I
played soccer the other day. And if you know me at all, this fact is surprising. I am not a runner, so even the idea of playing soccer wears me out most times. But all of a sudden, I found myself playing defense for the American team, who got their butts kicked 8-2. And the only reason we scored two goals is because we had a Ukrainian soccer player on our team.
I’m normally not a soccer fan, and at the beginning of the game I wondered what in the world I was doing out there. I had no clue how to play defense. On any normal day, I would never choose to play soccer. But on the World Race, in a life where I’m following God, sometimes he asks me to do some crazy things. Sometimes he throws me on the field and simply says, have fun. We weren’t there to win. We were there to play with these Ukrainian kids. It didn’t matter if they beat us 8-2 or 20-0. We were there. We joined in with something that they love to do, and in some ways, that shows Jesus more than preaching at them ever will.
We went back to this community to teach them how to play softball. It’s something new, something we could teach them, something different to pique their interests in the Americans and what we were doing there in the first place. So after throwing for a while, as our contact Bruce was setting up the field to play a game, we told a short testimony and a little bit about our trip. They got the reason we were there and then we had some fun.
Sometimes you need a way in, an interesting thing that will draw people to you and make them wonder who you are, where you’ve come from and the reason behind everything. Sports are a great way to do that, and it was cool to see these kids come around for a simple game of soccer or softball.
