The National House of Prayer is asking for four million kwacha from well wishers to help it organize an Under-20 football match between Zambia’s Chipolopolo and Real Madrid in December, and another game against F.C Barcelona in April next year.

National House of Prayer advisory board chairperson Bishop Joshua Banda of Northmead Assemblies of God announced this at a media briefing yesterday, adding that his committee had already organized two fundraising gala dinners towards raising the match fixing cost.

He also announced that Brazil’s Roberto Carlos, Lucia Garcia and former football legend for Real Madrid, Raucous Garcia would grace the “unparalleled” fundraising gala dinners.

Bishop Banda said the fundraising galas would be held at Mulungushi International Conference Center on November 17 and Mukuba Hotel in Ndola on the 18th, where members of the public would be expected to pay K2,500 for tickets.

“I would like to make a special mention that the guest of honour at the events is the Republican President H.E President Edgar Chagwa Lungu. You are aware that His Excellency is an avid football fan, supporting the Chipolopolo boys at all levels. His Excellency will auction off rare football memento and you cannot afford to miss this. These are personally autographed Lionel Messi number 10 F.C Barcelona T-shirt, personally autographed Christiano Ronaldo number 7 Real Madrid T-shirt and F.C Barcelona original hats, pens and other similar rare pieces. We have requested His Excellency to provide us with a personal neck-tie which will be a souvenir for the winning bidder to feature in their memento board. We encourage all of you to pick up your gala dinner tickets from Computicket in any Shoprite outlet across the country at K2,500. Only limited seats are available from both events on account of venue capacities,” Bishop Banda said.

“We have guest appearance from two top football legends. We have Brazil’s Roberto Carlos a world famous former Real Madrid player whom most of us remember from his glory days in his team. Second to mention is Brazil’s Lucia Garcia a former Liverpool football club and F.C Barcelona player. Third we have Rayco Garcia a former Real Madrid player who has similarly earned international acclaim for his stunning achievements across many years. Last but not the least, the house of prayer has also arranged to feature Mr Lorenzo Sanz, the former president of Real Madrid Football club at the gala dinners.”

Bishop Banda said the construction of the House of Prayer would cost US$10 million while the two games were expected to raise up to US$2 million (about K19 million).

“We expect to raise about K4 million for both events and this K4 million will help us organize the actual football friendly games that we are going to have in December and somewhere in April. And we hope to raise about $2 million from both games in Lusaka and Ndola. Generously, we know that the Zambian people will not just come to watch but contribute to the building of the House of the Lord. The budget of construction of the House of Prayer is around $10 million,” Bishop Banda said.

He regretted that the construction which was supposed to commence in June this year was delayed due to procurement processes.

“We had actually hoped to start construction by June this year but that has not happened in the sense that procurement processes took longer than expected. We have the opportunity at the moment to have great support from experts in the Ministry of National Housing and Infrastructure. We have been having meetings, we get updates on how far the engineering drawings have gone. Personally I would have liked to have started yesterday but you can’t hurry these things, we appreciate the deep technical details,” said Bishop Banda.