Making friends and a new creation through soccer!

Making friends and a new creation through soccer!

Thank you for praying for our trip to Gonaives and Gros Morne to train leaders and meet with some of our Regional Committee leaders. In general the trip went very well with no breakdowns, flat tires or accidents, even over some of the roughest roads in Haiti.

On Saturday after the meetings I was tired of talking so I put on my shorts so I could play soccer in the cement school yard.
We played 3 a side with small goals, and just as we were trying to put teams of 3 players together, two 11 year old boys showed up so we asked them if they wanted to play.

Of course they said yes, so we had our teams. We had a good game and our team played well together, giving each other high-fives whenever we scored a goal. I think we scored 3-4 goals and the other team only scored one goal on us.
That evening the boy who was on our team was hanging around so one of our leaders offered him some food.

I was eating at the same time, so I sat down and started to talk with him. His name is Pouchon and he is 11 years old. He said he attended the church where we held the meetings, but when I asked him if he was “converted” he said no. In Haitian culture, it is not impolite to ask someone if they are “converted” or “saved”. Most, even children, know if they have made a decision to trust in Christ. In Pouchon’s case, he said he was not. So as he ate, I shared a little evangelistic booklet written for children in Creole that explains how a child can know that his sins are forgiven through trusting in Christ and his payment for our sins when He died on the cross.
We talked for at least 30 minutes and when we were finished, I asked him if he would like to trust in Christ for his salvation. To my delight, he said yes. I asked him if his Mother attended the church as well, and he said yes. So I suggested that he tell his mother about his decision and ask her to help him grow spiritually.
Later, I asked several of my leaders to talk with him and they said that Pouchon understood the decision he had made, and was excited about his new relationship with Christ.

I wonder if Pouchon would have listened to me if I hadn’t played soccer first and encouraged him as we played together. It was a natural way to build a relationship with him and probably made him more open to talking with me that night.

In any event, decisions like Pouchon made are one of the main reasons we are in Haiti. We praise God for using us and our Haitian leaders in this way!