Answered Prayer... In An Unexpected Way

Last time I posted, I talked about the new basketball chapel we have going on at Truman.  Things are still going well there, however one of our difficulties is just getting to know the guys on a deeper level.  On average there are about 20 guys who come from both the JV and Varsity teams and we usually only have about a 30 minute time window for chapel.  Josh and I have been able to get to know the names of the varsity guys by going to their games and watching practices, but the JV guys have been harder to get to know.  We haven't been able to make it out to a JV game yet, and they always sit in the back of the room during chapel.  Though we know all the names for the varsity guys, we only knew 2 or 3 of the JV guys.  Josh and I noticed this and we've been praying that God would help us to build more relationship with the JV team.  Our plan for that was to start getting together with guys from both teams 4 at a time.  We planned to take them out for pizza and get to know things about them, their spiritual background, and eventually share about our ministry and the Gospel diagram we learned in Hungary.  We started doing that with the varsity guys first since we knew them better, but we hardly knew where to start with the JV guys.

Last week, God answered our prayer for the JV guys in an unexpected way.  Josh was out of town on a trip raising support, so it was going to be just me until I asked Brad to come in and speak to the guys. Normally, the coach lets the team out for chapel at 4:45, but we usually try to get there at 4:30 to get food set up and wait for practice to end.  Because I was on my own with food this time, I decided to show up a little early to set up.  When I walked in the door at 4:20, I saw a couple basketball guys standing in the hall fully dressed and ready to go home.  I asked them if practice was over and they said the coach had to let them go early because the girls needed the gym.  As I stood there with a gallon of gatorade and 30 Philly pretzels, I got frustrated that I had so much food and didn't know if I would have anyone to eat it.  I was also a bit frustrated that I wasn't informed about the time change since the day before I was told we would still have chapel at 4:45 like always.  I knocked on the coaches door and he said we could still have chapel if I could round any of the guys up.  The two guys in the hall said we might find a few of them at the bus stop, so we walked down to find them. When we got there, we found several guys from the team and told them we had food and that we were still doing chapel.  About 12 of the guys followed me back to the room... 1 guy from the varsity team, and the rest were JV.  Shortly afterwards, Brad showed up and we started the meeting, but because we got started so much earlier than usual, we had a lot of extra time with the guys because they didn't have an activity bus to catch until 5:30.  Brad took his time with a lesson on integrity from Nehemiah and got the guys to do trust falls with there teammates.  It worked out good and they were really involved in the discussion.  It was great because I left feeling like that was the most I had connected with the JV guys all season.  We prayed for a chance to get to know the JV guys better, and in the chaos of things that day, God answered the prayer in an unexpected way.

One of the guys from the team doing some extreme trust falling!