This year, God has blessed “Hope to people” with the ability to organize several outreach sports camps. In April, the Christian soccer club “Hope” hosted the young Christian team “Joy” from Odessa. Their coach and spiritual leader is Oleg Sharapov. He is a professional from Ukraine’s second soccer league, who after repentance is preaching the Gospel of the Lord to teenagers through soccer ministry. He found information about the Christian soccer club “Hope” and agreed to cooperate with Alexander Goncharov, the leader of the sports ministry of IPO “Hope to People”. Along with twenty guys, team “Joy” arrived to open the soccer season with a friendly tournament. It was not easy to have street teenagers, many of whom are growing up in problem families, as guests. However, God does his work. The boys, after listening to Bible studies and playing soccer games with team “Hope”, returned safely home.
In early June, 30 guys from the Christian soccer club “Hope” went for a return visit to Odessa. They were living in the church building, and the soccer games took place in a wonderful stadium of the Odessa Law Academy. They had a second joint evangelistic camp for teams “Hope” and “Joy”. The sea was a five minute walk from them, so the guys enjoyed swimming there in their spare time. Odessa coaches were pleasantly surprised by the behavior of the Rivne teenagers, especially during worship time. They highly appreciated the simple and systematic approach of the club “Hope” to the regular Bible studies and prayer during soccer practice. Especially memorable were the testimonies of the older guys, members of the soccer team “Hope”. They were better accepted by their peers than sermons by coaches and mentors.
During this trip, God has clearly shown that He is the only one who knows the human heart. Sometimes we categorize players on “prospective” players and those whom one can’t expect anything good from. God has once again taught us that we need to love them the same and preach to all. For example, on the last day of the camp a fifteen year old guy, who was putting the group leaders out of temper by breaking rules and spreading cynicism throughout the camp, repented during the game, “Live life in one hour.” The essence of the game is that in one hour the participants had to “live life”: to learn, work in imaginary companies, earn money on the stock exchange, and even to attend church. While the players are running from point to point, the leader suddenly, before the appointed time, stops the game and declares that “life” is over. Participants take time to analyze: who achieved and what was achieved in the given time. The game even has a scene of hell, over which several boys laughed loudly, including our hero. That evening at dinner the guys noticed that the guy was alone, crying bitterly. Through his tears, he said he did not want to go to hell. Leaders thought that it was his next bad joke and tried to joke back. But then they realized that he was serious. The final chord of the camp was his prayer of repentance before God.
