One of the national sports of the Philippines is basketball. For this reason, just about every village in the Philippines has a basketball court. However, the main purpose of a basketball court is not to play basketball, but to dry rice. The village we live in is no exception.
This year, one of Rebekah’s school classes is PE (Physical Education). So far, Rebekah has chosen to play basketball for her PE, rain or shine. Stephen gets the privilege of being the PE teacher. So, every morning at 6am, Rebekah and Stephen hit the court. By having this class so early, we (1) hopefully don’t sweat too much in the mid 70/80 temperature and (2) Agutaynens don’t usually put their rice out until about 9am.
This week, Rebekah and Stephen went out to the court. This particular morning was a little unusual as other Agutaynen kids were out playing, too. Well, they were playing on one side of the court, so Rebekah and Stephen took the other side. Before we started to play, Stephen removed a cracked-open coconut from the court. A minute later, one of the Agutaynen teens walked over and told Stephen: “agbantayan mo” which translated means “you be on the guard”.
After saying this, he pointed up to the coconut tree which hung over the basket we were using. Stephen noticed that there were at least 20 ripe coconuts just waiting to fall down. Where in the States would you need to guard yourself from falling coconuts while playing basketball? Well, Rebekah and Stephen had a good morning and made it home without injury.
We hope the Agutaynen believers will heed to the same warning: “be on guard”. Please pray for these believers as they are not watching out for falling coconuts, but attacks from the devil. May they stand firm and testify of God’s wonderful work in their own lives.