This year instead of doing one big (and expensive) training of Haitian leaders just after Christmas as we have done for the past two years thanks to AACH and AIS, we have decided to visit each of the 7 areas where we have set up a regional committee and see how they're doing and also train the local team chaplains in Ken Sande's The Young Peacemaker, which a fellow Crossworld missionary has translated into Creole.
Three people went on this trip: Richard Mears, AIS Haiti Director, Ronald William, AIS Haiti Board member and Coaching Supervisor; Sylvain Nelson, AIS Head Administrator and Chaplain Supervisor.
Our first trip was from Oct. 31st to Nov. 4th and we went to Gonaives. This was the town that was underwater just one year ago. This year they are having the opposite problem: They haven't had rain for over 2 months!
We were thrilled to find the 9-member Regional Committee eager to share their experiences from the summer and also willing to learn how to prepare quarterly reports and learn more about budgets and finance.
After a full day of discussion and training, we presented the Regional Committee with 11 pairs of cleats, 11 pairs of sneakers, and 24 soccer balls – enough for each of the 6 local teams to have 4 balls. (Can you imagine a soccer team in the US trying to function with only 4 balls?). They were happy to get the material and will be responsible for lending out the sneakers and cleats whenever there is a soccer tournament. While there we also did an inventory of the equipment we had given them before the flood and found that they still had most of what we had given them, in spite of the fact that the office where the equipment had been kept had been flooded.
The next day we did training with the 6 chaplains and 6 coaches, one from each team in the region. In the morning we introduced all of them to “The Young Peacemaker” curriculum and then in the afternoon, we had a separate seminar on coaching while the chaplains continued learning about “The Young Peacemakers”.
All throughout the two day seminar we would call a participant out of class so that we could do a personal interview with him. Since we really did not know these volunteers personally, we wanted to get to know them better and also make sure they were Christians who were assured of their salvation and were qualified and “able to teach”, as 2 Tim. 2:2 says. Thankfully, all but one of the volunteers were solid in their faith and we asked the Regional Committee to follow up with the one who was questionable.
Here are a couple of testimonies from these interviews:
“A robber entered our house and killed my father and cousin. I was very upset about this but my Mother said that I had not been killed because God has a plan for me, and so I decided to trust Christ and become a Christian.”
“My Father was very sick and the doctor sent him to Port-au-Prince for an operation. My whole family prayed for his recovery, and the operation was successful! I saw how God answered our prayers and put my trust in Him.”
It never ceases to amaze me how, when you share the vision God has given you with others, and they, intern, get others involved, the work of God can multiply rapidly. In the case of Gonaives, we trained two people through our TREC training program and now there are over 27 leaders involved in the AIS Haiti program there, most of whom we just met for the first time this past weekend!
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