We just had a group
from Vero Beach, Florida return back home after serving here with us for a
week. They were the biggest group we had so far (30 people),and they were a lot
of fun. They ran baseball clinics all week for the kids in the different communities
where they ministered. They taught the kids how to catch, throw, and hit a
baseball; and in addition to all that, they of course had a time to share
praise songs with the kids, share a testimony, and invite the kids to ask Jesus
into their heart.
In a country where soccer is the national
sport and default past time, it was hard to spike a few of the kids’ interests
in a sport that wasn’t soccer. In spite of the challenge, however, many of the
kids loved the baseball clinic, and I would have to say that their baseball
program was a homerun! For one, in Santiago de Maria, the team held the baseball
program in one of the schools and helped paint a wall for the Calvary Chapel church
there in that town. While we were there, we were told the good news that the
pastor of the church was going to start a baseball ministry to reach others for
Christ through baseball!
So many lives were touched this week as God
worked in and through His people here in El Salvador, and so many kids enjoyed
learning a little more about baseball. In fact, after we dropped off the team
at the airport this morning, we had to drive back to the Central Church in San
Salvador to pick up Randy’s car. On Monday, the Christian school at the Central
Church was the place where the team had held one of their baseball clinics.
Upon seeing Randy, Trevor, Jesse, and I get out of the van that we were
driving, one of the kids at the school who knew me from my Campos Blancos I
would always go to, left his group of friends and came up to me and told me
that one of his friends was wondering if we were going to do baseball again
today. I had to explain to David that we just dropped the team off at the airport
and they were on their way back to the United States. I asked him if he had fun
and he said yes; but I’m sure that he and his group of friends he was talking
to were disappointed that we had just come back today to pick up the car and
not to play more baseball with them. Who would have thought that baseball would
have been such a big hit and such a successful ministry tool here in El
Salvador! Praise God!
