First Pizza

I now fly out of India on 1 February. A little earlier than originally planned but it was either that or hang around without much to do here after Robin and Angela had both gone interstate for over a week.
The flight from Singapore to Sydney, however, is proving more difficult so I’ve been waitlisted but don’t know if I’ll be in Singapore for 8 hours or 10 days. If you could keep my travel arrangements in your prayers that would be much appreciated.

Since the problem with the season dates came up and I had to start thinking about leaving early I have felt challenged to make sure I made as much use as possible of the last week and left on the best possible terms. The last few days in particular have been busy trying to visit a number of the players’ homes and catch up with people with whom I have been involved with during my time here.

Last night I took 3 of the boys, Raju, Nithya & Suresh, out to Pizza Hut. It was the first time they had eaten pizza! I’m not sure how much they enjoyed the food, they may have just been being polite but they definitely enjoyed me taking them out and the novelty of the experience. Today we will meet together to pray. These 3 are already developing into leaders of the ministry. They aren’t bad footballers but more importantly they almost never miss a training session or fellowship time. Raju and Nithya in particular have increasingly begun to take the administrative burden for the Eagles off Robin and all 3 will be involved in coaching the Division 4 side in the coming weeks as well as a couple of other school teams. My main hope and prayer is that my presence has even slightly helped them along that path. I know they have been a great help and support to me, as well as good friends.

My Football Story

Over the last couple of months I have had a fair few chances to talk with young footballers. Most of this occurs through translation so I have to keep in short and simple. Often these ‘talks’ are spur of the moment things that have to be made up on the spot. Sometimes there is a little more preparation time and here is the simple message I have given most often to a range of different groups. Obviously it’s been simplified and embellished to make it more effective and easier to tell so I apologise to those who know the original and where it’s been poetically ‘enhanced’. It’s only a short tale but it’s surprising how long it takes with actions and translation.

A few years ago I was part of a team from Sydney. The team was going to play in Thailand. I was captain of the team and really excited because it was the first time I had captained a team. We prepared hard for the trip. We saved up for the cost of the flights. We trained and exercised. We played practice matches. We were ready for the tour.

In Thailand we continued to work hard. We got used to the heat and got used to the conditions of the ground. We dealt with the referees who weren’t always very good and the opposition teams who were sometimes rough.

During our time in Thailand there was a tournament. We really wanted to win the tournament so worked really hard to do our best. The tournament started and we played hard and we played well. All the training and work paid off and we started to win games. Each game we won made us all the more excited and determined to win. By the time we got to the final we were really confident and knew that we were good enough and committed enough to win. And we did win. It wasn’t an easy game but we won.

The prize for winning was a big trophy. The trophy was great. It was shiny and new and we were very proud of our new trophy. We held it above our heads and had photos taken with it. We ran around with it and showed it to everyone. We were really excited about our trophy that we had earnt with all our hard work.

However, the next day we had to leave Thailand and we couldn’t carry the trophy on the plane. After some discussion we decided to pack it very carefully in a suitcase. We were so gentle and careful as we put it in the bag. We packed clothing and other soft things around the trophy and very delicately carried the suitcase out the front of where we were staying.

To get to the airport a van came to pick us up. When the van arrived the driver jumped out and walked up to where we were standing. He grabbed the bag with the trophy inside and with a big swing hurled the bad onto the van. As it landed we all heard the loud “Crack” and knew. When we opened up the suit case later our worst fears had happened the trophy was in pieces.

We had worked hard for that trophy, we had played well and we excited when we won it. But it didn’t last. It was fragile and temporary. However, we can win a trophy that will last. That can’t be broken or destroyed. God sent His son to die for us to bring us back into relationship with Him. This is a prize that doesn’t fade, doesn’t crack, doesn’t spoil and that is for all time.

I am here visiting you in India because I love football, I work hard and play hard with the Eagles team because I like winning. More than all these things though I am in India because I want to share with you the prize that is available in the death and resurrection of Jesus. A prize for available for all of us.

I like the story because it’s simple, straightforward, football related and easy to relate to the gospel. It has felt particularly well received at the couple of junior tournaments and teams with which we have been involved. The many opportunities to share with and encourage young footballers has been one of the greatest blessings of my time in India and the only real disappointment is that a couple of extra opportunities that we were exploring did not happen.

