2014 Germany Missions Report

One of the unique aspects about Breakaway Outreach is that we are not only committed to serving the under-served children and at-risk youth in our communities, but we are consistently making disciples by empowering, equipping, and mobilizing these same kids to grow spiritually and serve others.

Two great pictures of this are seen in Antwon and Ryan.

We love to tell Antwon’s story (pictured above with Jimmy)… as a 9-yr old prisoner’s kid, he attended our summer camp for the first time in 2007. He has attended each year and has steadily become more involved with church life over the last few years. At seventeen, Antwon just returned from his first overseas mission trip in Germany, where he had the opportunity to coach baseball to children and share his testimony with multitudes of German young people.

Another teenager who served on that mission trip, Ryan (pictured below at Breakaway’s summer camp), was recommended for our summer camp in 2009, shortly after losing his mother and little sister in a car accident. Ryan gave his life to Jesus at summer camp, and was later baptized and taken in by a loving church family. Today, he serves faithfully on the worship team at his church.

A few years ago, a divinely orchestrated sequence of events led us to begin an outreach partnership in Germany. This outreach is reaching youth and children through gospel-centered baseball camps. It’s a powerful evangelistic movement that is multiplying quickly in Germany. This summer, we saw young people responding to the Gospel during “Team Times” on the baseball field, as well as souls coming to Jesus through the camp evening services. During the first evening of camp we had a teenager from Zimbabwe come forward for salvation. She came weeping and confessed, “I saw Jesus with arms open wide saying, ‘Come to me.’”

One of the most powerful testimonies from baseball camp was from a single mother of a family that was once “Romani” gypsies. She approached Jimmy after an evening worship service, asking if she could tell him her story…

In 2011, her family was new to Germany, after stints in Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy. They were having a very difficult time fitting into the culture and learning the language. It was during this time that they were given a brochure about baseball camp. They found it intriguing but didn’t follow up with it until the following summer. When they heard that baseball camp was coming again in 2012, she registered her three kids to attend.

One by one her children began following Jesus. They were so excited that they invited their mother to come to the camp evening services at the church. She declined, but was so happy to see her kids finally finding a community to become a part of in Germany. The next year, in 2013, she finally obliged to her kids’ constant begging, and attended a camp evening service. Her family was showered with love from the local church family and from the Americans who were visiting.

She has been no stranger to church ever since!

Last year, when baseball camp was over, there was discussion about whether or not there would be a baseball camp in 2014. The church talked about taking a year off, but too many parents came forward and said, “We must have baseball camp next year!” The Romani “gypsy” and single mother of three, came forward and said, “I don’t have much to offer. My home isn’t very big. But I will do whatever it takes to help make baseball camp happen next year—even opening up my home to host the Americans.”

That mother was a remarkable host parent this year to two of our Americans during baseball camp—one being Antwon. Her 14-year old son was baptized along with two others whose lives had been transformed by baseball camp. Her son will be coming to America to serve with our ministry this October through December. We are so excited to receive him, fill him up with some great southern cooking, and shower him with more and more of God’s amazing love.

As that mother looked Jimmy in the eyes during the camp evening service, her voice cracking and her face wet with tears, she told him to go back home and tell the Americans that it is all worth it.

Her family has been transformed by the power of God’s love. And the instrument that God has used to reach her household is baseball—a simple American pastime, but a dynamic evangelistic tool in Germany.

God is using the simple obedience of you and me to bring the nations to Himself; Germany, Zimbabwe, Romani gypsies, prisoners’ kids, orphans, the margins of society to the ends of the earth!

We are so humbled to be serving a God who always gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). May we keep planting, keep watering, and keep looking to Him to finish what He has begun through the spirit of outreach and missions in our lives.

Sharing His heart for every nation, every tribe, and every people,

Jimmy and Cindy Larche
Founders and Lead Missionaries