3 John 1:4 “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”
Our truck was loaded to the top with food, soccer equipment, tents and training materials when we set out on our road trip to North Haiti on March 25th. I was thrilled to have a new member of our team with us, Jean Eric Duval, especially since he was willing to drive most of the 10 hour trip! We were joined by Ronald William who is on the board of AIS Haiti, and Sylvain Nelson one of our leaders who just graduated from seminary last year.
Although some of the roads have just been re-done and are perfect, they get progressively worse the farther you get from Port-au-Prince and get really bad after the city of Gonaives which was flooded a few years ago.
Nevertheless our sturdy Toyota diesel pick up made it just fine and we crawled into our bunk beds after a cold shower and warm oatmeal.
The next day we got up early to start the training, however, it started at “Haitian time” - about an hour late. Eventually most of the 30 team leaders showed up – 3 from each of 8 teams we have in the Port-de-Paix area plus the regional committee. We had a great day of training going over the structure of AIS Haiti and introducing everyone to the “Young Peacemakers” curriculum. We even had time to play a little soccer with they guys in the afternoon. ( My team won when I scored the last goal!)
The second day more people came on time – especially since they realized we served breakfast early! We split them up into three groups: The Coaches, the administrators and the team chaplains and did training specific to each group. I taught the administrators how to prepare a budget and raise funds locally.
The next day was Sunday and the church of one of our leaders was having a big “Harvest” celebration where people bring gifts of produce and live stock to the church and then they auction them off to the highest bidder. Before the auction, however, they have a long service with lots of choirs and preaching. Unfortunately, we had to leave for an appointment after three hours – but they were still going strong!
The appointment was with young missionary who had just graduated from Wheaton College. He was in the process of starting a sports ministry for a larger mission in the area that had been there many years. We had a great meeting and he said after-wards that his head was swimming with all the information and experience I had shared with him. We are going to start with a joint training for our leaders some time in the next year and see where our partnership goes from there!
Later I reflected on what I had seen in church that day. Every choir had a custom-made outfit: One had robes, another had matching ties, etc. Also, the choirs had come from towns pretty far away, which means they had to pay for transportation to come to visit the church. I also thought about who was the audience they were singing to – I would suspect they were mostly Christians. Then I thought about how what they are doing is similar to our soccer teams: Our teams need uniforms and money for transportation so they can play other schools in other towns. The main difference is that when we play games in other towns our audience includes lots of people who are not Christian, but will come to watch a soccer game! It made me realize that the local churches in Haiti have the resources they need to support their school's soccer team – it's just a matter of balance and priority.
That afternoon I shared this with the Regional Committee and explained that I love music myself and sang in choirs for many years and was not criticizing what I saw that day at all, but I wanted them to realize that the local church in Haiti has more resources than they realize. We had a good meeting and discussed our dream of an outreach during the World Cup.
After the meeting we packed up and drove to Jean Rabel and arrived just before dark. That night it rained hard, but it was gone by the morning.
This was the biggest TREC training we ever had. There were 55 people that came – some from miles away. It cost us over $200 US just to pay for the transportation for everyone to come. They represented 12 teams in the area. This means that to date we have trained over 126 soccer leaders in the past 12 months. At Jean Rabel we had a good first day of training but because of larger numbers than expected, we did not have books for everyone
The next morning Ronald and I got up at 5 AM to do a training of coaches at the local soccer field. We drew quite a crowd, but everyone was happy with what we showed them. After that we split up into groups again and taught until 1 PM. After that we had a good meeting with the Regional Committee and talked about how to help each of the 12 teams implement what they had just been taught. Then everyone went home, and it was a good thing too, because that night it rained buckets through the early morning. When we got up we prayed that by the time we were ready to go, that the rain would stop – just as we had prayed – it stopped just as we were ready to load the truck and go!
However, the small stream just outside of Jean Rabel had turned into a raging torrent and we had to wait until another truck forged the stream to see if we were going to make it. Even though water came up over our hood, we still made it through, but it was scary! I was very glad for a diesel engine and 4WD! (see picture)
We then headed to visit our regional committee in Limbe, which is in the north of Haiti near Cap Haitian. Unfortunately, because of the lack of good roads in the north, we had to go south to Gonaives in order to go North. In one day we went from rain and swollen rivers we had to ford, to dry and dusty roads where big trucks in front of us kicked up so much dust we could not see, to heavy fog going over the mountains, to lovely sunny weather!
We arrived in the rain, however, and stayed with the family of Pastor Peggy: Four children under 12, including a 7 month old baby – 3 boys and a girl. Pastor Peggy is a professor of Physical Education at the Christian University of North Limbe and has attended both of our TREC trainings in Port-au-Prince. However, it wasn't until this trip that he really understood our strategy of working through Christian primary schools. He now is going to put together a larger committee who is going to have representatives of 6 local Christian schools on it.
Since Jean Eric had to leave us unexpectedly in Port-de-Paix, I ended up doing all the rest of the driving on the trip, including the 10 hour trip back to Port-au-Prince from Limbe.
In all, we are very glad that God has given us so many great volunteers who are implementing our program in so many schools all over Haiti.
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