Naturally, we’re always praying for salvation for others, ending world hunger, and of course world peace… But sometimes we offer up those selfish prayers that don’t really matter in the big picture, but would be cool in the moment. Jesus answered one of those for me on Christmas.
While we were visiting some friends in Gua Musang, we kept running in to basketball teams in restaurants and coffee shops. They weren’t wearing their jerseys or anything, but you can just tell when you see a basketball team if you’ve played before. So, using my amazing deduction skills… I assumed there must be a tournament going on. Let me also say, I hadn’t even seen a basketball in nearly 4 months, so I got really excited.
Praise The Lord for google, I was able to google “Gua Musang basketball tournament” and confirm my assumptions. The website listed the schedule of games, but the only problem was it didn’t give an address of where they were playing. As much as we were seeing the teams I knew it had to be in walking distance, so I just planned to ask someone the next time we ran into them. Then… We stopped running into them. I was starting to think the tournament was over when Anna (from Uniquely Knit) and I decided to go have some lunch. When we got to the restaurant there was a table of coaches eating there!
We spoke with them, they helped us order because the waitress didn’t speak any English, and he told us where the gym was! I was so excited and Anna said she would go with me to the game after we finished eating. We asked the same man if he could help us translate to pay and he said it was already taken care of. “Consider it a Christmas gift,” he said and pointed us in the direction of the gym. Free food and basketball?! What a Christmas!
We watched the games and found out that the championship game was the next day! But it was also the day my team was supposed to leave. We had planned to take an 8:30pm train which would have allowed me to go to the championship, but we thought that might be getting back too late so they were going to look for an earlier train. There were supposed to be trains and 2 and 4. So… I selfishly prayed all morning that the other two trains would not work for us! I prayed they wouldn’t run, I prayed they would be full, I just prayed I would get to watch the game. The 2:00 train was full. And the 4:00 train didn’t run. It was a Christmas miracle!
So, I got to spend the end of my Christmas watching a championship ball game. The team we were cheering for won. And I’m now convinced I’m Jesus’ favorite person. (Oh and someone bought our lunch again the second day before the championship game!)
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