Missionaries Use Baseball to Preach Gospel in Hungary

OM Hungary’s Sports Team—Terry Lingenhoel, Suzanne Cole and Brian Kroeker—recently visited local schools in Erd and Diosd to recruit new baseball players for their teams.

Over the last three years, the sports team has been welcomed into the March sports classes to introduce the new sport of baseball. The coaches hope to show the children the fun of baseball and encourage them to come to a free baseball camp at the end of March.

The goal is to reach every child and offer them a chance to play baseball with one of the Erd clubs, with the aim to fill up teams for every age group. This year the OMers are focusing on recruiting the younger children, as it will give the coaches a longer time to work with them and develop them as players, and also to have a positive impact on their lives long term as they grow up.

Each 45-minute class begins with a simple introduction of baseball, because most of the children have never seen a baseball or bat before. The class learns how to run the bases, throw, catch and hit.

Over a two-week period, the OM Hungary Sports Team had the opportunity to visit eight different schools and reach about 1,400 children and youth, with some classes numbering 70 kids. In most schools they are also allowed to offer the Gospel of Luke to each child. This year so many copies were given out that they ran out and had to give a different tract to the last groups.

The team planned to have a three-day open camp over Easter break to give interested children a chance to play real games on a real field. However, the weather made this impossible, with snow and rain over Easter week, making the game fields too wet and the weather too cold to be outside.

The OM Sports Team hopes that despite the cancellation of the camp weekend, many of the kids will start coming to play baseball as they begin a the new season of practicing.

For the original article, visit news.om.org.