“Two olive green duffles.” Cosmo planted his face into the palm of his hand and rested his elbow on the conference center counter. “Yes, they were labeled. Cosmo Zimik, Delhi to Bangkok, flight—”
The voice on the other end of the phone line cut him off.
He listened absently for several seconds. The words buzzing in his ear were rote. He’d heard the same lecture half a dozen times, at least once from the same nasally voice currently prattling on.
Tired of talking in circles, Cosmo resolved his bags were gone for good. “Thank you for your time.” He hung up. He stretched and put his hands behind his head. The ornate wall clock behind the reception desk said 5:35pm. In two hours, the evening session of the sports ministry conference would begin.
He couldn’t remember what tonight’s topic was. Regret clouded his thinking. Unaccustomed to the feeling, Cosmo wasn’t sure how to shake it.
He chided himself again for leaving The Winning Team floppy disk and three ring binder in his checked luggage. With those items gone, The Winning Team was truly dead. He had no other copy of the information: names and contact information for five hundred staff and volunteers from around the world, hundreds more donors, his best practices.
The last eighteen months of his life were lost, and he hadn’t even any evidence they ever happened. Crossing the crowded lobby of the combined hotel and conference center, Cosmo sat at a table near a window. Reaching into the pocket of the neon-orange running suit his conference roommate had given him, he fetched one of his few remaining business cards—It’s time you join The Winning Team.
He tossed the card on the table and stared out the window. The lush landscaping around the Catholic conference center and hotel reminded him of his Naga Hills—his Nagalim. It felt like he’d come full circle. Always scrapping to come out on top, the Naga remained permanently on the bottom.
Now that Cosmo thought about it, he couldn’t be certain what team he’d been inviting people to join. When he had named his ministry, The Winning Team, it’d been a jab at everyone and everything he perceived as losing. Of course his team would win. But it hadn’t. He had lost, again.
Even in the midst of his discouragement, he knew the idea to be ridiculous. The Winning Team was supposed to be God’s team. Cosmo’s failures hadn’t changed that. His overreaching and impatience had toppled The Winning Team, but the people the ministry had impacted—they were still winning, weren’t they?
“Excuse me. It’s Cosmo, right?”
Cosmo blinked several times, breaking his trance-like gaze out the window. He turned toward an attractive brunette with an American accent. “Uh, yes.” He stood. Instinctively, he bowed.
To his surprise she did as well—naturally, fluidly, and not as an afterthought like most Westerners. “My name’s—”
“Sarah?”
She frowned. “How did you know?”
“Your name tag.”
“Of course.” Sarah gazed at her front where the tag clearly said, Hello, my name is Sarah.
Cosmo gestured toward the seat next to him. “Please, sit.”
“Thank you.”
Cosmo waited for Sarah to situate herself before retaking his own seat.
“Is this your ministry?” Sarah studied the business card Cosmo had tossed on the table.
He considered how to respond before deciding the truth would require less energy. “It was.”
“Oh? You’ve started a new one?” She handed him the card.
“Not yet.” Cosmo pocketed it.
Sarah studied him for a second, perhaps considering a follow up question to his cryptic remarks. “I was in the workshop you did on using martial arts to reach street kids in Asian slums.”
“Really?” Cosmo perked up, happy to move the conversation away from his specific failures and toward his more general passion. “How did I miss you?”
Sarah blinked but didn’t respond.
“I mean,” Cosmo grinned, “I’m sure I would remember your face if I’d seen it.”
Sarah raised a brow, no closer to responding to Cosmo’s subtle flirting.
Cosmo decided not to push the matter further. “There aren’t very many American women interested in martial arts.”
“Oh, well.” Sarah finally breathed out. “I might have been a bit late, so I had to sit in the back.” She smiled, a radiant beam of a smile like a sun setting beneath an ocean horizon, and it knocked Cosmo off his guard.
Neither of them spoke for a long second until Cosmo gathered himself. “And what ministry are you involved in?”
“Me?” Sarah shrugged. “I teach children basketball and English as a platform to share about Jesus.” Again she smiled wide, her teeth showing, a dimple on the right cheek, slight crinkles around her eye. She stopped speaking and Cosmo realized his gaze had been too intense.
