Soccer Outreach

Rockford Community Church’s soccer outreach ministry, started with the intent of reaching children in the community of Rockford, has turned out to be an open door for ministry within the Hispanic community of Rockford. 85% of the children participating in the ministry are the children of parents from Mexico who speak little or no English. After 6 weeks of friendship building with the parents and children I sense that God has opened a door that will enable us to represent the Spanish speaking demographic of the Rockford Community. Along with this blessing has come the challenge of learning to communicate. We are trusting God to begin a Spanish Language class soon. If you are able to help us bridge this language barrier we would appreciate your help. If you have resources or funds to donate toward this ministry, please contact us.

Recently, the families of the soccer kids invited our group to a cook out. The parents provided all of the food and did all of the cooking as their way of saying “thank you” to Rockford Community Church for providing the soccer ministry for their children.

We were blessed to receive a donation of $500 from Wal-mart toward purchasing the soccer gear to get us started. We are still trusting God for more finances to buy the balance of what is needed to keep the ministry going.

The soccer outreach will continue as the school year begins at West Middle School where we will also have the opportunity to provide mentoring/coaching within the School. In our experience last year, working with the school in mentoring/coaching, we noticed a strong correlation in the increase of grades and improvement in behavior and those children who participated in the mentoring/coaching.

Pastor Samuel Sarpiya
Rockford Community Church