Faith

"Had I not found God, I would probably be a good-for-nothing drug-addict, or even worse, dead" says Zoltán Gera. The head of the Hungarian national football team was unable to live normally for years until the day he visited Faith Church and heard of Jesus Christ. It was there that he found God, broke out of poverty and into fame.

"We were neither rich nor poor. My parents gave me everything I asked for, and we had enough food to eat" - relates Zoltán about his childhood. They lived the life of an average Hungarian family. His father worked as a porter, his mother started off at a brewery, then moved to another job. There were no problems with Zoltán at the start: he finished the first few years of Primary School with excellent results.

As a nine and ten-year-old, Zoli often hung out at the lobby of his school with his friends. They spent their time in an "innocent" way, playing csocso, pool, and listening to music. "Back then I didn't feel like doing anything bad" - remembers Zoli. They regularly went outside to play football, his talent becoming apparent immediately. "I played differently, a little better than everyone else, so we would always split the teams in such a way that I would be in the weakest team."

The problems started when one day a few older students showed up in the school lobby. They smoked a lot, and bragged to the younger boys about their adventures which included robbery and staying away from home at night. These stories caught Zoli's attention as well, and he started talking to one of them. "They told us how good it was to smoke and go wherever you pleased, with no-one telling you what to do. We felt that they were waking us up to what real life was all about.

Zoli and his friends started hanging out with these boys in the suburbs of town. Their parents had no idea what was going on. The degenerational process took a long time, Zoli was still playing football as a qualified player of Pecs Leather Factory Football Team. "We started missing our lessons" - relates Zoli, who loved to visit casinos more than football pitches. "I spent my breakfast-money on casinos, and started to miss my football training sessions as well."