Yesterday (Sunday) afternoon we went up to Fort Jacques for the final match in the tournament up there and to show the film "Le Combat." Things started out very well. We had bought a new cable for the speaker and we were playing lively Christian (Haitian) music while people were filling the stands.
The game got started a bit later than we had planned on, but it was off to a good start. Claudy, our contact from the local church was there. He kept his suit on from church, we guessed because he was in a hurry. His church had had a harvest festival which ended at 3 p.m. Now I wonder if there are other reasons he would wear the suit. Young people in the neighborhood respect and listen to him, and we found out that that is very important.
Marken was there as comentator (he had helped out in this way earlier in the week, too.). He's good at it and knows the names of most of the players.
During half time Celestin, a STEP Seminary Student presented the gospel and other STEP students gave out cards for people to sign up for a drawing and indicate if they were interested in trusting Christ, being in a Bible study, etc.
Sadly, after halftime people started getting angry and a spectator threw a rock at a player. Then lots of people started throwing rocks at each other. It's such a shame when a few people ruin a nice thing for everyone. Many people in the stands came running towards us to get behind the community center. I (Carol) went inside with the computer I was using to play music. The comentator tried his best to calm things down, as well as Claudy and others. Our group got together in the Community Center to pray while others continued to try to calm things down and convince the players to finish the game. People stopped throwing rocks, but were still angry, so the game had to end. So that the crowd would not get angrier, the trophy was given to the winning team.
We prayed and talked about whether we should still show the film. Our friend, Mme. Levy and I were the only ladies and we said we weren't too afraid, so we decided to try to show the movie.
When the kids and teenagers came into the community center they were loud and rowdy. They would not calm down enough for us to do the drawing--most people couldn't hear us, so we started the movie and they quieted down. We even had problems with the computer freezing up for a few seconds many times during the second half of the movie. Everyone laughed when a man who was being baptized was held under the water by the pastor and the picture froze like that. I couldn't help laughing. But the movie came back on after several seconds. Celestin did a good job staying cool (as did all of our Haitian volunteers) and at one point when I was trying to get the computer the stop freezing up, he talked a bit more about the gospel and the point of the film.
Then, it was very late when we finally did the drawing and many peoples' names were called who had left by this time. We kept drawing names until we had winners who were present.
When we packed up and started heading down the mountain, it was late. We ended up driving some of our volunteers home and one had to stay overnight with us because he lives further away. We got home exhausted and very aware of how hard the work is sometimes and how we need God's wisdom to reach tough kids. Please pray for them and for us to be able to reach out in ways that are effective according to God's plan. It doesn't have to be according to our plan, but we want people, especially young people, to hear and understand God's message of love.
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