My name is Peter Alexander, and I want to share how God blessed my son Matthew's soccer team, the Vipers, which I coach.  My wife Michelle helped me see God move in our group of eight- and nine-year-old boys, one of whom has leukemia. My assistant coach Perry Bumanlag and his wife Dee (team mom with Michelle) helped immensely.

I honestly do not know much about soccer, but I know about God. So I decided at the beginning of the season to apply Biblical/spiritual principals to the team:

• Believing=faith + hope
• teamwork=unity, fun and friendship=love

We finished the regular season undefeated 15-0-1. Going into the tournament I had to build my faith as well as the team's that we could win the championship. I found one obstacle of faith could be fear of disappointment. ("What if we don't win?")  Reading Hebrews 11:1 and Romans 5 helped me with this.

At times, my son Matthew had more faith than I did about being a champion. The morning of the tournament I needed more faith, so I turned to Joshua chapter one and was inspired. I shared this with Matthew before we went to the tournament. We looked at the Scriptures and saw how God was with us, would not leave us, and would lead us to victory.  With that kind of faith we were reminded we had nothing to fear.

Saturday, we won two games. On Sunday, Matthew and I went back to read Joshua. We won the semifinals that morning! Two hours later we were in the championship. Before the game started Matthew, some of the other players, a player's dad, and I prayed before the game. We won and became first place tournament champions out of 31 teams of boys under age 10 in Fremont. We have been invited and will play in the Crossroads tournament representing the city of Fremont. That day we were simply in awe of what God had done.  After the championship, I invited the entire team to the church service we were having later in the day, since we were all at the tournament.  One family came; others were interested. Our prayer is that we can all be on God's team together in the faith. Through soccer, our family learned a great lesson about faith and friendship.

Coach Pete