Michigan Mission Team Visit - part 3

Sprucing Up A Basketball Court

 A block away from where Family Church meets is the first Protestant church to be founded in La Calera. It is a Pentecostal church and, while we don’t share all the same beliefs and practices, they are also preaching the Gospel both in our town and in an outreach project they have in a poor neighborhood on the way to Bogota. The pastors of that church are brother-in-law and sister of one of our leaders. Over the years they have noticed some of our outreach ideas, including the one where we spruced up our local basketball court making it a cleaner, safer and nicer place for the community to use. So when they heard we were having a team come to serve with us they asked if we might be able to help them with a project they have been wanting to do but lacked the manpower.

  

Before and after 

 

There is a poor community over the mountain and close to the Bogota city-limit. It has a very run-down basketball court perched on the side of the mountain that the kids in the community use. Every Sunday this church holds a Bible study in one of the homes and they have been attempting to be a Christian witness in a very traditional and superstitious neighborhood. One of the community leaders is a believer and got the permissions necessary to paint the court and clean it up. So we said yes and took the team from Michigan there to spend a morning working hard in the high-altitude and hot sunshine!

 

The team spent hours moving a lot of dirt (one corner is prone to landslides), cleaning the restroom building and painting fresh lines on the court. We also put new hoops and nets up and the community leader painted John 14:6 on the roof of the restrooms – this was a subversive act so it needed to be her painting the verse or else there would be an outcry for why there was a Bible verse put up there! While the court still could use a lot more renovation, it certainly was a huge improvement and as we were leaving, the kids were lining up to start using it (not really waiting till the paint was dry!)

 

 

One interesting story emerged as the day unfolded: 

In the corner of the court where the mud tends to slide down off the hill, on a protruding boulder is a cross carved out of the rock face. Jeff (team member from MI) had noticed this cross earlier in the day and thought it would be a good idea to paint it.  So we asked, but the answer was “no”! One of the conditions given to us by the community council in order to grant us permission to do the work there was that we were not allowed to touch the cross or the nearby statue of the Virgin Mary.

 

Bill then started talking to the older local man called Manuel and found out that he was the one who 27 years earlier had carved out the cross to commemorate his brother who was killed in a fight on that spot. Daniel (one of our Family Church leaders) hadn’t heard about the requirement to not paint the cross and while talking with Manuel just started painting it white. Manuel seemed OK with it but some of the local women gasped and reacted in shock. At that point Manuel said “yes, let’s paint this”.

 

So this started a whole conversation between Manuel and Daniel about the meaning of the cross. Manuel said that for him the cross was a memorial of his brother. Daniel reminded him that the cross represents Jesus’ death and resurrection, and that it also points to the future resurrections of Jesus’ followers. And at that point something clicked in Manuel, and he expressed that from now on he would now look at that cross in a new and different way.

 

The practical help of painting a basketball court was a way for our team and church to go and help a local community point to Jesus as being central. It was also a way for Jesus’ followers to express love for people with no strings attached!

 

 

- - After the work was mostly done the ladies in the community prepared us a pot of the typical chicken, potato and corn soup - ajiaco!

 

Part of a 3 post series summarizing Family Church's first Mission Team from the USA:

• Michigan Mission Team Visit - part 1 
• Michigan Mission Team Visit - part 2