Name Droppers. You know the kind…“I met” or I saw” or “I spoke to.” Well, I know a coach named Dick Helm. Coach Helm was the head basketball coach at Judson College near Chicago for many years. He coached with Lenny Wilkins as an assistant to this “winningest” pro coach at Atlanta and at Toronto. For me, however, his fame comes from working with a young player for four years at Judson and being a patient Christian witness to him while the young man “strutted his stuff” on the court as the leading scorer in the nation in his fourth year. A terrible fall his senior year left young Tom in the hospital for a number of days with no guarantee of playing again. He had time to really “listen to coach’s words,” for the first time. Tom asked Christ to come into his life, and if He did, he would serve him wherever God chose.
     Coach Helm was an excellent coach who helped Tom develop his skills on the court, but he was patiently faithful to share God’s love with Tom, also. Today Tom heads an organization called World Harvest and ministers primarily in the Philippines (some 30 years now), and also the chaplain for the Senior Pro Golf Tour. My wife Arlene and I visited Tom and Karen for two weeks in the Philippines in 1993. I kept a diary of that trip to give to my granddaughter, Cayton, who graduated from Valley in 2002. I want to share part of one afternoon in the Philippines on a trip that included a typhoon, driving through an area where the lava flow from the eruption of Mt. Pinitubo was still moving, up winding roads still partially blocked from a severe earthquake and then experiencing the most terrifying plane ride into Hong Kong that I could ever imagine. I will quote from my diary.
     “You think you are pretty wise about some things, until someone says, ‘Let’s go to a leper colony.’ I started to think: Can I catch it? What if I touch them? I was pretty sure I could deal with the situation as long as Tom told me what to do. When we got to the colony, a boy with large sores on his face came up to the car. He looked at us and said he had heard that someone was putting on a good show. ‘Are you really good?’ He asked (in Tagalog). ‘Come and see’ Tom replied, also in Tagalog. Just then an older man shuffled over to the car. Where he should have had hands were just knobs. Tom told me this was Ben, a Christian who wanted to get a Bible study started in the colony. I reached out to him to shake what was once a hand. It seemed so natural and I wasn’t concerned that I had touched a leprous man. Ben was so happy to see Tom. We took all the equipment into ward #5. It was an old army barracks with no screens at the louvered windows. About 200 men were crowded in the room and at the windows. As Tom began to juggle the basketballs, he talked to some of the men and tried to get them involved. At first, none of them were talking or smiling. Soon, however, Tom got things going. A joke, a dropped ball in someone’s lap; these were his way to surprise people. Soon the men started to smile and then to laugh. I looked around at ugly and deformed men and boys. No hands’ no feet, twisted and hideous bodies. But, they were smiling and laughing. You can’t imagine what this was like. These men and boys wanted to laugh and enjoy things, too. But I realized that few people would take the time like Tom was doing to do something special for them. Over at the side a young teenage boy had been brought into the room in a wheelchair. He had large bandages on his hands, arms and feet. He never did laugh or even smile. How terrible this must be for a teen. I prayed that he wouldn’t be so bitter that he could never smile again. Then Tom brought out his unicycles. Up and down the narrow space between the beds he rode. Grabbing a shoulder here and a head there, he was touching and reaching out to these lepers. The look on Tom’s face said, “For this moment I will risk everything so you can see that I love you and care for you.” As I watched, it dawned on me that Tom was doing this just so he could help the Christian men in that ward get a Bible study going. There would be no alter call. Nobody would be coming forward, but Tom was plowing ground, so these Christians in a leper colony could plant the seeds. No TV or newspaper article on this event. But, Tom was here because he believed God wanted him to go. Well, it came time for Tom to put someone on his shoulders and ride the unicycle. I had noticed one very tiny person come in after Tom had started. He moved along on two small wooden crutches. His body was very deformed. Tom looked at him and asked if he would ride. He didn’t respond at first, but then shook his head yes. Here was a little deformed man with leprosy trusting a strange American to hoist him up on his shoulders and ride him around on a unicycle. Two men put him on Tom’s shoulders and away they went down the ward and back. The leper was holding on for dear life. His leprous hands were in Tom’s eyes, his nose and his mouth. Everyone in that room was screaming. Tom finally put the little man back in his spot. As Tom turned, he saw the boy who had met us when we first came jumping up and down on a bed and shouting. Tom later told me he was shouting, ‘You are as good as they said! You did come and you are as good as they said!’ After a very dangerous ride on the high unicycle, Tom sent someone to get the sodas he had brought for everyone. About this time a very ugly and deformed leper with cerebral palsy and a big grotesque smile on his face got his wheel chair up close to Tom. When Tom noticed him he grabbed his palsied hand and talked to him. Tom said to me, ‘Look how happy he is…he’s a believer.’ It was almost too much. Cerebral palsy and leprosy…and he smiles because he loves Jesus. It didn’t seem American or even Christian to be sick and happy…is it? I looked back at this man with his twisted body and saw another leprous man with no hands bring a coke over between his wrists and then slowly pouring a drink into his mouth. I thought of Jesus’ words, ‘I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,’ and felt that surely this qualified a ‘doing it as unto the Lord.’”
   There was so much more to the story of that afternoon and the trip. However, what I want you all to realize is that you never know where the influence you have on your players will go. Coach Helm’s influence on Tom was to be the start of a very fruitful work in the Philippines. Does coach take credit for what Tom has done? Of course not. The glory all goes to God! However, I want you to know what a loving God we serve. When Tom started World Harvest Ministries, he asked Coach Helm to be president of his board of directors. Allowing Coach to be part of what Tom is now doing is just like the God who has promised to give us “more than we could ever ask or think” that “our joy may be full!”
Continue to work patiently for the God who sees and rewards!

-Coach Hitch