Preparations for AFC and our biggest Training ever!

From May 13 to the 21st, a team of 22 college soccer players and coaches will be coming to Haiti to play 3 evangelistic matches and also help train over 100 of our leaders from all over the country.

Yesterday, in preparation for this training, we packed up 25 boxes of Christian books to be distributed to each of our 100 teams. It took a team of 4-6 of us almost 7 hours to sort, count and pack up these books!

These boxes contain 18 copies for each team of the Bible study books we will be using with our players this year:

1) Confessions of the Faith (a booklet that explains basic doctrines)
2) How to walk on the Path to Life (This explains the road we all take to salvation in Christ)
3) Good News concerning Jesus (A Bible study based on the Gospel of Mark)
4) Growing in the Christian Life (The basics of starting our new life in Christ)



In addition, they contain books that our Chaplains can use for their own spiritual growth and some story books they can read to the players like "Pilgrims Progress" and "Greasy the Robber" a testimony of how God a saved a band of robbers in Russia.







In all we packed over 8,000 books to help our leaders and players grow in Christ!

We also worked on translating our training curriculum from English to French and Creole. There is a joke, but I think it is really true: Did you know that French is the language of heaven? No, really, How do you know that? Because French is so hard that only in heaven will they really speak and write it perfectly." Do you remember how the Bible talks about "jots and tittles".

"Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (KJV)

Well, French has lots accent marks and spelling in French is a nightmare!

So that's why I really respect Carol as a French teacher!

In any event, our faithful helper, Paules, had the job of translating and editing our French and Creole documents.



So please pray for us as we continue to make preparations. There is still equipment to pack, Evangelism materials to put together, and lots of things to buy, like food and drink for over 130 people!

A live report from our first "Genesis Goat Project" training

I'm not into Twitter, but this is the closest thing to it!



I am reporting live from our first pilot project on "How to teach children to raise goats" with Dr. Kelly Crowdis. Dr. Kelly is speaking Creole with an accent, but that doesn't prevent those attending the conference from absorbing the training and asking lots of questions. There are 34 Ambassadors Football Haiti leaders here from two towns. In a few months, each will receive a pregnant goat if they pass a test and start training AFH players how to raise goats. Then, after our young players have been trained, they in turn will receive goats with the ultimate goal of helping each child and AFH leader start raising goats for their own benefit as well as to help create a sustainable source of income for AFH in Haiti.



Most people in Haiti know something about goats, since almost everyone loves to eat goat meat here. Also, many of those attending have already worked with goats at some time in their lives, so we are not starting from scratch with them.

This morning we talked about the best foods for goats. Then we are talked about how to take care of the goats - whether to let them roam free, tie them with a cord, or put them in a goat pen. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of these different ways to care to the goats and prevent theft and disease.



Then we had a testimony from Franso, a young man who started in Dr. Kelly’s goat project when he was 16. Now he is 19 and has a “flock” of 10 goats after having sold a few to pay for his school this year. He described how at first he did not pass the exam so that he could get a goat of his own. But he kept going to the class and eventually passed with 85%! Then, with the help of his Christian teachers, he made the decision to trust in Christ. After that decision, he decided to give a goat as an offering to his local church – sounds like the Old Testament, doesn't it! He has even purchased a cow as a way of creating a savings account for when he wants to get married. All this activity is based on Biblical principles he learned from raising goats and attending his local church!



Right now Pastor Nesly is talking about John chapter 10 where Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd. He is saying how many of the heroes of the faith like Abraham and the patriarchs and Moses were shepherds before God gave them great responsabilities.



So please pray for the success of this project. We have made a good start, but now those we trained today must put what they learned into practice!

Got Goat?

Got Goat?

Today (April 12, 2013), we visited the community of Merge near Port-au-Prince to see first-hand how some children there are successfully raising goats after being involved in a goat project for 2-3 years.

Next weekend (April 20th) we are partnering with the same organization that trained these young shepherds to train leaders from about 40 of our teams.

We interviewed 3 girls and 2 boys and were very impressed by their Christian character and work ethic. By raising goats and being responsible for another living thing, they all had learned some valuable spiritual and life lessons.

The first young lady we talked to was Sabrina. She was one of the first students to be involved in the project in 2009. Today she has 5 goats and has sold another one to help her pay for her schooling. She takes care of her goats every day and even brings them into her house when it rains. When we talked about Psalm 23 where David says God is his Shepherd, she said she feels like by raising goats, she lacks nothing because as long as she takes good care of her goats, she will always have a renewable source of income.


The second student was Christela who was 15. She now has a small herd of 9 goats and has also sold 3. She was also one of the original students to start the project in 2009. When I asked her what she had learned spiritually from raising her goats she quoted John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” She almost cried as she talked about how much she loves her goats and the sacrifices she is willing to make for their well-being.

After that we talked to Valentine, a 12 year old who was 10 when she started in the program. She has had a rough time, with 5 goats dying during that time (4 were very young and the other was hit by a car). But now she has 5 goats and is still working hard. Her family does not own any land, so it is difficult for her to find foot for her goats, but the people running the project have planted a community garden where she can get some food for her goats on a regular basis.



