Meet Coach Joshua

I'm writing a report on our football activities today. Included in the report are some short interviews with some of our players and coaches. Here's the first part of an interview with Joshua. His words blew me away, reminding me again of how easy it is to enable young people to play football for real and how much joy that brings to them.


My name is Joshua Thoang, and I am 22 years old. I have been a football coach since 2007.

From the time I was 14 years old I lived in an orphanage. One day I watched a football game on the TV and I saw the players wearing nice uniforms and having fun. I was very interested in this and I wanted to play football too, but I didn't know how to play. Then one day, I decided to take a cement bag and make it into a ball so that I could play with my friends at the orphanage. Some of us knew how to play and some of us did not, and we all had fun! At that time, I hoped to one day have a real ball and a nice uniform to wear too. Now I am happy I have a nice uniform, I have nice shoes, I have a ball to play football with, and I am a coach of football too. I am very thankful to God for all these blessings.

Fun Day

Last Wednesday we took a break from work and had a Staff Fun Day!

Everyone was there- expat team members, full-time local staff and part-time staff. Immediate families were invited and some people also invited a close friend. Our team of a dozen swelled to over thirty men, women and children. It was a joyful day of celebration!

It was the first time we've done something like this for the whole team over a whole day. Our theme was remembering God's promises, based on the sign of the rainbow God gave to Noah after the flood. The room was decorated according to the theme. In the morning we had prayer, reflection, worship, fun games and preparing for our lunch-time feast. After lunch we had a concert & I gave gifts to our team. It was good to leave Poipet with sweet memories of hard work and also fun times together as a team.