Update on St. Marc

I’m sorry the news is a bit slow in coming, I haven’t always been able to reach Rich on his cell phone up north. Finally, here’s an update of the past couple of days. (And I still can’t upload pictures until Rich comes home tomorrow afternoon.)

On Monday and Tuesday, the team played two games, one against Flora, in Arcahaie and one in St. Marc against Tempete, a professional team in that city. In the game in Arcahaie, Flora won 2-0. In the game in St. Marc the Cleveland City Stars won 2-1.

Even though they didn’t win the Arcahaie game, Richard said that the team captain of the Flora team, who is a Christian, shared about his life with the spectators at halftime, and then went out to score a goal right away. In St. Marc, kids could come on to the field after the game to play and hangout with the CCS players. They really like the interaction with the kids…that’s what it’s all about.

At each game, door prizes have been given out and at the Flora game, we gave the Flora team some equipment, as well. The way this has been organized is that the spectators fill out a card with their name and address and they can indicate if they received Christ as their Savior, or if they would like more information, or have a prayer request they would like to share. The counselors at each game give out and collect the cards, then there is the drawing, and finally they sort the cards to see what follow up should be done. At Port-au-Prince 629 checked that they had received Christ as their Savior, At Arcahaie, 55.

In each town we visit there are really two teams that are involved in the game. The Cleveland City Stars, of course who play on the physical soccer field, and the team of counselors who are in the stands talking with people and distributing the response cards. This team is working in the spiritual realm where hearts are changed and life-changing decisions are made.

In St. Marc we were blessed to have a particularly well-trained and enthusiastic team of counselors working with us, and out of the several thousand people that were there, 170 indicated that they had come to know Christ personally.

Tomorrow the team gets a break and then they come back to Port-au-Prince in the afternoon. They leave for Cap Haitien on Thursday morning to play ACS Thursday afternoon. The old “Montezuma’s revenge” has hit a few of the players and one leader, so pray that they feel better soon, and that no one else has health problems.