Preparing for the tour

With the Cleveland City Stars coming to Haiti in about 6 weeks, Richard has been busy preparing...working on logistics for the team and coordinating the matches to be effective evangelistic events. Here's his report on the last few days:


God has been opening doors for us left and right. This week I have met with several large ministries here in Haiti and all of them are excited about the team and want to parcticipate in the evangelization they will do.Compassion, League Biblique and Campus Pour Christ all want to put us in contact with churches in Port-au-Prince, St. Marc and Cap Haitien and help us publicize the games. In addition, they will give us people trained in evangelism to use as counselors at all the games.

I have set up a trip with the president of League Biblique to visit Cap Haitien the 7 and 8th of May to encourage the churches to invite people and provide counselors in the stadium. I have also met with several leaders from the Haitian Soccer Federation this week. They promise they will get me the official letter of invitation tomorrow (as they have promised for the past 3 days!).

The Federation wants us to play the U-17 team and I think this is a better opportunity that we could ever dream of. You see, the Haitian U-17 just qualified for the U-17 world cup that will take place 18 August to 9 Sept. in Korea. That means they are one of 24 teams to qualify for this privilge. In order to qualify they had tie Mexico (0-0), the defending U-17 champion, tie Honduras 1-1 (the other country that qualified from their pool) and beat El Salvador 3-0 to win their pool. This is a very good team and I think that they will give the reserve team a very good, high profile game. In addition, this will probably be the only international game they will play in Haiti before they head to the U-17 world cup and is likely to be highly publicized by the media.

I am meeting with the director of Radio Lumiere today to start preparing some radio and possibly some television spots. They are also going to put me in touch with the National Television Station to see if we can't get the game on television.

Please pray for all of these opportunities - that I would be able to manage my time well and find the best people to help me. Please pray that God would raise up other godly men and women to help with this huge opportunity, and that God would provide the needed funds for a sound system, printing evangelistic tracts and other literature. THANKS!