Soccer Practice and Soccer Camp

April 4, 2009
My first practice coaching the Ladies reserve team was interesting. Because we only found out about the league a couple of days prior to starting practice, there were only 8 players there. I was told that there are more interested, just unable to attend on short notice. The level of players was quiet varied, from brand new to retired semi-professionals, which will make practices interesting. I think if we have a decent core group of experienced players it should be okay and it will help the new players along. Apart from the soccer aspect, I think there will be a lot of potential opportunities to disciple the young girls, which is a definite area for prayer.
After a busy week last week, this one was a little bit lighter. We will be running a soccer camp next week at a local school while they are on break. There are 800 kids in the school, but we are limiting the attendance to 250 kids because of space and staffing. The camp will be paid for by businesses who have agreed to sponsor kids, so getting 250 9-13 year olds there shouldn’t be a problem. It is a very poor community, where kids don’t even have a field or a park to play in, so we will be using the school facilities. AIS is working with a church and another soccer organization to run the camp, but I was asked to run the AIS portion of the camp (who knows why?), which will be the older half of the kids. So this week I have been getting all of the details planned (coaching and Bible study sessions) and coordinating all of the other interns to make sure everyone is prepared and trained to lead a group of kids on their own. Please pray that the program runs smoothly, that coaches lead well, and most importantly, that the gospel is declared clearly and made known to the kids. Pray particularly for Thursday, which will be a day open for all kids and families to come from the community. There will be games and skits, as well as a gospel presentation and testimony. We have invited local churches to help that day as well, to allow people to be plugged in to a local church to allow ministry to continue.

April 6, 2009
We had our first day of soccer camp this morning. We were supposed to start at 9:00 and thought there would be a couple of hundred kids, but there were only about 40 there. Apparently, the recruiting in the schools was a little lacking compared to what we expected. Thankfully though, a couple of us drove out in to the township while a couple others walked around the block and within 15 minutes we had 200 kids at the field, ages 6-18. The field is in pretty poor shape, mostly sand pits and hills, and more glass than grass, but the kids were happy to have soccer balls to kick around and play with. From the road you can’t see how poor the community is, so I was actually glad to be able to drive around looking for kids, because I was able to see the homes the kids came from (I was actually a little scared, I would not go there at night or alone, you could tell from people’s looks that outsiders are not normally there). Literally, the homes were filthy shacks, falling down and unmaintained. Some kids showed up without shoes at all, and very few kids had soccer shoes. Each intern led a group of about 12 kids (except for myself as I was coordinating) and spent about an hour doing soccer training then 20-30 minutes sharing a Bible lesson, and then a few minutes scrimmaging. The day started a little late, so we didn’t do everything planned, but we ended the day with a skit to present a brief gospel message and a bit of an explanation of why we were there. Overall, I think things went well.