Dear Friends around the world,

This month I wish to tell you the vision I have for this ministry and what role we can play in assisting you.  We are working very hard on finishing our web page.  We have everything in place and we are testing it out.  So keep checking our site at http://ww.tennisministry.com.  I would hope that it will be up and running by the middle of December.  Sorry about the delay but we wish to have a site that you can be proud of.

This ministry has been birthed for one purpose.  That is to assist and encourage you as tennis players in sharing your faith with others.  All of the programs that we design are built around this idea.  We are interested in releasing the God given talents that you have to serve the Lord and to lift up his name.  Many of you have written to us sharing your plans in this regard.  I will share them with you later in this letter.  At the moment let me tell you what we can do to help you.

Many of you receiving this have instant access to our information by the Internet.  However, many do not have access to the Internet and it is our hope to offer this same information to those who write to us. For those of you who have access to the Internet, searching for words such as ‘tennis and pastor and church’ you will find that somewhere around 15,000 web pages will be listed.  Worldwide Internet users double every five months, so the potential is there to have a very large network. We intend to do this.  In early 1999 we will start an advertising campaign to several key magazines to tell those who do not have Internet access how to reach us.  Tennis Magazine alone has a subscriber base of millions, so this will reach a very large number of people.

In keeping with our goals of assisting you, we will offer several networking tools.  On our web page we will post your prayer and needs requests.  At your request we will also post your contact information, for the purpose of assisting you in networking.  God has given many of you desires to use your tennis with ministry and we will list your ministry ideas and opportunities.  We will also have a chat room to instantly talk to others via the Internet.  God has brought me several people to assist me in this endeavor.  However, frankly it requires me spending many hours learning new programs and formats.  So have patience and remember to keep us in your prayers as we labor for this project.

We have had many requests for assistance along with a sharing of ministry ideas from you.  I would like to share some of them with you.

• We have a teaching pro who wishes to organize Christian meetings at all USPTA, USPTR, and USTA conferences.
• Several school coaches are sharing this newsletter with their teams and holding meetings with their players.
• We have a teaching pro offering to design and sell shirts with our organization logo, donating the proceeds back to this ministry.
• A top ten ranked US junior is looking for a university Christian coach.
• A junior tournament player is looking for a tennis coach to organize a tournament traveling group.
• Friends of several well known players are forwarding our news to them.
• Players are looking for a Christian tennis camp.
• Christian ministries are organizing tennis groups for overseas trips.
• Several Christian magazines are looking for leads from tennis.
• A coach is looking to organize her own Christian tennis club.
• Several have asked this ministry to come and give a tennis workshop.
• Several coaches are organizing local coaches for Bible studies.
• We receive a lot of requests for counseling.
• Tennis industry executives are contacting us.

Blessings,
Rev. Bob Kraft