Don Bosco-McFerran Tournament

Robin’s Customs team was Runners-Up in the league last year. For this reason they were often invited to invitational tournaments. One of these was run by the catholic Don Bosco mission this week. It involved the Don Bosco teams, the top 4 Chennai teams and a collection of others from around the country. We ended up making the short trip out of the city to the ground on 3 occasions, twice for matches involving Customs and once for the final. As I watched the team run out for their first game I was struck by 2 thoughts. First I was highly envious and then this was quickly followed by wondering whether the Catholics were in need of sports ministers. The reason for these rather selfish thoughts was the pitch. It was the softest, greenest thing I have laid eyes on in the last six months and even in Australia would be considered a good field. In India it was unimaginable.


To add to the beauty of the field tiered wooden seating had been erected right round the field (for the final they were packed full). To call them simply stands would be a disservice to the true ingenuity of Tamil Nadu construction which believes that anything can be built if you have enough straight-ish branches and lots of lengths of rope. Add in herds of buffalo that blocked the road to the ground, a goat that wandered into the goal mouth during the warm up to the final and a collection of decent goals and it all made for a really enjoyable few days. For the final we hired a van and filled it full of the junior players from the Eagles Division 4 team and took them for an outing as they prepare for their season which starts in a couple of weeks.

2 Weddings 1 Week

Last week I got my first taste of an Indian Christian wedding reception. Then 3 days later I got my second taste. The two weddings were of people from very different social strata and therefore whilst having a similar basic structure were very different. The first wedding reception was between an Indian and a Sri Lankan both of whose fathers or grandfathers were pastors heavily involved in massive ministries. Therefore at times it felt as much a union between the ministries as it was between the two young people sitting in the middle of the stage. Adding to the Christian conference feel was the fact that the front 2 or 3 rows of the auditorium/theatre in which we sat were full of pastors and at least 6 or 7 of them got up to share at length in English. Clearly no expense had been spared as hundreds were fed, there was a 24 piece band and a number of musical items and the decorations were pretty incredible. This was on top of the money that had already been spent on a ceremony in Sri Lanka and the incredible decorations and outfits. The wedding couple changed half way through the ceremony to show off an extra set of expensive threads. The queues for the food were incredible but eventually worth the wait with bhiriani and tandoori chicken. However, my favourite part of the wedding was the ‘toast’. Christians in India don’t drink so they’d come up with a novel interpretation of the toast in which an old man who knows somebody’s grandfather gets up and talks about the families. For this wedding an old fellow talked at incredible length about the ministries of the couples respective grandfathers. All without raising so much as a glass of water to his lips.

The second wedding was a much more low key affair in the grounds of an old Church of South India church. Again we sat in rows of seats facing the stage but this time the speeches were quick and a mix of Tamil and English. Again the ‘toast’ made me smile with its old man talking about the families. Despite the fact that the speeches were still going as soon as food started to appear people got up from their seats and filed out to join that queue. There wasn’t enough seats to serve everyone their sit down meal so about a 100 or so people sat down side-by-side at a time. As I sat there silently shoveling food into my mouth trying to keep up with the largish Indian men on either side of me and ignore the person who was already behind my chair waiting for me to finish the thought of pigs at a trough kept popping into my head. Not that the food, bhiriani of course, was excellent and Angela’s relatives made me very welcome.

A quick random thank you!

I have often had a fair bit of time on my hands over here at times when everyone (excepting small children) are busy. The teaching in some of the churches and on 'Christian' television has often been dissapointing or in Tamil. Therefore I wanted to send out a really big thank you to everyone who over the last few years has made it possible to download sermons and talks from the internet.

I was first alerted to the possibilities to use this as a method of getting teaching whilst in a foreign country by a missionary I visited in South America who mentioned that he had been listening to the minister from my home church just prior to my arrival. He was right. They're a great resource if you have an okay internet connection, which thankfully I do. Where books take up space and weight in the pack and therefore carrying enough for more than 2 months is not feasible the talks have no such draw backs.

