It was a very difficult day for Richard and me. At 7:00 am we went to pick up “pates” (pronounced pah-tay) to be sold at concession stands at the game. Since the Federation was getting all the money from the ticket sales, we were looking for a way to recoup expenses and we were told we could do the concessions. But when we were told by the Federation that they would not take any percentage of that, we thought we would have all the profits. But later we found out that the Stadium was taking 60%. That’s why we were trying the sale of “pates”. But in retrospect, it added an extra stress that we did not need. And not many were sold because there are vendors who carry baskets around in the stands and there was no announcement that these pates were on sale at the concession stands.
After picking up other things and taking them all to the stadium, we went to church. One of the players, Elijah, did a great job giving his testimony. After church we all went back to the hotel for the brunch there, but it was served an hour late. We wished we hadn’t waited for it because when we got to the stadium there were more problems. First, we had a problem at the gate. The counselors were supposed to meet in the conference room, but they were not allowed in the gate that would give them access to it because most of them had the lower priced tickets. Then we were told we could not use the conference room. So we had the counselors split up, some in the cheaper section, some in the higher priced section. This made the organization of the counselors difficult.
We had heard from our announcer, via phone, that there was no sound system yet. (Their’s had broken and they had agreed to rent one). Then as soon as we got in, the Federation people called us into their office. They were upset because they heard Richard “talking” on the radio & other announcements of the game that gave the ticket price as 50 gourdes, when it had been changed to 100 gourdes. (see previous post ). They also told us that they would lose money on this match and they asked Richard what they should do about that. Richard showed them where he had taken notes in his notebook about the President of the Federation approving the 50g ticket price and reminded them that they had changed the ticket price only a week before the game. Radio spots and interviews had already been taped. After this, we didn’t know if they would have a sound system or not, but they did. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let our announcer emcee the game, even though they had agreed to this before. We were supposed to have players give their testimony before the game, but that didn’t happen—I’m still not exactly sure why.
Another issue that complicated halftime was that the Federation’s sponsor, Digicel, decided to do a presentation of cell phones to a few of their players at that time. And people did not stop talking while Pastor Pierre made his presentation. We thank the Lord that you could still hear him over the talking, but most likely some people were not paying attention. We did get a lot of decision cards handed out, filled in and collected. Of course, it will take time to sort them out and set up the follow-up. One reason people filled them out was that we gave away door prizes. There was a sticky situation for a few minutes when two people showed up to collect the first prize of a laptop. But Pastor Pierre and Pastor Bilda handled it really well, calmly and with smiles. It turned out that these men had names that sounded almost exactly the same.
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