June 24, 2009; Day 5: Watery St. Juan Day

This morning after making some phone calls to Marcus' wife Carrie, and her making some phone calls to his doctor in the USA, we were relieved to find out that with his leg in a cast, it would be o.k. for him to stay for the rest of the trip. This was great news because of the role Marcus plays on the leadership side of our team. He really brings a quiet maturity to things, and is a great role model for the young guys on our team. This was also good news because Marcus and Landon came here together, and if Marcus had to leave, it would either make things difficult for Landon, or mean that Landon had to go with him. This would have left us with 5 players, but... crisis diverted... Praise God

Today is the Catholic holiday called John the Baptist Day, or St. Juan Day. This is the one day of the year when everyone runs around throwing water at everyone else. I guess the irony of it raining all day was probably lost on them, but it really made things difficult for us. This morning at about 10:00 a.m. we went to the town of New Washington to play 2 games. When we arrived we made a courtesy call to the mayor, only to find out that both of our games were scheduled on outdoor courts. The mayor suggested that we reschedule the games for Friday, but we already have a full schedule and we told him that it would not be possible. He then suggested that we could move one of the games to the covered court near the town center. We were so thankful that he was willing to work with us to make it happen and we agreed to meet at 4:00 for the game.





After lunch and some time at the hotel, we headed back to New Washington to play our game. We were very fortunate that the local church had provided some workers to help with track disbursement and response collection. Now that we are down to 6 mobile bodies, we have 5 for the game and only 1 to collect tracts. It was a great blessing to have the extra help. The game started out pretty tough and we were down by 4 at half time. Michael shared his testimony and Pastor Jo gave a brief message of salvation. There were over 200 people there at the game, and we received about 70 tracts back from those who expressed an interest in learning more.

It is always one of our goals to encourage the local church, but this game it was very apparent that we were successful to this end. The whole youth group had shown up to help with tracts, and after the game it was a blessing to us to see the big smiles on each of their faces as well as the other church members who had come. They were going from player to player introducing themselves. We gave the filled out response cards and a stack of Bible Study pamphlets to the pastor to use for follow up and joined them in praying for God's blessings on our collective effort to see people come to know Him through this. Please remember to keep the People of New Washington in your prayers! God is going to do something great there, we are so excited to have been a small part.

After the game, the mayor invited us to his beach side restaurant for dinner. It was an amazing Pinoy Barbecue spread at a very nice location right alongside the beach. We even got to sing a couple of songs on the karaoke machine... one with the mayor!!! We are always thankful for the opportunities that God gives us to relax and enjoy His creation on these trips, and we continue to thank Him for fun times like this.