Richard's time in the States

This morning I took Richard to JFK airport for his return to Haiti. His time here in the States has been busy> I can't believe how fast the time went by! Here is some highlights:

When I picked him up at JFK on Friday night, the 9th, we drove north and stayed overnight in Mystic Seaport, CT. The next day we went to our friends, the Martinez' house in Rutland, Massachusetts and had to catch up on about 5 years of news! Well, it had been about 5 years since we had seen them in person. That night Richard's cousin, Jonathan, his wife, Kim, and their son, Aiden, came over to visit, too.
the next morning we attended Heritage Bible Chapel, where the Martinezes attend. They have just recently started supporting us! I have to say I was surprised to see that the church was so big and so full! Why? Well, let's just say, it's not the Bible belt....anyway. It's a great church and we enjoyed meeting with several of the members who had a great interest in Haiti and what's been going on there. It was so nice to spend the time with the Martinez family.
Monday we went to Manhattan to take a picture at Grace Church to commemorate our 25th wedding anniversary. We really enjoyed walking around New York on a bright sunny Spring day!

Throughout the week, Richard met with family, friends and supporters...catching up, thanking them, being encouraged by them. We visited our daughter, Joy, who is a freshman at Eastern University on Wednesday. And Richard got to play tennis with Ricky a few times.

Saturday he at the Saturday morning men's Bible Study.
Sunday, he greeted the congregation at Crossing Community Church and then drove right over to the Church of the Good Samaritans where he spoke. He enjoyed visiting with them a bit, but had to hurry back to the apartment so that I could use the car to go to my sister's bridal shower.

We've been collecting some equipment.
Monday we went to Germantown Academy, where Richard went to school for elementary through high school. We spoke about the earthquake to a French III class. The students were not only very attentive, but quite advanced--seemed to understand our French AND some Creole! They are actually reading a book in French that is set in Guadeloupe which has some Creole in it. We were amazed at the stack of boxes of donations the school gave us! Since the school is building a new upper school, they need to clear out the original building and were willing to give a lot to Haiti--even lots of new items from the school store!

Later that day we picked up boxes of donated equipment and clothes from Calvary Chapel Philadelphia.

This week, the Beales, of Crossing Community Church, helped us get some issues straightened out on our laptops.

We appreciate all of you who helped make this a great trip and those who donated equipment and clothing for Haiti....Next step...is me packing up a bunch of boxes, getting a hold of a van and driving it out to CAM in Ephrata, PA....Any volunteers??? :)
Carol

Celebrating the life of Betty Mears

God worked things out so that Richard was in town for his grandmother's funeral. Betty Mears went to be with Jesus after living 100 years, 1 month and 21 days on this earth. Many wonderful people have been affected by her, including 3 children, many grandchildren and great grandchildren. She and Richard's grandfather married late in life, but had been friends when they were very young. She was a thoughtful and active woman of faith who influenced us and our children as well. We are thankful for her role in our lives. Here is a picture of her and Richard Cook Mears, Sr.

Our 25th Anniversary

Yesterday was our 25th wedding anniversary.
I picked Richard up in New York Friday evening. Here we are in Mystic, Connecticut where we stopped on our way up to the Boston area to visit our friends Jose & Raquel Martinez and Heritage Bible Chapel.

On our way back to PA, we stopped in Manhattan to see Grace Church where we were married. We were hoping the magnolia tree would be in bloom just like it was on our wedding day...it wasn't, but the blossoms on this tree (cherry? pink dogwood?) are about the same color. It was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed it.

Easter in Haiti

Easter in Haiti is either a celebration of death or a celebration of life. If you are following the Voodoo religion, Easter (really Good Friday) is a celebration of the death of Christ. Especially in the countryside they dress up in costumes to "trick" the spirits and even yell "crucify Him" in what they see as Satan's victory over Christ.













If you are a Christian, you celebrate the resurrection and life of Christ. A traditional meal consists of "Poulet pays" or Haitian-raised chicken. In the picture you see Elysee's fiance, Anne Love, proudly holding up two chickens which she prepared for our Easter meal.










In order to celebrate in a grand fashion, we invited Adline, her new-born son and her 10 year old daughter as well as James, our teen-age neighbor - so we had about 11 people around the table with 2 babies under 4 months and a 3 year old.



