Baseball Team Travels to the Dominican
Wilmore, Ky. - Asbury's baseball team recently returned from a week long mission trip to the Dominican Republic. The team booked their trip through Score International and stayed at their complex just outside Santo Domingo in Juan Dolio.
Mark Deetsch and Aaron Mann shared with a team after a game in Boca Chica.
The trip consisted of playing games against different Dominican players on five different days in four different cities and interacting with children in the community. They played at a variety of ballparks including the oldest professional stadium in Santo Domingo where the famous Alou family played. They also played at the home of a Dominican Winter League, where Major League players often play in the winter, in San Pedro.
The team would get a better glimpse at the fields where most kids grow up playing as they visited a field stuck between a road and houses in Boca Chica and in a village outside of San Pedro where Alfonso Soriano grew up playing. Score International is also building a sports complex that will also house a Bible College in two years where the team got to practice and play a game.
After each game two players would give away jerseys, pants, cleats, bats, gloves, balls and all kinds of baseball gear and share with the other team about their faith and how it has impacted their life. The Dominican players were then told about the opportunity they had to live in Christ and how they could get involved through Score.
Aaron Rowe and Josh Cummins shared in a village where Alfonso Soriano grew up on the final day in the Dominican.
Asbury's group of 33 would spend their afternoons in a village in a sugarcane field or at a local orphanage for disabled children. At the villages the players would play with the local kids and passed out candy, baseball cards, and hats. They also played a pick-up game of baseball and the kids showed the players how to eat sugarcane.
The team was able to experience a side of life that they never knew existed in the Dominican. All the players called the trip "life changing" and said that they'd "never forget it." During their last night there they were challenged to remember to keep everything in perspective as they return home and reminded that some of the missionaries we worked with all week were saved because of other teams coming and playing their team and sharing about God.
The baseball team will open the season at home on February 9th against Kentucky State University at 2:00 pm.
