each other.  That has changed, too.  

Once word of Marcia’s illness filtered out, the soccer community and much of Salt Lake City have made them feel like they are not alone.

Deb Harper, a Real Salt Lake fan and the owner of a construction business, has founded Soccer Unites Utah, which is trying to raise awareness about the need for bone-marrow donors and raise money to pay for Marcia’s medical expenses that are not covered by insurance.

Marcia (pronounced Mar-cee-ah) calls Harper “my angel.”

There have been others, too. The team’s owner, Dave Checketts, has pledged $10,000, and the club flew Marcia to New York for a second opinion. Chivas U.S.A. is auctioning jerseys from last Saturday’s game. Pablo Mastroeni, a teammate of Williams’s in Miami, will donate a World Cup jersey for auction. And the Jamaican reggae star Shaggy is recording a public-service announcement for bone-marrow donors.

Yet for the most part, this has been a grass-roots campaign. Two high school girls teams put on a charity match. A 10-year-old boy in Houston who remembered when Andy stopped to talk with him after a game donated $20. And Real Salt Lake players wear green Soccer Unites wristbands.

“It’s important for Andy and Marcia to know how much love and support they have,” Harper said.

It is not what the Williamses expected when Andy was left unprotected in the expansion draft four years ago and chosen by Real Salt Lake. Williams, a skilled midfielder, made his debut with the Jamaican national team at 16. As a 20-year-old, he played for Jamaica in the 1998 World Cup. But he never seemed to play enough defense to please his M.L.S. coaches, and he was shunted off to five teams in seven seasons.

“I was terrified,” Marcia said of moving to a largely white community dominated by Mormon culture. “My first thought was I was going to have to wear long dresses and I’d see men with many wives. I told Andy I’d go back to Florida, finish my nursing degree and he could meet me there.”

Now, four years later, Marcia says she feels at home. She relishes how family-oriented the community is and describes her neighbors as caring and color-blind.

“God must have put us here for a reason,” said Williams, who also has a 10-year-old son, Jordain, from a previous relationship who lives in New Hampshire. “If we were in New York or Chicago, I don’t think the support would be the same.”

Community does make a difference and I believe that God has placed people in your small group for a reason!  I thought about the last phrase…“If we were in New York or Chicago, I don’t think the support would be the same.”  How is your small group making a difference in the lives of individuals and families around the Vegas Valley?  How has your small group made a difference in your life?  Share your story to be an encouragement and let others know…they are making a difference!