Meeting With School Leaders in Verrettes

Here are Richard and Tim Ferri meeting with some of the school leaders in Verrettes. We had some problems getting everyone together at the same time, but we met with leaders from two schools on Tuesday.

We were happily surprised to find that one of the schools is still using soccer equipment we gave them 5 years ago! Richard talked about our vision for a pilot project in the area, starting about 5 soccer programs and having the teams play each other. The leaders from the Verrettes school told us they had participated in a local tournament and that they were only able to do that because Richard had given them equipment 5 years ago and they took care of it by collecting the cleats and everything after every use.

We went to visit one of the schools in the area and found that it had several pressing needs. The roof is rusted and leaking in a lot of places, the school started building new latrines but was never able to finish, they need new benches and don't have enough space for the students. It was somewhat overwhelming, but it seemed like a good thing that we could only visit one school. It seemed like God was having us focus on this one school instead of being overwhelmed by several with all these problems.

Here's Richard talking to Emmanulie, the Director of the Orem (Sp?) School that we visited.

Tim is hoping to bring a work team to do a project like this. One work project that seems logical to do first, would be to finish the latrines.

As for starting the pilot project...Richard asked the schools to select 3 or 4 teachers to come to the TREC training (AIS's training for coaches doing soccer ministry) that will be held in December. We talked about the dates and a few more details. It was a good first visit for the project.

Soccer Contest with Compassion Kids

Sunday afternoon we had the rescheduled contest for the Compassion kids that was supposed to take place at the national stadium before the big game between the Cleveland City Stars and the Haitian National U-17 team.
Eleven boys were able to come and about as many adults came with them. Although it was a shame we couldn't do it at the stadium with all the kids, this was much less crazy. At the stadium there were too many problems to deal with before the game. We had the rescheduled contest at Quisqueya Chapel which worked out great. They seemed to have a good time. There was even a short rain storm in the middle of the event, but we got the kids under the gazebo and did one of the contests there. Then they were back outside. We gave them hotdogs, chips and juice and then handed out prizes for the winners. All the kids got a book about the Bible, and the winners got a pair of cleats, a new soccer ball and a T-shirt.

It was great having Tim Ferri here visiting us from our home church. He helped out and really seemed to enjoy the kids. Later, at home, Tim hung out with some of the guys from the neighborhood. Unfortunately, most of them wanted to play only soccer. Even though basketball is really Tim's game, he played soccer. He hasn't been intimidated by not knowing the language--he's been learning a couple words each day, noticing which ones are similar to Spanish. He learned "zanmi" (friend):