This is turning out to be a week I will never forget - A week of great sorrow because of the loss of my friend, George Knoop, but also a week or endurance, perseverance and blessing.
Yesterday I got up at 5 AM to get ready to travel to Gonaives to meet with our leaders who were trained last year how to teach our players how to raise goats. As we started out, I noticed that our trusty Toyota 4-cab pickup truck’s manual transmission seemed to be slipping, especially on hills (which Port-au-Prince has many of!). Sure enough, soon I smelled the awful smell of rubber burning- our clutch was starting to go! We already had the car packed, and there were 6 of us going on the journey, so I called my mechanic and discussed the situation and decided we would limp along pretty slowly. So a trip that normally would take 2 hours ended up taking about 3. But thanks to a lot of prayer, we made it and were very happy to see about 40 of our leaders there waiting for us.
The meeting and administration part went well. We had couple from France who taught our leaders how to grow Moringa, http://www.moringanews.org, a type of tree whose leaves are very good food for both humans and animals. I felt a little like “Johnny Appleseed” as we handed out seeds to our leaders afterwards!
Then we broke into small groups to talk about the good and the bad of the program. Here are some responses to one of the question we asked: Do you have a story of how God is working through the “Give a kid a kid” program?
“Since God is a shepherd, He also calls us to be shepherds. Depending on how we raise our goats, God can see if we are good shepherds or bad shepherds.”
“Because of this idea our players and learn more about God. God is serving with (GKK) to help our players understand how to raise goats. More people are understanding how this can help with their finances, and more players are getting saved.”
“My goats gave birth to two baby goats, but that same day, the babies both fell into an open latrine. I didn’t know what to do, but a friend came along and got a rope and was able to save the goats! I was surprised because people around here just don’t do things like that! So I cleaned them up with soap and now they have started to grow! I thank God for that!” Pastor Jonas
Many told us how much their players love their goats, and try hard to care for them, some under difficult conditions, like when it does not rain for a week or two.
After this, all 43 leaders had to get in line and have their administrative paperwork checked and updated to make sure everything was in order: Had their goat had babies? Did their goats or babies die? This really helped us know what was happening and we will give you an update after we analyze the data collected. After that they were each provided with a meal of rice and beans and chicken.
Finally, we had a question and answer period. All of our leaders in the soccer program are volunteers which is a very difficult when most of them receive very low pay as teachers where we have teams. Some of them asked if we could offer them a small monthly stipend to help them with their needs. I responded that this was the reason we launched the GKK project, hoping that the offspring of their initial goats would help them be able to respond to these needs in the future. Like any good, stable way of making money, raising a herd of goats takes time, but in the long-term will be a good thing (Think of how rich Jacob became after only 14 years of raising Laban’s goats).
One of the things that made the trip so pleasant was that I had four young Haitian men who are doing internships with me this summer to help. We worked as a team and it showed. The other pleasant surprise was how well our new administrator of the GKK, Chantale, presented the role in GKK and how firmly, yet kindly, she dealt with our leaders.
So, in general, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the start of GKK, we are encouraged and are doing all we can to help our leaders and players become good shepherds, both of the goats and of our players!
(PS: the meeting ended at 3 PM and we limped our way back to PAP and arrived around 7 PM after a long, but satisfying day!)
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