By tradition, every summer is always “hot time” in terms of events which take place in the soccer ministry, but the current summer season seems to be the most vivid in terms of thrilling events.
In July, I was invited to the United States to be the part of a soccer camp. To be frank, for me, it was the first time experience, therefore, it turned out to be especially interesting and blessed. The camp was run by a local church. I’m trying to be exact, so I figure that there were about 50 children of all ages in this camp.
The main conclusion I drew for myself – all children are sinners and desperately need the Gospel… And my biggest impression was as to how the church and ministers should contribute in the children’s ministry. At this point, we actually have something to learn from our foreign brothers and sisters.
As usually, this summer, we’ve had a little getaway to the village of Zgorany where we held the camp for the refreshment of the young leaders of “Nadiya.” It has really been productive, useful and an interesting time spending for all of us, and most important thing was that we’ve studied the First epistle of Peter every night near the campfire. On top of that we played volleyball, swam in the lake and sketched out some plans for the future. I’d like to share that God spoke to us a lot through the situation with one of our young soccer players, whose parents forbidden him to attend “Nadia,” because they say that we “drag” people over to our belief, to put simply, they’re trying to say that we impose our convictions on other people. So this boy in a deep trouble now, he has real persecutions. And unfortunately, our previous conversation with his parents did not go very well. For Dima, the most comforting passages from the Scripture were 1Peter 3:14 and 4:14, which says about the people who suffer for the Christ’s sake. Now we pray for Dima and his parents a lot, the situation has gotten worse once he admitted to his parents that he wants to be baptized.
Following the camp in Zgorany, there has been organized a week-long trip to the campground in Zalessye, but this time with the youth team. We stayed in our beautiful and cozy shack. During this time, we were profoundly engaged in training activities, preparation for the tournament season as well as studied every day the Sermon on the Mount laid out on the pages of Scripture by Jesus Christ. I’m thankful to God that there were15 boys, among whom were many unbelievers. In my opinion, they were very interested in what we did there, and they are all enjoyed reading the Word of God. We organized the curriculum in such a way that they also had the opportunity to perform their assignments, and then during the discussion they expressed their thoughts based on what they read on their own. At times, it was very funny to hear them saying something, and sometimes they have spoken the right things and hit the mark. So, we hope that they’ll benefit a lot from this mutual time spent in Zalessye.
Thank God for this blessed summer time!
Alexander Honchar
