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experience and no understanding of how I would
teach blind children to play basketball, so I told the
Lord all my questions and concerns.

I was unsure of how I would be able to accomplish
something that seemed so difficult, but 15 minutes
before I left my home to teach at the school, God
gave me one idea after another for strategies to use
for teaching basketball to these blind students. The
first idea He gave me was to wrap the basketballs
inside plastic bags and tape them all around so when
the balls dribbled, the students could hear the scrunch
of the plastic-coated balls hitting the court. Then the
Lord reminded me of Hula Hoops that I could use to
guide the children through the drills. I put the hula
hoops around their waists and I held onto the hula
hoops to guide them. As I was trying to teach them to
dribble the ball, I noticed my hair tie on my
wrist. I used my hair tie to hold my hand on
top of the children’s hands at the wrist as we
dribbled the ball together.

As I continued to teach the students the
game of basketball, God supplied more
ideas as I needed them. To help the students
learn to shoot baskets, I used a long stick to
hit the backboard where they should throw
the ball. It was scary for them (and me!) at
first, but they started getting the ball closer
and closer to the net. To learn to pass, we
started with “bounce passes” because the
students could hear the ball coming. They
also learned to chest pass by saying the name
of the person they were passing to and then
counting to three before passing the ball
to their teammate. Once they got the hang
of these techniques for passing, we started
passing and shooting. This was a much
slower process for the blind students than it
would be for seeing students, but we had fun
learning together—not only about the game
of basketball but also about the Lord.

We now have a beeper installed on our
backboard and bells in our basketballs. By
the end of our first term, the blind students
had made twelve baskets, but even better
than that, two students received assurance of their salvation, and they are growing
in their faith! We are starting all over again after COVID and hope to have a
competition at the end of 2022! With God’s help and a little creativity, we are
bringing spiritual light to those who are in physical darkness. W
Number 2, 2022
BIMI 7