Therefore whilst I have been in India I have downloaded talks from a range of sites including EU, various Sydney churches, Sydney synod and the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (which has a couple of really interesting and fairly unusual talks available). The point of this post is therefore to really thank everyone responsible for making these resources available. I particuarly want to thank the speakers for letting their talks be made available in this way and the techie people who do the recording and hosting work (I'm aware these skill sets are very rarely in the same people). I don't know if anyone involved in that work will read this but they've really been a support here and a couple of talks in particular have really helped me in a challenging time.

On holidays?

The League has been postponed, that much now seems definite. There probably won't be a competitive fixture from now until 24/25 February, which is well after I am scheduled to fly out. The Customs team (with which I had been training to try and keep up fitness here) have been given a holiday until the 1 February and the Eagles training schedule looks pretty thin, particularly given that a number of the players are using the postponement as a chance to let niggles heal and to head out of town to see family. Then there are the college tournaments that are about to start and will make even fewer players available for things.

It's all left me feeling pretty lost and confused. Suddenly everything that was keeping me busy and providing opportunities to talk and serve appears to have come to a halt. The fact that I won't be around when things get rolling again makes it even harder to work out what best to do. If this wasn't concerning enough it now seems like my host family may not be in Chennai for my last planned week here. Please keep me in your prayers as I really struggle with how best to make use of the time I have left and what plans to make about getting home and things like that.

Future thoughts

I have been reflecting lately on how much our thoughts of the future impact on current events. The weekend can be either a great chance to rest and unwind or a frustrating waste of time depending on whether we look forward to a busy Monday or a Monday spent catching up on deadlines missed. Many a confusing ordeal has been turned into an adventure by thinking about the story telling potential to be had later. Much of the study at university is judged as good or bad by students based on assumptions of what will be useful in the workforce. How very different does a month without work feel to the holidaymaker and the unemployed?

For me I have seen this phenomenon in the way my thoughts on this time of ministry in India have ebbed and flowed due to uncertainty about the future. As dreams and plans come in and out of the picture so what I do each day takes on more or less significance. It often all depends on how I think what I'm doing will or won't help get to that next thing or will help once I'm there. As plans fall apart or change the criteria by which things are judged changes with it and unfortunately so too does my experience of events.

As Christians we have a picture of the future into eternity. How great would it be to truly experience everyday events in the perspective of that future and judge by that criteria? Often we are able to look back and say "God was using that time" or "that was valuable in God's eyes" but I know I am regularly more influenced at the emotional level by how things fit into my short term future plans than eternity. Over the last month I think God has been giving me prayers to pray, both for myself and others. This is one of them:

That I may so trust God's future that I don't just look forward to it but experience the present in the light of it.

The Local Scene 4

Just one question on local life that has kept me amused lately:

How many good things can be in milk from a cow that feeds on trash all day?

As everyone knows cows are a big thing in India. It's the home of the sacred cows. They really are everywhere and you do have to drive around them or wait until they get out of the way.

Not that they're often very well looked after.

They're very skinny and often scavenge their way around the city. I've watched cows eating movie posters off the wall. I've seen one eating a motorbike (at least the non metal parts). There's one cow nearby that every time I see it is lying in the middle of a rubbish heap consuming anything within reach.

Given that they don't really eat beef the question I keep coming back to is how much use would milk be from that kind of cow?

Madras Eagles 0 - TN Special Police 0

Still undefeated. It was an okay result against one of the other teams pushing for promotion. However, it could have been so much better if the referee had bothered to tell us that he had only given an indirect free kick for a really nasty foul on the edge of the area prior to the kick being taken. Instead he waited until the ball had beautifully sailed into the net and then awarded a goal kick.

My own game can probably be summed up in two sentences:
I played in midfield for the first time.
"Winter" here is definitely over.
Therefore I was much more involved in the game but really, really felt the heat and poor pitch.

For your prayers
Most concerning coming out of the game is the news that due to complaints from a lot of teams the league may be postponed again. This has left my time here feeling really up in the air. I'm not sure whether or not there will be another match before I'm scheduled to fly home. I'm not sure whether there will be much training during the postponement and I'm really unsure of what the best option for me is in sorting through these issues. Please keep me and this issue in your prayers as at the moment it is all rather unsettling.

