Did anyone know that Siem Reap, Cambodia hosted the Olympics this year? Well on March 20th this year they hosted the event. The day started with opening cheers from both teams participating on that day. The passion and energy could be felt within the sports complex where the games took place. The judges (our manistry team) came together to crown the winner in 3 different categories. This was just the start of some intense competition for the rest of the day.
Although Cambodia did not actually host the Olympics, they did host a school’s Athletic’s Day. We were staying at an international school base the month we were doing ministry. Most of the month we partnered with a church organization that did English programs out in the villages around Siem Reap. This ministry only took up about four hours of our time, so we asked the school if we could help them out in any way. They gave us a list of little work projects and mentioned that they would love to have someone take on setting up this field day. Right away, I thought it would be fun to help but didn’t want to take on the job of leading it. After some pushing by the other people on the team, is when I finally decided to take on the responsibility.
So to start the process of designing what the day would look like, I sat down with the teacher that had set the ones up in the past years. I heard the details they desired for the day to include. Some of those were competition, teamwork, and sportsmanship. After about an hour of talking about these details, I was on my own to put together the structure for the upcoming day. I used the layout they had provided for their past ones and added some of my own twists to the day. After creating a rough draft per say for the event, I sat down with the small number of staff from the school. At this time we tweaked the schedule a little bit to cater to the number of students and the time allotted for the day. This was just two days before the day would take place. The day before the event I worked with one of the staff gathering up all the gear we would need, ropes, cones, balls, batons, and water jugs.
The day of the event, most of the guys on my team helped me in facilitating the events. I put guys in charge of running the track events as well as some in charge of the field events. The track events included 100m, 200m, 400m, and 800m runs as well as team relays. The fields events were not your typical ones from the Olympics. We had agility events and other small games designed for these. With the help of the school staff, parents, any my team we were able to pull off the day without any major incidents or changes. During the day there were many teachers or parents that approached me or one of the guys from my team, they thanked us for putting this day on. This wasn’t the only thing they did for us. They invited us to their staff brunch time the next day where they has a table full of small treats and snacks for us. The kids had even made posters with thank you notes written on them.
This Athletics Day that I was able to design and be a part of us was so much fun. I will definitely remember all the kids faces and the people I was able to do it with. This also showed me that I shouldn’t be afraid to step up as in many cases I just like to be the helper in the background. This showed me that I am capable to lead. Overall the experience was amazing and one I won’t forget.
