Sharks, Monopoly, and Streetball. Oh my!

  “Our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”

Psalm 126:2

 

This week, God reminded me to have fun. 
   On Monday morning, we had VBS like normal. We got done with our planned stuff, and we had about an hour left to fill. So naturally, we decided to make up a story. Tommy,Leah, Kendra, Stacey, and I all took turns making up parts to the story. Basically, it involved a shark named Big-Tooth who eventually grew legs and had to fight gorillas that started fires with bananas. A pretty normal story, I think. Haha. I’m pretty sure we had more fun telling it than the kids had listening to it, but it was still awesome. It was great just to relax and be goofy. 

   After VBS, Tommy and I went with Frank (one of our translators) to visit Dulce. We had a great time laughing and joking around. At one point, Tommy and I talked about how we were going to be traveling to Asia, and we mentioned that they often eat cockroaches and other bugs over there. Dulce was, naturally, thoroughly appalled by this fact. We then spent the next few minutes just laughing and joking around about having to eat cockroaches. Tommy and I also got to see Frank joke around more than we had before, which was really awesome. (On a side note, Dulce served us lunch while we were there. It was an absolutely delicious meal of spaghetti, and rice and beans. Besides the food being delicious, it was so humbling to see Dulce’s selfless servant’s heart. She has little but is still willing to give. May God continue to teach me through this experience.) 

   Later that afternoon, we went back to Guachapita to do our house visits. Tommy and I hung out with Willy and his friends. Willy is about 23 or so years old and recently lost his 2 month old child. It has been great getting to hang out with him, and you can tell that he enjoys the company. Anyways, we ended up all playing Monopoly. The funny thing was that it was the British version of Monopoly. So basically, Tommy and I, Americans, played the British version of Monopoly with Willy and his friends, Dominicans, while having to try to speak broken Spanish/English. God has a crazy sense of humor! It was a great time of hanging out and playing. Also, I was able to negotiate a Monopoly trade in Spanish. I felt very accomplished! Check that off my bucket list! Again, though, it was so awesome just to relax and laugh and have fun with these people. 

   On Thursday afternoon, Phil, Jake, and I were walking home from Guachapita, and we came upon some kids playing street baseball. We stopped and asked if we could play, and they were very excited to let us join. We played baseball with these kids for about 30 minutes or so. It was obvious that it brought joy to both the kids we played with and the people in the community who watched us play. On Saturday afternoon, Phil, Jake, Tommy, Laura, and I were walking to Guachapita, and we saw the same kids playing again. So we stopped and played with them again. Again, it was a great time of just being spontaneous and having fun with people of the community. 

   So I just told several random stories. Surely, there must be a point behind all of them. Here it is. Having fun can be a form of ministry. I think that I had been having too much of a serious business approach to ministry.  Oh, I have to have this deep serious conversation with these people. Yes, God can work through that. But it’s also ok just to relax and have fun and be goofy and laugh while doing ministry. The way to minister to these people is just to relax and talk and enjoy life with them, whether that is done through a serious, deep conversation about Christ or through a goofy conversation about eating cockroaches.