January 20, 2012
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The team.
Cody Young giving his testimony to kids at a clinic.
Team members with some of the kids at a clinic.
Steve Dennie, Communications Director
Jeff Dice: “I’ve been to Nicaragua 29 times, and have probably been on 45 mission trips in my life. But it’ll be hard to top this one.”
Jeff is a Global Ministries “nontraditional” staffmember serving part of the year in Nicaragua. He visited Huntington, Ind., soon after returning from Nicaragua as part of team which, on their Facebook page, described themselves as, “We are a group of men heading to Nicaragua to play baseball and share Jesus with kids.” They did both quite well.
The team had 20 members:
- Jeff and his son Camden.
- A friend of Jeff’s who is a coach in Clare, Mich., and his son.
- 10 baseball players from Huntington University.
- 3 soccer players from Huntington University who wanted a mission experience during January Term and, according to Jeff, “actually played pretty good baseball.”
- 2 former baseball players from Anderson University (Anderson, Ind.). One of them, Cory Young, played minor league baseball (shortstop and outfield) for the Baltimore Orioles.
- Josh Kesler, pastor of The Well in Huntington, Ind. He went along as the team pastor.
“We had a mixed bag of people, but the chemistry was unbelievable,” Jeff said. “From the first day, I’m happy to say, we never had any kind of group issue. The maturity of these guys was amazing.”
L-r: “Goliath,” Camden Dice, and Cody Young. Cody Young is 6’3.”
The team spent a week in Masaya, of city of 130,000 (the country’s third largest) which is the center of our work in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has a four-team winter league, which they would call their professional league. It includes players from many countries. Then in February, 16 teams—all Nicaraguans—begin playing what they call their First Division.
“We played the team from Masaya that plays in the First Division,” Jeff explained. “The level of player was at or slightly above that of a US college player. We matched up because we had Derrick McKinney and Mitch Bowers pitching. They are elite college-level players, both from Huntington University. That leveled it out for us.”
They played their first game—actually, a double-header–on Saturday, January 7. They lost the first game 3-0, but won the second 6-2. The team’s Facebook page recorded it this way: “McKinney scared the crap out of several local hitters by buzzing them inside and high. He pitched really well except to a hitter we now call Goliath. He is 6’7″ and hit a McKinney 3-2 offering that is on it’s way to Costa Rica.”
Jeff recalls, “After the inning, Derrick walked over to the Nicaraguan bench to shake Goliath’s hand. We had this baseball connection that overrode any barriers present, because we all loved baseball.”
The Americans shattered four bats during those first two games. They went to the local bat maker and bought ten more bats. Then they stopped at the local Papa Johns, where they ordered 8 large pizzas and watched the Cincinnati Bengals lose to the Houston Texans.
On Monday, January 9, they began a series of baseball clinics which ran every day from 9 am to 12:30 pm, a different age group each day. After the clinic they would get some lunch, and then have a few hours before the evening game.
The clinics were conducted in partnership with the Masaya mayor’s office, which contacted local baseball coaches. Those coaches then brought their teams to the clinics—an average of 40-50 players each day.
(more…)
Arek and Donna Delik (right) are UB endorsed staff in Poland working with Operation Mobilization. Donna sent this note on Monday morning, January 30:
Jeff Sherlock (right), a former UB missionary in Macau and a current member of the Global Ministries Leadership Team, is one of the professors leading the trip. He reported on January 12:
