Baseball in December

While on a stateside visit in Virginia in the fall of 2002 I found myself musing about the differences in the lives of our children brought about by our living in Africa. Many of the dissimilarities brought to my mind made me smile. It's unusual in the states for the boys to be charged by an elephant and in Africa we have adventures such as that annually. There are the cultural aspects as well to consider of being able to communicate in many different languages and also the reality of seeing daily how the rest of the world lives. But, then I saw some boys cycling along the sidewalk of the park. They stopped after a tour and began playing ball. My heart ached. I realized that I had no hope for my boys to be able to just go out and have a tour of town or stop by the park to play ball with some friends for there is no park. At that time they couldn't even communicate with anyone that wasn't American.
Today, four short years later, Tucker, my oldest son, headed out the gate at three this afternoon with his baseball equipment. He had gathered up twenty or so of his good friends from Tabligbo to go have a "sandlot" experience. I had to smile at the simple blessing of a private longing realized. I don't know if I was more amazed at Tucker's language skills or at the fact that these boys from Tabligbo, Togo, West Africa can shag flies and swing for the fence. Of course, the fence is imaginary, and the bases are just rubber squares thrown down on a soccer field, and the bat Tucker likes to use is one I made on my lathe out of teak, but you get the picture of a little American missionary absolutely comfortable among his Togolese friends. This is one of those small, but extremely significant blessings from God that encourage us to continue on.

Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."