Juan grew up in Puerto Rico, the son of a sugarcane plantation foreman. One of a family of eight, he lived in a three-room shack with a dirt floor and no toilet. His first job, at age six, was driving oxen to plough the cane fields. He worked eight hours a day and earned one dollar. Juan said it was in the cane fields that he learned important lessons like being on time, work hard, and be loyal and respectful to your employers. His job and small income were a great source of self-esteem. At age seven he got a job at a golf course spotting balls for golfers, and he began to dream of playing golf and earning enough money to buy a bicycle. The more he dreamed, the more he thought, ‘Why not?’ He made a golf club out of a guava limb and a piece of pipe, then hammered an empty tin can into a ball. Next, he dug two small holes in the ground and hit the ball back and forth between them. He practised his ‘golf’ with the same intensity he put into his job in the cane field, and he got good – very good. In his thirty-one years as a pro golfer, Juan ‘Chi Chi’ Rodríguez won eight PGA tour events and twenty-four major tournaments, and he was the first Puerto Rican to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. What can we learn from him? Two things: 1) Be willing to start small. The Bible says, ‘Do not despise…small beginnings.’ 2) Be willing to think big because you serve a big God (see Ephesians 3:20).

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.