Right to Play team from Moncton University visit AIS in Verrettes

It has been a wonderful week of activity for me as I hosted a team of 26 from Moncton University in New Brunswick in French-speaking Canada.
All the club members are related to the University of Moncton as former or current students. They raised thousands of dollars and collected 3,200 lbs of equipment which they brought over in 64 hockey bags. Each club member had to do a fund-raising activity to be a member of the club. They did everything from bagging groceries to benefit concerts and sports contests like a canoe race across a frozen river!

Once they arrived, we stuffed a school bus with the bags and once it was full, we piled the rest on the roof.
We had three major activities planned for the week:

1)Visiting at least 10 schools (2 a day for 5 days), One Christian and one public.
2)Tearing off a roof on a school and replacing it with painted tin.
3)Organizing a 7-game, single elimination U-13 boys soccer tournament with 8 teams.

By the end of the week we had visited 12 schools, played games with over 3,000 students, and gave each school two sets of soccer uniforms, school supplies, and lots of other sports equipment.

We had torn off the roof and rotten wood and, along with our Haitian helpers, had started to put on the new roof.

The soccer tournament went very well with at least 500 people coming to each game and probably about 1,000 attending the final. We were able to get a local radio station to call the final live and got the opportunity to share the Gospel over the radio at the half-time break and after regulation before the game went to penalty kicks. In the end, the Verrettes team won on penalty kicks and afterwards there was a nice award ceremony.

In addition, we played a woman’s soccer game with local Haitian players, some of which used to be on the Haitian woman’s national team.

Another high-light was visiting the physical therapy and prosthetics center which was helping rehabilitate those earthquake victims that had limbs amputated. We were able to distribute hundreds of Teddy bears and stuffed animals to these victims as well as the children in the mal-nourishment and pediatric wards.

Some of the challenges we faced during the week were:
1) A shortage of gas and diesel
2) Someone stole our generator, but the police recovered it
3) At one of the soccer games, angry fans started to throw rocks at the opposing team when their team lost and some of our players were hit.
4) One of our trucks had a flat tire 3 times.

Thanks to all of us who prayed for us this week. I was very proud of our AIS Haiti leaders and how they performed under pressure. We all grew during this period!