Ten missionaries arrived Friday afternoon in Jefferson City — more than half of them on two wheels.
The young troop of six bicycle riders and four support personnel set off Tuesday from Dodge City, Kansas, on the Kansas Route, according to rider/missionary Erin Sprenger. They are part of a national ride for a nonprofit called Biking for Babies.
Participants in the nonprofit raise money for pregnancy help centers by contacting acquaintances and asking for donations, and by attending locally hosted meet-ups, like one held Friday at St. Joseph Cathedral School.
Sprenger was in her mid-20s and lived in Jefferson City in 2018 when her Catholic young adult group hosted a similar event for the biking missionaries. She decided to join.
Biking for Babies was founded in 2009 as a way to get young men and women to raise awareness and financial support for pregnancy resource centers across the country. Organizers took up their bikes and cycled across the state of Illinois, talking with those they encountered about the beauty of every human life. That ride raised more than $14,000, which went to Living Alternatives, a pregnancy resource center in Illinois.
“We’ve essentially ridden across the entire state of Kansas, and will by tomorrow night have ridden across the width of Missouri as well,” Sprenger said.
There are six routes this year — six different teams all starting at different locations. Five of the teams will converge in St. Louis today. The other team is to traveling east to Washington, D.C.
All the routes are about the same distance — 600 to 800 miles — all ridden in six days.
Leslie Kerns, executive director of the Pregnancy Help Center of Central Missouri, was on hand to provide tours of the center’s mobile unit, nicknamed Daisy.
“We go to surrounding communities and we give pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. At one of our locations, we test for sexually transmitted infections,” Kerns said. “We’ve had her (the mobile unit) four years.”
The organization’s brick and mortar site offers additional resources, she said.
“We do classes. We have professionally licensed counseling,” Kerns said. “We have a nice baby boutique with all kinds of baby items. Each time a client comes in, they can get free diapers.”
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