On a recent trip to the Dominican Republic, Don and Carolyn Stanford had no trouble getting their group’s 30 bags through customs. At least, not after they opened one of the bags and started handing out a few of the 10,000 sets of basketball player cards to the customs agents.
Although the Stanfords expected a long ordeal, they got through in record time.
“The customs agent said to open one of the cases,” Don said. “I unzipped it, took out a pack of cards and handed it to him. His supervisor came over and I gave him a pack. There were about 30 guys lined up, checking bags. Here they came, and I started handing out cards to all of them. They finally just waved us on through.
The pair was happy to hand out the cards, which featured a group of basketball players, coaches and officials. Most important, though, was the back of the cards, which held the plan of salvation in Spanish.
The Stanfords, who are members of Central Baptist Church in Decatur, were supervising the bags for a group of NCAA Division I and high school basketball players who played a series of exhibition games with Dominican teams. Don went to officiate at the games, while Carolyn went as part of the support team.
The trip was co-sponsored by SCORE International, an evangelistic organization operating out of Chattanooga, Tenn., and Phil Waldrep Ministries of Decatur.
The Dominican Republic takes up two-thirds of an island to the east of Cuba; Haiti occupies the other third. The population is largely Roman Catholic and speaks Spanish.
Waldrep spoke at halftime. Carolyn explained that the American players gave Bibles to the Dominican players at the beginning of each game. “They also gave out packs of cards to the fans,” she said. Like the customs agents, the fans who attended were eager to get their hands on the player cards with the plan of salvation on the back. Don had no trouble officiating at the games in spite of his lack of Spanish. “They knew when you blew a whistle, something happened,” he said. ”Some of the players spoke some English. Of course, the hand signals are the same.”
The SCORE International players played a total of eight games.
“We didn’t lose a game,” Don said. “Someone said it was the first time that had ever happened. I told them it was the first time we ever had our own referees,” he said jokingly. Every night, the team played basketball. During the day, they worked on missions projects. One project was feeding a village.
Working with a missionary, the group took 200–300 box lunches to a village where everyone worked cut- ting sugar cane for $1 per day.
From little bitty kids to one lady who was 104 years old, they all worked cutting sugar cane, said Don.
Before they gave out the lunches, the missionary stood on a milk crate and talked to the villagers. Waldrep also preached through a translator.
Another day, the players visited an orphanage. “A lady runs an orphan- age at a garbage dump,” Don said. “We went to a store and bought a lot of food and diapers. Phil had brought a lot of clothes.”
An American man the Stanfords met at the hotel bought cases of fresh fruit and sent to the orphanage.
The orphanage was filled with more than 100 children who were thrilled to have the tall young Americans visit them.
“They would come up and get you by the hand or hold their arms up for you to take them,” said Don.
The basketball players entertained the children for several hours, swing- ing them and playing games. “Two of the guys let them plait their hair,” Carolyn said. “It was so funny. There was lots of laughter.”
Don pointed out, “When you laugh, you don’t laugh in a language.”
“When we left, the boys were so quiet,” Carolyn said. “We found out later that it really bothered them. It really got to them.”
The last night, the game was televised nationally, including Waldrep’s halftime message. To everyone’s disappointment, heavy rains fell that night and attendance was much lower than anticipated.
“When it storms down there, nobody goes out because the drainage systems are so bad,” Carolyn said. The disappointed missions team later realized that God had not let them down. “We found out later that there were many more watching from home since they couldn’t get out. There were 2,000 decisions reported to local churches,” said Carolyn.
But the Dominicans were not the only ones to benefit from the trip.
“We had devotions every day with [the players],” Don said. “Not all of them were Christians.
“The last night, two of them prayed to receive Christ. It was more than I expected,” he said.
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