Tirur Village

On Saturday afternoon one of the players from Robin's Chennai Customs team, Arulmani (who speaks a little English), took me to his village. An hour long ride on the packed train further west it was an amazing change from the bustle of the city.

I think I must have been big news out there. By the time we got fully underway there was 16 really small boys (training barefoot) and 14 older boys ready to train. On top of this there were also dozens and dozens of locals who had come to watch my session. I ran two groups simultaneously for the big and little ones and had a lot of fun rushing from group to group trying to keep the drills interesting and challenging. There was some translation but getting my point across was still something of a challenge. At the end of the session everyone wanted to say thank you and shake my hand. At one stage rather than waiting their turn upwards of 10 small boys were shaking my hand simultaneously which was quite an experience. The adults in particular were very grateful for my visit and keep pressuring me to say I'd come back. They even gave me a gift, though I'm struggling to work out what is the appropriate thing to do with my newly acquired 'Mary and Child'.

I was disappointed that for various reasons I was unable to share more of why I was in India but still I was able to give out Eagles Sports Foundation stickers that included a Bible verse and contact details for the ministry.

After the session things got even more crazy as all the small children followed me back through the village to Arumani's house. There I posed for many, many photos with his family, neighbours, random local kids, local footballers and a whole range of those groups. Then food and drink was brought for me and everyone just sat around and watched me consume it. It was all a lot of fun but rather surreal.

When it was time to go I hopped back on the train to Villivakkam. I think late at night how full a train is is a matter of luck and I was very unlucky. We had to physically push ourselves into the carriage yet at every stop more people somehow managed to fit in. There was no way to even get near the seats let alone use one. By the time I got home I was absolutely exhausted but really excited by my adventure.

Struggling with Blessings 2

As mentioned in an earlier post I have been struggling with the way blessings were preached on and prophesied on in many of the Christian contexts I have been involved in. It was therefore to my amazement that when Bec arrived the book she was reading, whilst primarily about communication and spiritual growth focused heavily on the issue of suffering and blessings. The book SoulTalk by Larry Crabb has been really powerful in challenging and growing me during the last couple of weeks here and I'd really recommend it.

I've therefore thought I'd include a paragraph from it here as a part response to my early post:

"The weakness of modern Christianity, with its shallow worship and rootless excitement and crowd-friendly relevance, can be traced to one assumption: We think God's Spirit was sent to earth to give us the happiness that blessings bring. The suffering Lamb has done his work. Now the mighty Spirit has taken over. And his job is to build on the finished suffering of the Cross by overcoming our problems, healing our wounds, setting things right, and replacing suffering with adventure, meaning and romance.

Now we're in competition with every other religion and self-help movement and political ideology to produce the good life. It's a competition we cannot win, because Christ never promised us the blessings of heaven till we get there." (p.220)

The problem this still leaves me is how to best to relate to the prosperity teaching here in India and those desperately waiting for the Lord to make 2007 a really good year.

The Word of God

On Wednesday I decided to be more intentional about my discipleship of some of the senior players so met with 2 of them. For an hour we sat on the floor of my bedroom and read through 1 Timothy 1, talked, shared and prayed. At times it was slow going as one of the players had to translate a lot of the more complex English into Tamil and vice-versa but it was really encouraging to hear these young men speak of coming out of traditionally Hindu families and growing in their desire to serve the Lord. It was also a great opportunity for me to share some of the issues I have been thinking through in terms of my life and sports ministry with them. I pray that God will use some of the things we talked about and that I'll have opportunities to not only meet again with these 2 but spend time with a couple of the others.

In the evening I again saw the power of teaching about and from God's word but in a much larger context as I attended a large meeting to hear Ravi Zacharias speak. It was great to hear a strong talk (by someone the locals excitedly consider something of a local boy done good) on the topic of 'Has Christianity Failed You'. Where the discussion in the morning was simple, fragmentary and sometimes confused, the evening had no such problems as Ravi presented a Biblical and intellectual approach to the contrarieties of Christianity and then he and another visiting English lecturer answered questions people submitted on slips of paper.

Both meetings though had in common a desire to not only know more about God but to see our lives in the light of what He has done for us and left me touched by an awareness of what trully returning to the source can do in our lives (mine definitely included).