BARRIGADA, GUAM -- For Aaron Jones, partnering with Harvest Ministries on Guam brought his own harvest - a harvest of experience and involvement that not only correlated to his studies, but also gave him a completely new perspective on life, on ministry, and on God himself.
For seven weeks this summer, Jones applied himself teaching PE, playing soccer, and counseling at camp at Harvest Ministries in the South Pacific, and he took every chance he could get to use sports to connect with the most important aspect of ministry: people.
Harvest Ministries doesn't just connect with the youth of Guam, they give them a place to belong. Summer school, summer camps, and sports outreach run round the clock, and so the chances to connect with people and impact lives are everywhere you look. Even after schools and camps are done, Harvest will host "open court" nights of volleyball, basketball, and 9-square. Some 70 teens come on a regular basis, making sports a part of the routine.
Sports and ministry? Talk about Jones's bread and butter.
"I had done counseling, I had done soccer clinics, but I was kinda done with the whole 'camp' thing," Jones said. "Then Guam came along, and this was a chance to get out of my comfort zone and connect with a new culture, but [Harvest] really got me hook, line, and sinker when they talk about how much they love their sports, and how they use this to get people and teens to come in. I thought right away [that] this is the kind of place I can get behind. One of the biggest passions of my life is connecting sports with ministry."
In the States, the highest interest and following is reserved for the highest levels of sports. But on Guam, any sport - no matter the level of competition - is a sport everyone can get behind.
And they do.
"An island that respects sports so much is such a cool thing," Jones said. "Everybody is playing all the time. Even for middle school teams, they'll put up banners in the gym and their high school games - any sport - are packed. Line to line. And the bleachers are full. That's just a regular thing. Everybody shows up."
Jones fit right in with everyone because of their common love of sports. And it didn't matter that he's from over 7,000 miles away. During the day, his primary task was teaching PE, using all sorts of sport-specific activities to build relationships with kids. To close out the summer, Jones was a teen camp counselor, and even in that setting, sports took no time showing up again.
"The week of teen camp, the first thing my campers did when we got into our classroom was flip over a mattress and play volleyball," Jones said. "In the classroom. Three versus three - these guys were crazy talented."
Besides that, Jones joined a local amateur soccer club team and played games on the weekend, scoring two goals and assisting twice in two games for a local team. But beyond the sports, the chance to connect in another culture is what mattered the most to Jones.
"I think I use sports as an opportunity for ministry because of the relationships that can form and the speed at which they can form," said Jones. "There's the common passion and love for the game, and. you can use that as a foundation to form relationships of trust, and you can show all of that through sports very quickly. It just makes the connection easy. Naturally, I'm not an outgoing person, but the sports over there just made it fun and started things out on a good note. It was definitely a huge part of my relationship experience. You turn the conversation from asking about their sports teams to eventually inviting them to the other events. You start using and leveraging sports to eventually lead to these gospel conversations - it's more natural, and, I believe, more effective."
The final thing that stood out to Jones was the community of believers and the instant bond and encouragement that believers experience in the Church - as it applies to all believers throughout the world.
"The church was amazing. Being there was incredible. Their community, their singing… they have some songs over there that we didn't know existed but they're singing their hearts out. Seeing their passion in a different culture and context is huge because you realize that you're not alone in this - it's not just me in my tiny community that believes in God - my God is so much bigger than that. "Seeing Him in the creation is incredible on Guam, the caves, waterfalls, beaches, coral… but then in the people. It's so obvious when you go somewhere new: God is here. God is huge in all of these peoples' lives."