A couple of years ago, we had the opportunity to work with a church in Zarate to host a volleyball tournament. They had done an excellent job organizing it and bringing in many different schools to the event to hear the gospel. We have tried to run volleyball tournaments a couple of other times with other churches but they did not seem to have the right support personnel or did not invest the necessary time to make it a success. Therefore, this year we contacted Zarate and they were interested in working with us once again.

There were 12 different teams that participated in the tournament. Each of our team members assisted with line judging and other responsibilities. Some schools had more than one team represented and at first we had some problems with certain people trying to play on more than one team. We were able to resolve the problem and the tournament went relatively smoothly.

Normally, what we try to do is serve lunch and then have our gospel presentation. Since the food was delayed in arriving, we went ahead and did the presentation first. After we presented the gospel through our presentation, some of the members of the church in Zarate went to each of the groups to ask if they had any questions about what had been presented. They were able to take many young people aside and deal with them in small groups and use the wordless bracelets to reinforce our presentation. We later found out that 33 young people made a profession of faith. When the tournament ended, we gave out the prizes to the winning teams and invited them to the church for the Sunday services.

After a full day standing, we were ready to go home. We were also a little hungry as the lunch that was provided did not go as far as expected so the portions were fairly small. So, on the way home, we stopped and picked up some rotisserie chicken to take home with us. Though we had a few people who felt a little under the weather, God gave us all the strength to make it through and to use us to lead others to Christ.