Leagues good and bad


Recently published studies from Brazil make gruesome reading. They provide numerical tables on the young people who die violently. In Scotland it is 2.7 per 100,000 people, but in Colombia the comparable figure is 73.4. This makes Colombia along with El Salvador the world's leaders in violent deaths, five times higher than the USA or Africa. The one consolation is that the Colombian rate has halved over the last 15 years.

It's in this context that the football programme was started. Initially Mark brought the youngsters from the streets into the Seminary to play football and this has finally developed into a 1200 youngster, 5 league tournament. On Saturday we went to watch the final game of the season and the awarding of the championship trophy.

Generous funding comes from Holland (along with orange tops), the USA and TEAR Fund. But the project has been affected by global economics and the shrinking $. The 26 Colombians working on the project haven't been paid since September and $160,000 is needed to finish the first stage of the sports complex.

It's beyond me how anyone can sleep with these kind of burdens. But God is sovereign even in soccer and maybe historians will eventually tell us that the downfall of the US-UK economies was the best thing for missions. Maybe.

Photo: Worried looking Mark (right) with a Colombian colleague. Dutch readers please note the orange tops.

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