The summer U-15 soccer tournament at Verettes is officially over. The final and semi-final matches were both hard-fought games which ended in ties and had to be decided by penalty kicks.
In the end, it was the team from Borel that won the tournament. Apparently, their coach did a good job teaching them how to shoot penalty kicks!
The semi-final game between the home team Verettes and the visitor Borel was the best game of the tournament. Verettes dominated the first half and scored two goals. It looked like they were going to win the game. But about 10 minutes into the second half, they were awarded a penalty kick and scored making it 2-1. Then a miraculous goal just before the game ended tied the game, sending the game to penalty kicks. The goalie of Borel made two spectacular saves to lead his team to victory.
Two semi-final games were played on June 25th with the final being June 26th. Our Haitian brothers who did the evangelism did a great job sharing the Gospel at all the games. At one game he told the story of a boy who always wanted a soccer ball, so his Father worked and saved in order to buy him one. The boy loved that ball and played with it every day. One day he came home hot and tired after playing and opened the window in his bedroom and went to sleep with the ball beside him. When he woke up, the ball was not there. Someone had stolen the ball. A few weeks later he was still sad about the ball and was walking through town when he saw his ball for sale in a store. He knew it was his ball because he had made a mark on it. (In Haitian society, you can’t accuse someone of stealing unless you catch them red-handed.) So the boy told his Father, who then worked hard to buy the ball back for the boy. The Haitian evangelist went on to explain that, even though Satan “stole” the good things God prepared for us in the Garden of Eden by tempting Adam and Eve to sin, Jesus paid the price to restore us to God and eventually all things will be restored to us in the new heaven and new earth.
About 40 people indicated that they trusted Christ through these games and we collected well over 400 response cards. Through our partnership with 5 local churches in the area, each one of the people who responded will be followed up with.
In addition to the Gospel presentation at the games, we also have done two soccer clinics this week: One for young boys and another for girls where we presented the Gospel. Then on Thursday night, June 26th we showed two evangelistic films that were produced in Africa that contrasted African voodoo with Christianity. We had about 300 people at these films and many seemed to understand the message the films conveyed.
This afternoon we will do a soccer clinic for some churches up in the mountains surrounding Verettes. The youth in this area do not have the same opportunities to be coached as those who live in town, and we want to show these out-lying churches how they can use sports as a tool for evangelism.
Tomorrow we will visit a local church who is helping us with the follow up and rejoice with them over the work that God has done in their community this week. Then we will head to our next tournament in the North of Haiti in a town called Limbe.
Please continue to pray for God to touch the hearts many through these tournaments and for safety on the roads!
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