Shaheen's FCA Dominican Republic Mission: Church and Baseball: A Match Made in Heaven

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Church and Baseball: A Match Made in Heaven

So last week I was talking with Jimmy (the player/coach) of the adult team in San Jose. I asked him how his Sunday games were going against the neighboring village (Blanco). He told me that Blanco stopped playing San Jose a few weeks earlier and started playing a different village. I asked why and he told me that San Jose had won the last 5 or 6 Sundays in a row. Wow. I told him that is unfortunate that they decided to go somewhere else even though they have had a tradition of playing every Sunday for many years. After several minutes of small talk, I asked Jimmy if it would be ok for me to bring a team to play his team each Sunday after church in San Jose. Jimmy told me that would be great and I was excited. Now was the hard part. I needed to find at least 9 different guys that could play the 9 different positions. A bunch of the young men at my Bible studies are pitchers and I know that they will want to play. For a few days, I set out and asked young men that I thought were either Christians or at least "good kids" to play this Sunday. After several days of recruiting, we had a team of 13 players, only 4 of which were pitchers. Perfect! Not only were they going up to San Jose for a game against some pretty good adult players, but they were also going to a church service first. I was pretty excited that 13 young men committed to spend the day in San Jose with me on Sunday. Below are a series of pictures from the day. We ended up winning the game in 5 innings 7-4, because of rain, but that was not the best part. The best two parts were that fact that all 13 young men worship our Lord and Savior before the game in a tiny church, and served the community after the game by working on the field in the rain. It was glorious. God is so good!