Saturday, June 10, 2006

2006 World Cup Prayer Guide



With the massive worldwide popularity of the World Cup, I thought that it would be a good idea to create a Prayer Guide for the 32 participating nations. As Christians’, prayer is perhaps the most crucial thing that we can do to impact our world for the Gospel.
My challenge is that each of you would take the time to pray for the 32 countries participating. A few general ideas of things that you can pray for:

  • Pray for the missionaries serving in these nations. In many of the countries, missionaries face various hardships and obstacles.

  • Pray that more nations would take up the call to missions.

  • Pray for the churches of the nations, that they would be strong and unified.

  • And above all, pray that Jesus would be glorified in our lives, our churches and our ministries.

This may sound like a silly idea to some of you, but I assure you that the World Cup does have an impact on the World. During the 1994 World Cup, 4 Brazilians become Christians. This year, warring faction in the Ivory Coast have declared a "cease-fire" while their country plays in the Cup. You just don´t know what impact the power of prayer could have!

There are two translations, one in English and the other Portuguese. You can download either the PDF or MSWord file.
Click here to get your copy.

Friday, June 09, 2006

It Has Begun!


So the World Cup began today. To which 90% of America responded with: "the World What?" The World Cup may not be a big deal in North America, but for the rest of the planet...this is a HUGE event.
For Brazil, the defending champions and Cup favorites, there is a unimaginable amount of energy flowing through the country. Everything is decorated in "Verde e Amarelo" (Green & Yellow), Brazils colors. And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Yesterday, I was driving out of downtown on my way to pick up Gabi at school when I saw a poodle with his face dyed green and his body dyed yellow.
So far only two games have been played, Germany v Costa Rica and Ecuador v Poland. Germany, the host country, looks very, very good and will certainly challenge Brazil if they meet in the finals. The final score was Germany 4, Costa Rica 2. I am not sure if the fact that Costa Rica was able to score two points is a good thing or the fact that Germany was able to score 4 points so easily is cause to be fearful.
Anyway it plays, these next several weeks will be filled with excitement, nervousness, and hopefully....much celebration.