Soccer Clinic

Yesterday was a holiday in Haiti - commemorating the Battle of Vertieres.

So, we went out to the Croix des Bouquets area to an area called Champbrun. The little village there is only 20 kilometers away from Port-au-Prince, but is pretty much isolated with no electricity, no water, etc. A few years ago, God used Pastor Esperandieu Pierre, his wife and friends to begin a work there to help the people there who live on the edge, providing for themselves the best they can by raising goats and sheep.

Apparently about 40 years ago there were lots of trees in the area, but now it's like a desert with cacti and low thorn bushes. It took a long time for Pastor Pierre and his crew to clear some land, painstakingly digging thorn bushes out of the ground. They now have a church and a school which has grown in the past 4 years to the point where they have 350 students that they feed every day.

We had about 42 children officially participate in the clinic, but we counted 70 playing by the end of the day! We divided them into 7 groups of 6 players by age and rotated them through different training "stations": heading, shooting, dribbling, etc. The exciting part was that we had 5 student soccer players from Quisqueya Christian School helping us, plus Ecdes, who lives with us. This was the first time Ricky and his friends have helped us with a soccer clinic and it was neat to see how well they got along with the kids.

At one of the "stations" we shared the Gospel through a "3 ball" illustration as well as through a Gospel analogy that talks about a little Haitian boy who loved to play soccer. We didn't have them fill out response cards, we just sowed the good seed and pray that God will touch the hearts of the children.

After the soccer clinic, Ricky and his buddies got to drive a "go cart" around the dry desert-like sand and do lots of "donuts". It was a great time of combining ministry with play!

After we left about 2:30 PM we decided to stop at the National Soccer Training Center of Haiti. There we got to see the Haitian U-17 girls national team boarding the bus for a game. We also got to talk with some of the players of the Haitian U-15 national team and we gave each one a Gospel tract and we gave one of their leaders "Pilgrim's Progress" in Creole. Once again we sowed the Good Seed!

We were all tired, dirty and sweaty after a full day of ministry, but happy that we were able to distribute almost 100 tracts and share Christ through stories and illustrations with the 70 that participated in the clinic!