June 17th, Saturday

We started off the day with a little excitement. As we were getting ready for the day, Sarah slipped and cut her chin. We decided that it would be best to let Sarah get some extra rest and stay home for the day as we did not want the cut to get dirty and infected as everything is pretty dusty down here. When we got back that evening, Sarah was doing fine and the cut has continued to heal nicely.

We arrived at the hosting church at 7:30am and then went to the park where the tournament was going to take place. We were scheduled to start at 8:00 with 17 teams. We only had one team present on time and had to wait for more of the teams. Because of Father's Day, the district scheduled a special march and told some of the schools that they had to participate. A few of the schools that were therefore scheduled to participate did not. At 9:30, we had an assembly with the 6 teams that were present and went over some of the rules, sang the national anthem (of Peru), and then assigned the teams to courts. Teams continued to arrive and we ended with 14 teams represented. We had to shuffle some of the teams around from their scheduled courts to balance things due to the missing teams.

Each of the team members helped as line judges for the games and I was one of the referees. Throughout the day, we had the opportunity to get to know many of the players with some people trying to talk to us even when we were suppossed to be officiating. One of the players found out that Andrea had the same name as her and enjoyed trying to communicate with her.

At around 1:30, we stopped the tournament to have lunch which was provided for all of the teams. After lunch, we had the opportunity to do a couple of skits and then share a gospel presentation with them. We did a pickpocket skit to break the ice and then a skit that discusses many people's opinion of who God is and then what the Bible tells us about God. The message included the "Good Person" test.

Afterwards, we had three of the players approach the counselors to receive Christ as their Savior.

The church had also contacted a person to come and sell drinks and snacks throughout the day. They had tried to get someone from the church but nobody was available.  They then approached somebody who made a living having a concession stand and gave her the opportunity to provide those services. During the message, she was listening and afterwards, she asked one of the church memeber to tell her more about what had been shared. She then also accepted Christ as her Savior.

During the rest of the afternoon, we had the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals, determining 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams to receive prizes. The prizes were to be awarded the next day as part of the Sunday church program.

Though it was a long day of standing being line judges, we know of at least four people who will now not need to face a Holy Judge without having the blood of Christ applied to their account.