Since I have arrived in the Philippines, I have done many different things such as taking shifts working in the orphanage, to planting sod on a soon to be soccer field trying to get it ready for a soccer camp ministry coming in April.
Yesterday held a very new/awesome type of ministry for me.
Well Saturday was the off day for all the teams here all 5 of them, so we all wanted to go into town and hang out and meet people. It was on Saturday that a few of the WR guys were hanging at the park in town and met the international frisbee team for the Philippines (crazy, huh?). That is definitely not something I thought I would find here, but I did. As some of the guys from the World Race were talking with this frisbee team, they invited all of us WR’s to come play with them on sunday afternoon. Once everyone got back to the house a team was put together. The team consisted of Josh , Allan , Greg , Paul , Jake, Brooks and myself. When I woke up that Saturday I put on my clothes and walked over to the orphanage. I had a shift at the orphanage for the next 7 hours. Afterwards needless to say I was exhausted, and one thing that I did not want to do was play a international frisbee team. But Allan kept pushing me to go until I said yes. Oh, I did I mention that as soon as my shift had ended that was when we had to leave to go to the game. Their was no resting time. Well we all loaded up on a multi-cab (multi-cab is a very very small bus/car thing that is made not made for a person taller than 5.10) on our way into town and then walked over to the park. Once we got there, we saw the team all 35 of them. We all introduced ourselves and talked for a bit and then we all started to practice. Everyone practiced for about 45 minutes, and then it was game time! Before we all walked out onto the field we knew that we needed to pray, so we told them that we were going to pray and that we would love it if they would pray with us. One girl spoke up for the entire group and told us that of course they would pray with us. She also said that she was a Christian but many people on the team were not. So we all gathered around together and prayed. The we walked out onto the field and flipped the frisbee to see who got to throw off and the game was on!
Uh oh, First point them.
Then something happened, the next 4 point were us. Now it went back and forth like that for a while until we eventually WON!! with 13 us, 4 them. It was so crazy I couldn’t believe that we had just beaten the international team for the philippines.
I do want to give credit, where credit is due. Before we started the game I had the idea to pray to God, to ask Him to play with us. That we wanted to win! God has taught me over the past few years, that He loves when you pray to him about the little things, that there is nothing to small ask for His help in. As you can read in my blog “Nothing to Big or to Small”. Pray about the little things even if that is “what should I eat for breakfast” or “what should I wear today”. It is also another opportunity to come to the Creator and talk, as well as a great way to teach yourself to “pray without ceasing” – 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Now this wasn’t a long prayer. It was just me saying God it would be so much fun to win, and know that You were a part of that win. Our God is many things, one of which is fun.
Anyway, the game had ended, and we were all walking off the field and we wanted to close in prayer. So again we came to them and told them that we would like to close our time in prayer, and again they were up for it. We prayed and talked for a while. Then they told us that they wanted to hang out with us sometime, so we all exchanged numbers and they invited us to come back and play next week.
Isn’t it awesome how God uses everything? We didn’t go there planning on doing ministry we went there just planning to play a game of frisbee. and now we have several opportunities to go hang out with this team, to build relationships and share Jesus with them.
After all this happened we had the thought to go back every Sunday or maybe a couple times a week and just hanging out at the park with the people there, bringing cookies for the kids, and frisbees, just getting to know everyone. Planting seeds, and hopefully watching them bloom.
