Baseball, Missions, and Memories: Annual Tourney Raises Funds for Mexican Missions

When Tom was in elementary school, he felt led to be a missionary in Mexico through the influence of Mrs. McConkie, the children’s church coordinator who led the Missionary Helper’s Club. He never strayed from that decision. He developed an interest in Mexico during his junior
year at Grace College, when he studied in Mexico City.

“Our pastor, Howard Snively (at the Ankenytown, Ohio, Grace Brethren Church), was preaching about missions and said that we as a church had never sent out a missionary,” Tom later recalled. “I decided to be the first.”

He added, “I am glad to be a missionary because I have helped people know Jesus as their Savior. They can go to heaven now because we told them about the Lord and they believed.”

The Sharps as they prepared to return to Mexico: Tom and Suzy with Cristi, Mandy, and Ben

Tom and his wife, Suzy, went to Mexico City for the first time in 1976, serving with CE National’s TIME, short-term missions program. By 1983, they were full-time missionaries serving with Grace Brethren International Missions. They began a Bible study in Apatlaco, an area in Mexico City.

During their four years there, they saw the purchase of land for the first time in the history of the Grace Brethren movement in Mexico. The city at that time had a population of more than 20 million people, making land hard to come by. In a letter to friends, Tom wrote, “God has really directed in this as this property [for the church] is only five streets away from where we are having a Bible study with about 40 people.”

After the Sharps second term in Mexico, 1986 to 1988, they returned home. The colitis, an inflammatory disease of the colon, from which he had suffered much of his life, had developed into cancer.

He died from the cancer on August 24, 1989, at the age of 33.

The following year, his friends decided to dedicate their annual softball tournament in Tom’s memory. It seemed only fitting.

“I had been Tom’s best man in his wedding, and he was my best man in my wedding,” James Beal said.

The tournament had begun ten years before and involved area Grace Brethren churches. After Tom’s death, they decided the proceeds would be used toward missions in Mexico. Over the years, eight to ten teams have played in the annual tourney, which has expanded to include groups from other churches.

Any entry fees that are collected are still used to spread the gospel in Mexico.

“The tourney is to show the people in Mexico that God’s love for them does not end,” notes Tom’s brother, Mark Sharp, a member of the Winona Lake,
Ind., Grace Brethren Church.

This year’s tournament is August 15. It is the 20th anniversary of Tom’s death and the 30th anniversary of the tourney. If you would like to participate or learn more, contact Richard Beal at (419) 571-9872 or James Beal at (419) 886-4875.

To learn how you can find everlasting love, like Tom Sharp had, click here.

MaryAnn Peteya was an editorial intern with the Brethren Missionary Herald Company during the spring semester 2009. Peter Semple, an editorial intern during the summer 2008, contributed to this story.

An Update on the Sharp Family
Mandy Sharp Swain sends along this update on the Sharp family: Suzy remarried and went back to Mexico for four more years. She is now works at ABeka Academy in Pensacola, Fla.