Yesterday, Friday, we really didn't do a whole lot. In the morning we went and watched the baseball team play their last game against the Panamanian guys at the academy. It was pretty cool to watch. Afterwards there were a few other Panamanian players that showed up to throw a few pitches and show what they had. One of the pitchers' aunt is married to Mariano Rivera. This kid was 16 and was throwing right at 90 which is insane for someone his age. The catcher was also 16 and was catching and throwing the ball down to second in ridiculous time. From the time he caught it to the time it hit the glove at second was consistently under 2 seconds which is fast even for MLB standards. It's the kind of arm some major league guys would want. We might be seeing these two guys on tv before too much longer. After that we had another government thing to do and guess what it was.....painting...again. We painted a lot of classrooms at a school in downtown Panama City. The classrooms were in pretty rough shape and needed some paint but for one I'm tired of painting and we aren't really doing anything to promote Christ or teach people about Christ. We go to a park and a school and paint with no one else around, they just give us a bucket of paint and some rollers/brushes and let us be until we are done. Not really mission work in my opinion. I kinda understand the painting at the children's home a little more because we are supporting and helping the efforts they are doing but we were only there for 2 and a half days. But I kinda knew going in that plans were tentative and that a lot of plans would be made once we got here since it's the first time we've been here but I still want to complain a little because I'm good at complaining. Last night we just watched soccer games all night. USA beat Jamaica, Honduras lost to Costa Rica and Panama tied Mexico. It has been a lot of fun meeting and hanging out with this group though. It's a small group of only 19 and we have been able to get to know each other pretty well. So that has been a lot of fun and we have a lot of fun whatever we are doing.
Friday was the last day of actual work and today started the sightseeing/retreat part of the trip. Today we went to a place where the group could buy souvenirs. It was an outdoor market place where you can haggle on the prices and some of the guys got the people to come off of their prices by quite a bit. After that we went to a wildlife preserve in the rainforest. This place was really neat. They made it quite clear that they were absolutely NOT A ZOO! and that owning animals was absolutely terrible because you take them out of their own environment and that you are basically worse than Satan if you do that. They only take in animals that are illegally caught or bought or animals that have been injured and need rehab. They try to rehab all the animals to the point where they can be released into the wild but not all can re-adapt to the conditions of the wild. They had jaguars and pumas and birds and crocodiles and tapirs and monkeys and other animals all in cages .....and on display for the public...... and you had to pay an entry fee of $5......If that's not a zoo then I don't know what is! After that we went to the mall for dinner and now we are back at the hotel.
3 of the baseball players brought their girlfriends with them this week. While we were at the rainforest one of the guys, Daniel, proposed to Megan so we now have an engaged couple with us. That was pretty cool.
We also heard a pretty good story today. 20 years ago this missionary couple was living in Nigeria. They had been living there for just over a year and everything had been going pretty well. So one morning the missionary guy (We never did get their names so they are just missionary guy and chick) goes out walking to the store. As he was walking down the road he came up on this little kid, estimated at about 17 months old, drinking water out of a mud puddle in the road. The kid was in rough shape with sores on his body and malnourished/dehydrated. So the missionary guy picks him up out of the road and takes him straight to the doctor. The doctor begins to treat him and tells the missionary guy that the kid would not have lasted much longer out on the streets, maybe not even lasting the day. The doctor however was able to treat the kid and get him the nutrition he needed and the medicine he needed to get on a road to recovery. Within a few years he was back good health and full strength. The kid was never reported missing and eventually the missionary guy and chick went to the US Embassy to see what needed to be done with him. A few years down the road this kid was eligible for adoption and was adopted and moved to America at age 11. The awesome part of the story is that the kid ended up going to Freed Hardeman to play baseball. When he heard about this mission trip the baseball team was going to be going on he became interested because of his story, his life was saved by missionaries. Now Mark is in Panama on a mission trip doing what he can to spread the word and love of Christ only because he was on the road at the precise time a fairly new missionary was walking down the road who picked him up and changed his life. Now the really cool part is when you stop and think about what events may have happened that led that missionary guy and chick into the mission field. What led them to have a desire to go to Nigeria? What's their story? What happened in their life to make them want to give their life to spread the gospel abroad? Because when you think back you see that sooo many things had to happen in their lives and their parents lives and their parents parents lives that led those two missionaries to Nigeria and to that spot in the road when a young kid was drinking from a mud puddle. Some people believe in coincidence but I believe in a God who has a plan, a story to tell. A God who has a story that is unfolding each and every day. A God whose story we take part in no matter what our beliefs are or the decisions that we make. We ARE in His story. An author has his hands all over his work, his styles, techniques and ideas are all throughout his work. The plot is his, the characters are his, the random events and curveball endings are all his but unlike the author of any book you read, the Great Author of all things allows us two choices. The ending has been written and the plot has been set but we are given the option of writing our own parts or trusting that the Perfect Author will write us a part for the ages. Who knows what Mark will go on to do. He is a great guy and hopefully will do great things for Christ but 20 years ago a couple of missionaries allowed God to write their story and boy did He write a good one.
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