I remember the days back in the late 80's and in 1990 of taking soccer teams to communist countries for the expressed purpose of encouraging underground churches and Christians as well as smuggling in bibles. Then in 1991 the former Soviet Union was opened up and the first ever ministry initiative for the Charlotte Eagles Soccer Club was a trip that I had the privilege of leading to this country. One year before we ran out of the 500 Bibles we brought to distribute in Czech and Poland. It was a terrible feeling. People begging for a Bible. I asked the Lord to help me raise enough money to bring 100,000 Bibles, N.T's and Gospel of Johns to the USSR in 1991. I made the order but had a drop out date just in case we couldn't raise the $. We needed just over 20,000 dollars which might as well have been a million to us at that time in our little Seahorse office in southern california. This wasn't about my great faith it was about a vision from God. The day i needed to make the finally commitment we weren't even close. I walked into the office and a fellow staff member sitting at his desk asked me, "so what are you going to do Brian, cancel the order?" I responded that the day had just started and we needed to give God the whole day to meet our need for $20+k. It wasn't like I was confident or anything just set on waiting till the end of the day. I will never ever forget that phone call that came from Mike P. after lunch that day. "Brian, my boss Bill S has committed to give you guys 20k for the Bibles and he wants to go on the trip as well." WOW! This money came from revenue he was receiving by the county using some of the land he owned for garbage. In May 1991 22 team members & Eagles staff along with 8 businessmen went to Moscow, Tbilisi and Kiev and distributed 100,000 Christian Bibles, NT's and Gospel of John. It was one of the most amazing trips I have ever been on. Going to the place that stored our Scriptures and loading up the bus with each box was terrific. Then giving them out to people after I preached on the resurrection of Jesus Christ in front of Lenin's tomb, on street corners and as our players shared one on one with complete strangers after public presentations of the Gospel was an ABSOLUTELY AWESOME experience. I have some powerful stories that I will share another time from this experience. Giving people Bibles in the old USSR in 91 was like feeding gold fish food. It was quite the experience to see people so hungry for the Word of God after 70 years of being told there was no God. What a privilege! Can we use the World Cup in 2018 for the Kingdom of God? It's the Glory of the Impossible!
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