God pretty much rocked my socks off today.
I’m trying to get my fingers to type all of the crazy emotions and thoughts that I have going on inside my head right now.
I wrote earlier about how we have a lot of freedom to choose our ministry this month. On our first day here, we walked the beach and noticed that there were volleyball nets outside of almost every bar. Sarah and I talked about how it would be really fun to build relationships with people while playing sand volleyball …not to mention that we can work on our tan and get quite a work-out at the same time :).
Today was our first “official” day of ministry. We walked through the multiple shops lining the beach in search of a volleyball; we finally found one, purchased it, and began to look for the perfect location to draw people into our game. We really had no clue how the whole volleyball ministry thing would pan out, so we decided to just start peppering with each other. About 15 minutes into this, we stopped and stared at each other because it was still just the two of us playing…then we just started laughing. We were thinking this was going to be a bust since no one had approached us yet (maybe because we’re so good…ha), but we noticed that a few shop owners were watching us play so we invited them to join us. A few minutes later, we had a game of 5-on-5 going.
We played for about an hour and a half and decided it was time to call it quits; Sarah and I had already macheteed some of a forest that morning and ran a few miles so we were pretty tired at this point. As we’re about to tell the guys that we’d play another day, a man in his mid-sixties asked if he could join our game. Sarah and I looked at each other and decided we could play for a little while longer.
We call our new friend California. California immediately gave the impression of being a bachelor; we soon found out that he was from Los Angeles, hence the nickname California. He knew quite a bit about volleyball, was really nice, and joked around a lot with everyone.
Unknown to Sarah and I, California had made a “friend” named Paris during his visit; Bethsaida and Leah had noticed him and Paris laying on the beach together all day and felt inclined to go speak to her. When California came to play volleyball with us, they were given the opportunity to talk with her for awhile.
Paris is a woman that’s only a year younger than me; she works as a prostitute in order to feed her brothers and sisters, as well as help provide for her parents. Bethsaida and Leah spoke to Paris about the fact that she is worth much more than what she can sell her body for. Paris told them she felt convicted about the way she earned money and agreed to meet them for lunch the next day.
to be continued…
