"- Shoot with your toe! - Goal! Wohoo! Great job! I believed in you! - Thank you! But I prayed! I believe in the Lord!"

This is a part from one of the dialogues at the sport community called Face Off. Yes, in this post i'll share about our trip with the team of Athletes in Action with our volunteers to the Netherlands to the conference called "Sport Community training 2". Thank you very much for your support and prayers! We wouldn't be able to manage without them.  We felt them and the Lord has been blessing us and helping us especially during the difficulties on the way and in the miscommunications :-)

I won't talk much, i'll show you :-) I'll just say that it was a 2 weeks intensive trip filled with different emotions and answers from the Lord. The conference was built to be in a balance of the theory and of the practice. The theory was for example, how to grow in self leadership, what stages of coaching/discipleship are in Sport Community and what are the passages between them, how to evaluate and to draw lessons of the Lord - "kairos moments".  And the practice was - we visited and participated in 4 different places of sports communities - we observed the strategies and methods and different approaches.

Sport Community (SK) "Oosterlikht"
Below -  the evaluation time at the Sport Community (my favourite part in SC)

 Devotion part about how to make a right choice toward the Lord - SC Hoogezand - elementary and middle school age children

 Devotion part for the same SC but in another gym for teenagers and older young people.

I played with my team as best as i could  ;-)

Sport Community "Face Off"

Anna - volunteer from the church for 3 years, she is in charge of the devotion time at the SC and is responsible for the equipment (as well as for the juices for children)

 The devotion part was about how to say positive words which the Lord wants us to use and to build up with.

Here it was our team at SC Face Off. The guy in the blue jacket is Ryan. His dad immigrated from Albania as he told us. The title of this post is the dialogue I had with Ryan. When I scored the victorious penalty, that's what he told me - that he believed in me and we won. And I said that I prayed and I believed in the Lord and we won. I hope that was the Gospel for him besides our actions :-)

One of the most impressive lessons for me from this trip was  - the older women - volunteers from the churches who didn't play football but who served for a year and for3 years with the commitment to come out of their comfort zone every Wednesday to the football fields of the Sport Communities and who communicated with non-believing youth, single old people, parents of their neighbourhood. If this is done in the Netherlands, we can do the same and even more in Ukraine, and it's not necessary to be an athlete for that ;-)
Here's a short interview with Yulianeke (hope you can hear what she says, later there will be subtitles for this video)

 This is Yolanda. She loves to talk to the teenagers girls in SC Face Off. They love to communicate with her.










Here's the feedback of one of our team members - Max Radchenko (18 years old), who does SC with his volunteers in his native city - Smela

«During the conference God showed me how to build a bridge between a church and non believers through sports - all is needed is not to be afraid to come out of the comfort zone. At the conference I was shown the model of the relationships in the team (upward, inward and outward) - that is what is needed before you start the project! Upward - the relationships with God; inward - the relationships with the team and outward  - the relationships with non-believers. If there's no relationships with God, it will be a social project and such kind of organization will just fail. If there's no relationships to build up in the team, there won't  be anybody with whom to do the project. If there's no relationships with nonbelievers, there won't be anybody for whom to do this project. So everything should be in a balance!
After the conference I set few challenges for my growth. A lot of exciting things are in the future!
P.S. During the trip we also had a possibility to travel and to see interesting places of Europe:) For us it was a great time in the unity with the team of Athletes in Action.:)"

 Also i was impressed how the Lord blessed us and answered the prayers - before the trip my responsibility was to find accomodations for our team in the places where we needed to stay for a night during our travels. As we were short on our financial possibilities and we had to find the places comfortable in terms of timing and distance and finances (hostels or friends of friends etc) - God blessed us with all places to stay overnight almost for free - we even were fed with dinners and breakfasts by the people who never knew us and even never saw us before. That 's what is called - "the body of Christ"! We made pictures with each one of them - great new aquiantances and prayers! Thank you for your prayers as well!

 Krakow, Poland

 Groningem, Netherlands

Dortmund, Germany

 Amsterville, Netherlands

 Munich, Germany

 What we expect in future and what we need to pray for: 

1)      The elders of the church "Revival" approved and took some obligations as well regarding the set up of the soccer field in the parking lot of the church - for example - lights, heating, locker room etc.  We already planned and divided the responsibilities on this. Please pray we would work in the unity with our volunteers, that the elders of the church also would fulfill their obligations, that the webpage and the ads would work, that the Lord would bring those children and parents He sees, that the project would be realized by God's guidance spiritually, physically and financially (one of my responsibilities is the budget) ;

2)       please keep praying for my basketball practices in the team with non believers ("Pretty ladies 30+") (I missed one month) Please pray for a wise friendship with them so that God would open their hearts and so that in the tfuture God would give an opportunity to do basketball sport community and to invite them (their children) to participate and to coach;

3)      Thanks to God for a possibility to mentor and to disciple my friend - basketball coach Katya P., and that she can do Bible study with her girls she coaches; pray for the repentance of my friend and ex basketball girl - Anya R., please pray for my disciple and our volunteer Anya F. - so she'd find a place to rent and so she would be able to see her family who lives in the US;

4)       for the repentance and for the deliberation of my sister Ira, the repentance of my brother Valera and of my nephew Vova.

Huge thank you! I'm looking foward to hear what is happening in your life and what can I pray for you ?:-)