Mark WiedmerHarry “Tornillo” Guzman said the same prayer every night for six years in his native Dominican Republic.
“God, please give me a chance to go to the United States,” the 15-year-old recalled through an interpreter as he stood on Grace Academy’s baseball field in East Brainerd.
He then paused for a moment, looked at his surroundings and added in broken English, “Jesus is good.”
It all began a few years ago with a better-than-good idea from Fury Academy 16-under baseball coach Tim Dean.
With the Chattanooga-based mission group SCORE International and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes already heavily involved in helping the Dominican Republic’s impoverished youth in their homeland, Dean decided to bring a few of those young men to Chattanooga for a summer of baseball.