This Post by: Aaron Paterson, first-year graduate student at Mizzou in the Truman School of Public Affairs, Non-Profit Management program. Aaron works in Student-Athlete Development in the University of Missouri Athletic Department. He is getting married this summer and hopes to start his own youth-based non-profit some day.


Today we drove 25 minutes to our first place to serve in a town called La Villa Salvidorita, meaning "The Village." The town has about 5000 people, most people working for the agriculture business, cotton or sugar cane industry. I´ve seen some sharp contrasts between a third-world country and having access to the technological world. One image that stands out the most is the amount of trash everywhere. The people here usually just burn their trash when its time to dispose of it, often in the ditch by the road. So driving by yesterday, I saw a fire in the ditch and at the same time a guy getting his hair cut in the front yard (all dirt, like most "yards"), while holding a laptop computer. It was such a contrast. Then in  the town today, which had dirt yards, buckets for baths in the backyard, cows and pigs roaming the streets, barbwire fences, tiny homes...and every now and then a huge satellite dish for cable TV. It was strange to witness...

Back to today, let´s just say it wasn´t like what it was supposed to be. We planned for two hours last night for our day today, and hardly did what was expected. It was, once again, a lesson that you really have to adapt on the fly in the mission field. The kids this morning were too little for baseball...all maybe 10 and under. So we played kickball instead. In a dusty, hot field. I can´t stress those two words enough. It was dusty, and hot. We got sweaty and dirty, but we had a blast. Then we walked back and made our witness bracelets with the kids. The time making bracelets was a wonderful opportunity to connect with the kids and share the Gospel story. Ken, one of our team members, did an excellent job translating the story. His Spanish skills are definitely coming in handy. It was so neat to see how excited the kids were to where their bracelets. Then we ate the PB&J and ham & cheese lunches we packed.
 

Sean and I were asked to lead an older group of kids in baseball down at the field again. So we round up some folks and headed down to only find a bunch of older boys/men wanting to play baseball. With the language barrier I was a little confused and unsure at first what was going on, but our interpreters finally came down with our baseball equipment. I tried to mix the teams but the locals insisted that we play Nicaragua vs. Team USA (and the local Pastor). So we did. It was a friendly game in the end...not as competitive as I first thought it would be. But we definitely had to dust off our gloves (guantes) a bit. The locals came out to watch and definitely favored and cheered for their home team players. They got a few laughs out of us as well. I struck out my first at-bat. For those of you who don´t know me...that was embarrassing. But I made up for myself nicely later. Team USA held it´s own actually. Teresa and Tammy both had a hit and both scored. Tammy even "slid" into second base. She banged up her arm a little on the slide and has now nominated herself to be our all-time third-base coach from here on out. Austin, Will, Sean, and Brett all played well and had a blast. It was just an unbelievable experience all around. With volcanoes as our backdrop in the distance, the cows and pigs roaming the streets beyond the field, sweating profusely in 120 degree heat...we were playing "America´s past-time" in a foreign land. It was a thing of beauty. We did our best to soak in the uniqueness of the experience. In the end, the local pastor prayed with both teams, invited the neighboring men to come to church, and hopefully be a part of a local baseball team he hopes to start. That was a wonderful conclusion to the day. At that point it all made sense. We might not have done the plans we had created, but God had other plans for the day. Today we played baseball, made friends, and supported a local mission in their efforts to reach more people. The local Pastor told me today, it would have never happened if we hadn´t been there to draw a crowd, interact with the people, challenge them to a game, and share Christ´s love through friendship. Pretty cool...

We´ll see what God throws at us tomorrow. To Him be the glory!