Tennis, More Than Just Sport
Hi, my name is Toshe Temelkov. In 2017 my wife and I started an Agape ministry in North Macedonia called LeaderImpact™. Through this ministry and on account of a mutual passion for tennis, I met a fellow tennis lover and North Macedonian business leader, a former HR director at a large Croatian Insurance company in Skopje.
Our paths began crossing in 2018. Since then we have played in several of the same tennis tournaments. We started practicing together, and I helped train his son, who was in high school at the time. At some point my wife and I started spending time off the court with him and his wife. They came over for dinner, then we went to visit them and had a great time getting to know each other.
In June 2021 he decided to check out LeaderImpact. He came to one of our vision events where several of our members shared their stories of how LeaderImpact helped them in their professional, personal and spiritual life. He seemed impressed but was too busy to make LeaderImpact a priority in his schedule.
Some time later I was at a tennis tournament, getting ready to play. From the corner of my eye I spotted him with his left arm in a sling. I immediately approached him and asked what had happened. He told me how, as he was walking into his workout room at home to exercise, he tripped and broke his shoulder. As he was telling the story he jokingly said, “Now I have time for LeaderImpact and for everything else that I have been neglecting.”
At our next LeaderImpact group meeting we discussed the book “Becoming a Leader of Impact.” This key question was in the section we read: Have you ever had a wake up call? He said, “This is what is happening to me right now. And I am starting to realize that I have been neglecting the spiritual aspects of life.” After several group meetings I shared the gospel with him over the phone and also shared a Bible app with him.
He is now one of our key people. He is leading a group himself and is amazing at it because of his past experience as an HR director. Praise God for transforming his life and for opening up doors for us through him to have a greater impact in the business community here in North Macedonia.
I have led and been through hundreds of leadership workshops and trainings but have never consulted the bestseller of all times, the Bible. Now I am committed to reading it, studying it, as well as promoting it.
