The Lord gives, takes away, and gives again!

I always appreciate it when people send me news articles about things going on in Haiti. About a week before the TREC training started, my Crossworld supervisor, Dwight Lehman, sent me a newspaper article about a group of Canadian College students who were bringing over $40,000 worth of sports equipment to Haiti.

Since we are always in need of equipment, I wrote to the editors of the paper asking them to send me the e-mail of the person in charge of the program “Right to Play” (http://www.righttoplay.com/). They were kind enough to respond, and right away I sent an e-mail giving the contact my number in Haiti and asking him to contact me.

Unfortunately, I got an “out of office” response, and since I was busy doing TREC at the time, I thought we had lost our opportunity. But God had other plans – the next day, I got an e-mail from Roger LeBlanc, the Canadian Professor heading up the group and he said he would be glad to meet with us.

It was 9:30 on Thursday night by this time, and Friday was the last day of the seminar. So I prayed with 2 other Haitian leaders, asking God to open the way for us to get some equipment and meet with Mr. LeBlanc. Then I picked up the phone and to my amazement, got a hold of him right away.

He said he was available, and so I told him we would send our pickup over to pick him up with some of his college students on Friday morning.

When Mr. LeBlanc arrived, he was very excited about what we were doing, even though he made it clear that “Right to Play” has no religious affiliation. He brought his daughter along, who is a soccer player, and another young lady who is the captain of the College's soccer team. They also brought along 5 BAGS of soccer equipment!! The bags had uniforms, cleats, sneakers and bibs that we desperately needed for the over 28 teams that were represented at the training. THANK YOU MR LEBLANC AND RIGHT TO PLAY!!

That afternoon we combined this equipment with the equipment we already had on hand thanks to Ian Moore of AACH and others who shipped donations to us. We were able to outfit 11 new teams and re-stock most of the other teams represented! THANK YOU IAN!

All of us rejoiced at the miraculous way God provided this equipment! The Lord gave!

So it was with great joy that we dropped off our newly trained coaches with their equipment at the bus station at 4:30 AM the next morning while it was still dark.

We had to take 2 trips to the bus station because there were so many people to take, and so one of the teams left a large box in the back of the truck which was for one of the second group.

Before we left the bus station the first time, we checked to see that the box was there.
However, when we arrived back to the hotel, the box was gone!! It was a big, heavy, box so we did not bother to tie it down. Apparently thieves lifted it just as we were leaving the bus station! Not only did this box have equipment in it for one of our regions with 8 teams in it, it also had $40 cash and one of our key coach's personal belongings. Needless to say we were disappointed at this loss. The Lord took away, but as Job said, blessed be the name of the Lord!

The following Sunday, I was telling another missionary friend about our seminar and she said that she had some soccer cleats available. When I asked her what size, she said the exact sizes we needed to replace the one stolen! The Lord gives, again!