Thursday, October 23, 2014

Trip to the South of Haiti - Port Salut, Jacmel and Leogane

10-22-14


Please pray for our Trip to Leogane, Port Salut and Jacmel between Oct. 22 and 25th.

Today Lucasse, Rochenel and I left for a trip to visit three towns where we have teams in the south of Haiti. We left the house at 9 AM and hit a big traffic jam in Carre four because the locals were burning tires to protest trash being dumped in their neighborhood. We were in the traffic jam from 10 AM until 11:30 AM, but finally made it to Leogane around noon.
I liken driving to Haiti to a video game where you never know what’s going to pop out of nowhere: Motorcycles, goats, chickens, pedestrians, etc. Thank God Lucasse is a good driver!

We first went to visit Pastor Guillaume in Leogane. Pastor Guillaume is the head of the regional committee for Leogane which oversees the AFH teams in four schools. The object of this trip is to prepare each town we visit to play a regional Evangelistic Futsal tournament. The Regional winners will then be eligible to participate in the National Futsal tournament.

There were 3 members of the regional committee at this meeting: Julia and Guidony . Julia’s huband and daughter survived by crawling under a bed when their house collapsed and had to be extracted from the rubble by using a car jack to lift up the cement roof so they could crawl out. Now the daughter Is 5 years old and in kindergarten.

After lending Guidony a digital camera so he could take pictures of the players for their tournament badge, we started on the second leg of our trip to Port Salut.

We made good progress until we got a flat tire. It was a very hot day, and our tires got extra hot because of the heavy load of books we were carrying. So the tube inside one of our back tires exploded like a popped balloon and we knew right away what the problem was. However, the heavy load tore the tire as soon as it popped and it could not be repaired. Thankfully we had a good spare tire that allowed us to get back on our way after about 30 minutes.

So because of these two delays, we ended up getting to Port Salut around 5:30 PM which was 1 ½ hours later than we told them.
However, when we got there we found 11 leaders waiting for us. What was most amazing is that one of them was a 65 year old school teacher who was more excited than anyone else about AFH’s program because if would help the church evangelize her neighborhood. She also told us that after the training that Lucasse and Rochenel did last May, they had started to work with the children and 3 came to Christ at the first practice!

The other exciting thing was the “Met” Moran was at the meeting. “Met” means “”Master” or “teacher” in Creole. It turns out that Met Moran is in charge of most of the sports activities in Port Salut. He is the representative for both the Haitian government Ministry of Youth and Sport, but also for the Haitian Soccer Federation – and best of all, he is a committed Christian! Not only that, but he says he has access to a basketball court that is perfect for Futsal, and it is available this fall because they are not doing a basketball tournament at that time!

The Christian author Blackaby reminds us to look for where God is already at work and join Him. It certainly looks like God is already at work in Port Salut, and we want to join Him!

During the meeting some little boys and girls were kicking a deflated Basketball around and laughing and giggling as they played “keep away” from one another. It was just another reminder of the power of soccer to attract children into AFH’s programs.

So thanks for your prayers as we join with God in what he is doing in Port Salut, Jacmel and Leogane.!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Uh-oh -- Pneumonia among the goats! Please pray for the goats

Please pray with us about the goat project. 7 goats have died recently of pneumonia. 22 goats have been exposed to it because these are the goats that were given back to the ministry.

This should be a time of rejoicing because those who have benefited have been "passing it forward." But we are concerned that we may lose more.

We do praise the Lord for the veterinary agents trained by Dr. Kelly who are able to treat the goats and may be able to save them.

Thanks for your prayers.