Ralph is a precocious 11 year old who interviewed me in English when I first arrived. He has only been involved in the program for one year, but has already given back on goat to the project and now has another one.



The last boy we interviewed was Billydew. He has built a goat pen near his house to protect his goat, and is very excited because she is pregnant!

Jacques and Isabel Jourdan joined me on this trip. They are from the French Alps and have worked as shepherds so I was anxious to show them this project. They were happy that the goats were healthy and the children seemed to be doing a good job. But of course Haiti is a far cry from the Alps!



In all we were very encouraged by what we saw and hope that our leaders and players will benefit from learning how to raise goats and will work hard to succeed both spiritually and as shepherds – after all, they have the example of the greatest shepherd ever to follow: Jesus!

A Strategy that yielded surprising result

A Strategy that yielded surprising result!

One of the strategies we are using in Haiti is to tell as many pastors and school directors in Haiti about how they can use soccer as a tool for evangelism. This is important because we are trying to build a movement in Haiti that will start growing on its own as Christian leaders see the value of sports in Christian education and also for evangelism. To this end I was thrilled when one of the leaders of the Conservative Baptist Church in Haiti invited me to speak to a group of about 150 pastors about a month ago. I only shared for 10 minutes, but apparently God was moving in the hearts of a few pastors who heard my message.

I followed up on this meeting by offering a 2-hour seminar on sports evangelism at STEP, one of the best theological seminaries in Haiti on April 11th.

I used text-messages to inform those pastors and seminary students who gave me their phone numbers about the training and much to my surprise, four pastors from 4 different Conservative Baptist churches came to the seminar from an area called Anse Rouge. We had passed through this area last week on our trip to the North-Ouest department of Haiti and it is a very rough and remote area! They paid their own way to come and they said they were glad they did because they really learned a lot at the seminar. Afterwards we talked for 30 minutes about how to implement the strategy in their area and I offered to train 6 of their leaders at a training we are going to have in May. (More on this later!)

In addition 2 other pastors came from that one meeting as well along with about 25 STEP students.



So we praise God that we were able to help these Christian leaders think about different ways to present the Gospel to people in their communities!

Twins make a pick-up game lots of fun!

Twins make a pick-up game lots of fun!

While visiting the House of Hope, an orphanage for children with long-term disabilities and diseases, and also 10 earthquake orphans, I brought them a soccer ball to play with and joined them in a game. Immediately two young boys volunteered to play with me on my team. It turned out that they were twins: Bensley and Bensly! They were great fun to play with as they could anticipate each other’s movements very well and make passes almost without thinking. We won our first two games, and of course I have to brag about the nice move and shot I made that resulted in a goal!

I also made the directors of the orphanage happy because I brought them a case of Christian story books to share with their 87 children.


In all I distributed over 10 cases of Christian books to the schools and churches we work with.

Trip to North-West Haiti went well!

Trip to North-West Haiti went well!

In spite of my Toyota truck taking more punishment than they show on a Ford truck commercial, we made the long treck from Port-au-Prince to the North west department of Haiti without incident. The trip was so rough that it took chunks out of our heavy-duty truck tires.

But it was worth every minute of bone-jarring travel to meet our players and talk with our leaders about what God is doing through our teams. In total there are now 8 girls and 5 boys in the Haitian talent development program of the Haitian Soccer Federation that formerly were part of our teams. In addition, we were able to distribute Christian literature to encourage our chaplains in their work with our players and also give out badly needed equipment. Some of our teams did not even have balls. (This is always a need, so please collect as many soccer balls for us as you can!)

Some of our leaders have been volunteering with us since our first training in December of 2008. They continue in the work because they see God working in the lives of their players and in their schools through Ambassadors Football Haiti’s programs.

In addition to encouraging our leaders, another purpose of the trip was to take pictures of the players and have the schools, churches, AFH volunteers, players and parents be aware of our strategy and have them sign a document that makes them aware of how we want to help spread the Gospel together with them in their communities.

By the time the project is done, we will have taken more than 1,800 pictures of players and volunteers.

Meet our Leaders from Jean Rabel in Northwest Haiti

On April 2nd I met with the Regional Committee of 5 members representing 20 school teams in the area around the town of Jean Rabel in Northwest Haiti. Although we traveled some of the roughest roads in Haiti in order to get to this area, the scenery was spectacular.

But what was even more spectacular is the heart these leaders have for reaching youth for Christ through soccer evangelism. Even though we haven't been able to host a tournament in the area for over 2 years, they were still enthusiastic and wanting to work with their school teams.

The following day we visited one of the most remote beaches in Haiti: Mole St. Nicolas. We have one team in this beach town, but encouraged this one team invite 3 other local teams to form a zone because they are so far away from our other teams.

We took pictures of our players at three of our schools in the area and found them all very enthusiastic.

While there we could not resist taking a dip in the ocean since the town has one or the nicest beaches in Haiti!

The town also boasts 4 forts built after the Haitian revolution to protect Haiti from a French attack, several of which are well-preserved.