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Welcome to our Sports Friends Newsletter!
 We
hope you enjoy this bit of news from Sports Friends. God is
using the simple, yet powerful, platform of sports ministry to expand
His Kingdom. We hope this newsletter encourages you and leads
you to pray for Sports Friends and its leaders serving around the
world. You have been included in this distribution either
because you signed up on our website or because one of our Sports
Friends missionaries thought you would appreciate these
updates. If you do not wish to receive them, you may
unsubscribe below.
Nigeria in Focus
In this  quarter’s newsletter, we would like to focus on God’s work through the Sports Friends ministry
in Nigeria. SIM, our parent mission organization, was first
founded in 1893 in order to bring the gospel message to the interior
regions of Nigeria. SIM has maintained a consistent presence
in Nigeria over the past 116 years and has birthed a church that is now
one of the largest denominations in Nigeria with over 5,000 local
churches.
Sports
Friends first opened its office in Jos, Nigeria in 2006 to lead the
development of church-centered sports ministry with this SIM partner
denomination as well as with many other churches in the
country. Nigeria is the most populous nation in all of Africa
with a population of over 150 million people; over 60% of these people
are under 25 years of age. There
is a tremendous opportunity for the churches of Nigeria to use the
powerful platform of sports ministry to reach these young people and
their families and communities with the transforming love and word of
God!
A "Whole Life" Coach
Audu
is a professional working in the medical industry, and his job keeps
him quite busy. However, he has a heart for the Nigerian
youth in his area and made time to attend a Sports Friends training
conference held in Nigeria in 2007. He became excited about
the opportunity to use sports to reach out to those in his
community. Since he has a busy schedule, he quickly recruited
another godly man, Sunday, to help him. He shared the vision
with Sunday and made sure he understood the importance of having a
kingdom perspective in the sports ministry. They joined
together and gathered a group of boys (under 15 in age) and started
meeting and training with them weekly.
After worki ng
with his team for some time, Audu decided to plan a football (soccer)
tournament, but not like other tournaments in his area. You
see, all the past tournaments never came to a completion because
fighting always broke out during the tournament
and it had to be canceled. Audu focused on Godly character
issues. He also mixed up the teams so that new relationships
were formed. By God’s grace, the tournament did
finish successfully. Many church and community leaders,
including those of other religious beliefs, came out to witness the
competition and encourage their youth to grow in godliness.
By the end of the tournament, 14 youth accepted Christ as their
Savior. These new believers are involved in different
churches and are being actively discipled. One non-Christian
parent even requested to have her son on a Sports Friends team because
she saw the difference in how the coach and youth behaved.
Audu
is also training these young men in areas of life beyond football; he
is their “whole life” coach. He has
started a farm with them and is teaching them business
skills. Other volunteers are also helping the boys with their
school work and educational learning. The ministry is growing
wider and deeper. Audu has been willing to invest in a group
of boys, and God has blessed it and multiplied it so that now hundreds
of Nigerian youth in the area are being impacted with the transforming
power of Jesus’ love.
Over
the last several years, Sports Friends has trained over 1,200 Nigerian
men and women like Audu to become effective sports ministry leaders,
impacting their communities for the cause of Christ through the
platform of sports.
Camping Impact
Sports Frie nds has just completed our second year of summer camping ministry in Nigeria. During the first week of camp, we hosted about 90 boys between 16 and 20 years old. John, from our SF Nigeria staff, led the camp and did a wonderful job.
Over 20 of the teens indicated they wanted to put their faith in
Christ! As we talked with our trained Nigerian coaches
(sports ministers) who brought the youth to camp, we were encouraged by
their faithfulness and how God has been working in their teams and
bringing life change. The campers
played many fun games like water balloon volleyball, learned how to
make sandals, and were encouraged to live life with Jesus at the
center. Please pray with us that God would continue to draw
Nigerian youth into a closer relationship with Him through our camping
ministry.
Nigerian Football Missionaries
You may have  heard
about the “Back to Jerusalem” vision of the Chinese
church to send Chinese missionaries into the many countries that lie
between China and Israel where there is very little Christian
witness. You may not know, however, that the Nigerian
churches have a similar “Back to Jerusalem” vision
– to take the gospel to the mainly non-Christian countries of
North Africa and the Middle East and to meet their Chinese brothers
back in Jerusalem. Sports Friends is working with one of the
largest Nigerian mission societies (with over one thousand Nigerian
missionaries) to train their missionaries
how to use sports as a natural bridge to build relationships through
which to share the love of Christ to those who do not know and follow
Him. Please pray with us that these Nigerian football
missionaries would be a great light of God’s love and truth
in the communities where they serve.
Beyond Nigeria in West Africa
Nigeria ser ves as a strategic training and resource center for Sports Friends in West Africa. Sports Friends
recently hosted a vision trip of senior church leaders from several
countries across Africa to come and see the SF ministry in Ethiopia and
explore how a similar ministry could be developed in their
countries. Sports Friends is currently working with church
leaders in both Ghana and Liberia to develop plans for beginning church
centered sports ministry in these West African countries. Our
SF team in Nigeria will be an integral part of these new ministry
development efforts in the coming months and years. Please
pray with us that what God has begun in Nigeria will spill over to
other countries throughout West Africa.
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