He asked the first question to pop into his head. “Here in Thailand?”
She shook her head before diving into the work she’d been doing for the last few years in Hong Kong.
Cosmo listened to every word, feeling his passion rekindle from the heat of Sarah’s. Their philosophies and goals were so similar. Cosmo hadn’t believed a woman or a westerner could share so many of his own ideas.
After several minutes, Sarah stopped abruptly. “But enough of me.” She blushed lightly. “I’m not sure how you got me off on all that. I came over here to find out more about your martial arts ministry and how you think it could transfer to a place like Hong Kong.”
Cosmo sighed. His heart sank and rose like ocean waves inside his chest. Months after terminating The Winning Team, he still hadn’t allowed himself to fully grieve its loss. The need had pushed him to the verge of an emotional breakdown. And now here was Sarah, a sympathetic ear, a fellow worker, a kindred spirit. He wasn’t sure how to begin.
Sarah stared at him, a quizzical look on her face.
“I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask.”
Sarah laced her fingers and laid her hands on the table. “Oh? What makes you say that?” Her eyes softened. “You wouldn’t be the first missionary to make a mistake.”
Cosmo laughed. He’d never thought of himself as a missionary, not in the same sense Sarah used the word now.
“What’s so funny?”
“Me as a missionary.”
Sarah scrunched her brows. “Well, aren’t you?”
“I guess I always thought of missionaries as foreigners with poor language skills.”
Sarah laughed. “You mean like me.”
Cosmo hemmed before granting a partial admission. “You’ve nailed the foreigner part, but to be honest, I haven’t heard you speak anything but English. And you speak that pretty well.”
“I should hope.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “My English skills aside, I’m sure I fit the bill perfectly. My Cantonese is far from perfect. But enough avoiding the real issue.” She breathed deeply. “What happened to The Winning Team?”
Without further dancing, Cosmo plowed into the matter directly. He shared the whole story from leaving Athletes in Action to closing The Winning Team offices. The only parts he held back were the threats from Hindu militants.
While he needed to unburden himself, there was only so much he could unload at once. And it seemed unfair to involve a total stranger with the seedy underbelly of Delhi’s ongoing caste and religious warfare.
By the end of it, Sarah seemed dazed. “Wow.”
Cosmo waited to see if she would push back her chair and flee.
She shook her head. “I knew India had to be an ethnically and religiously complex place, but I had no idea of the pressures Christians have to endure.”
Cosmo relaxed. She wasn’t going to bolt. “I’m sure many of the same pressures exist in Hong Kong.”
“Maybe so.” Sarah gazed out the window, as if she could see the hundreds of miles northeast to the peninsulas and islands of Hong Kong itself. “If so, they’re difficult for an outsider to perceive. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.” She returned her gaze to Cosmo.
He felt a hundred times lighter than he had an hour earlier. “Me too. I wish I wasn’t such a slow learner. Maybe a good ministry would still be doing good things if I hadn’t taken it out of God’s hands. Hopefully the lesson won’t be lost as well.”
“I’m sure it won’t be, not after what I’ve just heard and the way you shared it.” Sarah said.
“Oh?”
“It takes humility to be so blunt about your failures.”
Cosmo nodded as he stood. He glanced at the clock behind the receptions desk. “Have you had dinner?”
Sarah shook her head.
“The dining room’s serving for thirty minutes still. I wasn’t hungry before. Suddenly I feel the need to eat several small animals.”
“Yikes.” Sarah stood.
Cosmo gave her a wary eye. “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
“Heaven’s no. I just hope the animals are cooked first.”
Cosmo shrugged. “If not, we can always start a fire out back.”
“In this humidity?”
“I grew up in the jungle.”
“Really? I suppose that’s something to talk about over dinner.” Side by side, the two hurried toward the dining room. When they arrived, delegates were streaming out, in a hurry to sneak in a shower or a nap before the evening session.
“Oh, another thing we could discuss.” Cosmo stood aside so Sarah could enter through the crowded doorway first.
“What’s that?”
“I was wondering if you might want some volunteer help to get your martial arts program going in Hong Kong.”