On Friday, April 1, Mike, Wally and I went to Arlington to evangelize the Texas Rangers opening day game. As the defending American League Champions, the atmosphere was electric. We arrived about two and a half hours before the game. I found a place to park for $5 about three quarters of a mile walk from the stadium. As we walked to the stadium we saw signs for parking go from $15 to $30 to $35 and all the way up to $50!
Wally, Mike and I at Rangers Opening Day
Our mission was two fold. First was to glorify God by sharing His gospel message. Second, was to do some recon for the outreach the following day where we were anticipating about 30 participants to come with us so I wanted to have the lay of the land.
We brought with us about 1,800 baseball trivia tracts as well as another 1,700 or so other tracts that we had. We decided the best plan was to combine the two purposes of the outing. So we made our way walking around the stadium and handing out tracts and talking to people as we went.
Within a few minutes of being there, we had the only difficulty we had with the authorities. A woman who worked for the ball club told me that we could not hand out literature and had to go across the street. I told her that we are on public property and have the right to free speech. Around then another guy in Rangers credentials came by. He rudely snapped, “you have to be within 10 feet of the curb. I’ll step it off for you.” I looked toward the street and it seemed like maybe eight feet. So I told him that I was already within ten feet of the street. They decided they would go get the police. We continued to walk around the stadium and never saw them again nor heard anything from the police.
When we got around to the home plate corner of the stadium the crowds were really streaming in from the parking lot. The ballpark is situated such that some remote parking all funnels down to one bridge across a creek up to the stadium. We simply stood by the street (within 10 feet of the curb :-)) and handed tracts to the streams of people as they came across to the stadium.
Fans arrive for Rangers Opening Day
Wally and Mike manned one side. I took the other. Eventually I realized it would be easier to hand the tracts out by going across to the parking lot side of the street. So I proceeded over there and handed out 100’s of tracts.
I was running low on tracts and the people were still coming. I pulled all the tracts out of my back pack. Eventually Mike and Wally were out of tracts too and they came and joined me. They were out of tracts. I split up the remaining tracts that I had and we handed them all out. Then we picked up some of the tracts we found on the ground and handed them out again.
We made our way around the stadium to check out the rest of the corners. It appeared all four corners of the stadium would be ideal for witnessing for Saturday’s outreach!
