How the Soccer Crusade Printed Program Came to Be

The souvenir program is one of the more important items that is used in a "football crusade." Every spectator, player, and official receives a free copy. Hundreds are distributed outside the stadium as well. Therefore, 100,00 programs would need to be printed for the March 1989 crusade, but Uganda, at that time, had no place that could print that many. A printing place was found in neighboring Kenya, in Kjiabe, 35 miles outside of Nairobi. As this was in the days before computers a draft of the program would need to be sent via overnight carrier. First, Russ (Carr) tried Fed Ex, but the printing people could not locate the office in Nairobi, so Russ had to resend the materials with DHL. Next, the people who were going to transport the truckload of printed programs from Kijabe to Kampala (Uganda) couldn’t, so another way had to be found. By "coincidence" the printer had a friend, a building contractor, who was traveling to Uganda with his truck. The building contractor, a Christian, said he would be happy to transport the boxes. When the contractor arrived in Kampala he stopped briefly at the headquarters of Light Ministry, (the name Campus Crusade uses in Africa) even though he was on his way to another city some seventy miles away where, because he misunderstood his instructions from the printer, he planned to deliver the boxes. While he was parked in front of the Campus Crusade office, George Piwang, who was helping with the crusade, "happened" to be walking by. George walked into the Light Ministry office and met the building contractor asking him straight out, "What are those boxes on your truck?" The man replied that they were programs for a football crusade, and he was taking them up country to deliver them. George asked to see them and discovered that they were indeed the programs that he was looking for. God often moves in strange and mysterious ways!

Incidentally, the programs were greatly used of the Lord. At the conclusion of the crusade, over 5,000 response cards were torn out of the programs and returned to the follow-up committee. The vast majority wanted to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior.