Dear Friends,
We rightly celebrate God’s goodness to us this week. The world sees a day off, turkey, football, and Christmas shopping. Worship begins with thanksgiving: Enter His gates with thanksgiving. We did our first-ever ROW baseball camp this past week and I’d like to share with you the scope and result of that blessing. Please join me in praying about this and giving thanks for it.
A man makes his plans, but God directs his steps (Proverbs). Our plan was to publicize a baseball camp, work with the players who came to participate, share the Gospel with them in the process, and trust God for the results. On Monday, our Barahona hosts took us to the local baseball park. I never imagined I’d see what I saw. (God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we can ask or imagine! Eph. 3:20) The entire league was there practicing. Many teams. Hundreds of players. All my plans evaporated. I was trying not to look too surprised. We spoke with the league leadership and they called the players to the pitcher’s mound and introduced us. They said, “Do what these folks tell you to do.” We set up a series of skill development stations and the players began to rotate throught the stations. At the close of the session, the league officials invited us to come back and continue the camp for the next two days, be their guests at a tournament game on Tuesday, and asked our two ball players to play on their team in a Thursday afternoon game.
There is more!
They also gave me an open invitation to bring groups back as often I could to do sports camps & evangelism there. They said they would be more than happy to assemble the players in the stands so we could preach the Gospel! On Wednesday, we did exactly that. I asked pastors from our Pastors’ School to be present to share the Gospel. Our team shared in their drill stations and players came to Christ. In the assembly, one of the pastors preached and 15 players gave their lives to Jesus. That is cause for thanksgiving and it is now an ongoing opportunity.
Going forward: We need to keep this opportunity a matter of prayer. We need churches and schools to take advantage of this opportunity. We will be back in Barahona in late March for another session of the Pastors’ School. Do you have a group that could do a sports camp? Our baseball group did construction work in the early part of the day and did baseball for about two and a half hours in the afternoon (after school). (Picture Gallery below!)
Blessings,
Keith
ROW Collection Note Cards