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Soccer Tourney Opens Doors to Gospel in Albania

albaniaPriam, the National Coordinator of Youth for Christ in Albania, is working once a week with young people in a difficult suburb of Tirana called Babrru, and twice a week in a Roma (gypsy) community  on the edge of the city.

Priam has run a number of evangelistic sports tournaments where Youth for Christ organises small soccer tournaments and the gospel is shared between games.

Following on from this, Priam is running Youth Alpha programmes with young people who have been to the tournaments. This is something totally new in Albania; his church organized the translation of the Youth Alpha DVDs and paid for them to be subtitled in Albanian.

A Mission Trip Report:

“Mushqeta is a strong Muslim community. There are up to 10,000 people living in that area and there is not any churches in that area, except a new church planting project. For many years, different missionary groups did a lot of social work and activities, but the indigenous people never allowed them to preach the gospel. Together with a voluntary team from Gospel of Christ church, we organised a football championship for teenagers from 14-17 years old. We introduced the youth alpha course to the group and they were very enthusiastic and 31 of them
signed up for an alpha course.”

Youth alpha does not work well with the Roma kids who have no education, so Priam is looking for something that explains the gospel more simply for them.

The DAD project (drugs alcohol and smoking awareness programme in schools) worked very well, and if/when Albania can get the funding for it, they will restart that as soon as possible.