Even though I had had a tummy ache (since Saturday), I really enjoyed holding the babies while their Mom's ate.

Afterwards we had a good discussion about the fact that since God forgave us, we need to forgive each other.

So I had a nice Easter with my Haitian family, but of course I missed Carol and the children so I called them on our internet phone!

God's Grace in the midst of tragedy

The day of the earthquake our neighbors came running to us asking us to help transport a pregnant woman to the hospital who had a badly broken arm. I (Rich) ran and got my keys and asked our Haitian helper, Ecdes, who is 16 to come with me.

We got the woman into the car and made her as comfortable as possible, but she was in extreme pain.

We had to drive to 5 different places before we finally had to give up and take her into a hospital even through they said they were all filled. Ecdes and I carried her up to the only light we saw in the courtyard and asked the overwhelmed nurse who was there to take care of her.

The woman's name is Adline and today she came by with her baby boy named Wilkens Jean who was born on February 4th, to thank us for our help.

It turned out that, in spite of the overcrowded conditions, she did receive some care. She was in the hospital a couple of weeks, actually. But they couldn't treat her arm properly and it became infected and had to be amputated.

However, she did not complain at all, and now she is the happy mother of a healthy baby boy. She has a 10 year old daughter to help her out, so that is a blessing. But her husband died before the earthquake and she has no job.

She was so thankful to Ecdes and I that she has made Ecdes the boy's Godfather.

Please pray that we will be able to help her find a job so she can care for her two children.

False teachings abound in Haiti

While in Limbe Pastor Peggy told me he had to come to Port-au-Prince on business next week. I asked him what he was going to do in Port-au-Prince and he said he was going to try and get a Visa to take a training in the US. When I asked him what kind of training he said it was a follow up course on some psychological training he had already received. He told me the name of the course, and I immediately recognized it as a non-Christian cult that is popular in the US. Pastor Peggy had told me he had already attended several sessions on this teaching and that at least 1,000 others – some Christians – had already received the training. I was astounded! I asked him how he had made contact with these people, and he told me through the internet.

When I told him that this was not just “psychological training”, but the false teaching of a specific religion, he was surprised. He thought it was just “Positive thinking” and harmless. I suggested that he ask the Holy Spirit to confirm in his heart if the teaching was false, and he said he would do this.

I am praying that God will use him and this experience to help him tell others about this false teaching and their methods!

It gives me great joy to see our AIS Haiti leaders walking in the Truth

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.

Dominican Christians Help and Pray for Haitians

While in the Dominican Republic a few weeks ago picking up relief supplies we met many Dominican Christians who are praying for Haiti. This dear lady introduced us to her Pastor who prayed for us in the middle of a busy street!

The prayers of righteous men and women are very effective!

First Training well received

Today was our last day of training for the Port-de-Paix region of 8 schools. Everyone seemed to benefit from the training and asked us when we are coming again.

We split our leaders up into three groups: Chaplains, Coaches and Administrators. I taught the administrators, Sylvain and Jean Paul taught the Chaplains and Ronald William and Jean Eric Duval taught the coaches.

I taught the administrators how to make a budget and went over the basics of Fund Raising. Our goal is to make the teams as financially independent as possible and that means they need to know how to raise funds locally.

Unfortunately we still have a shortage of soccer equipment - especially balls. We were able to give each team only one ball. Please pray that we receive more balls soon so that we can keep the boys playing.

Tomorrow we head to Jean Rabel and we will not have access to internet until Easter.

So have a blessed Palm Sunday, and Carol will have to update you on the homefront!

A miracle Baby!

Siliana was given up for dead. She weighed 1 1/2 pounds when she arrived at the House of Hope, Crossworld's ministry to sick children. She was HIV positive and her mother was dying of AIDS.

Not even nurses wanted to hold her for fear of contracting AIDS.

But Linda Felix and Jenny Reitz were not afraid of AIDS and they started to care for her.

Jenny said she knew she would make it after the baby started to babble almost constantly.

Today Siliana is 3 years old and attends school as a healthy, but small, child.

It's amazing what God's love can do. He must have a very special plan for Siliana!

A Great day of Training

Our first day of training went very well, except it got started on "Haitian Time" which means about an hour late.

It is a little scary when you have done so much preparation and then no one is there when it is supposed to start. You think I would be used to this after working so long in Haiti, but I'm not.

However, when things did get rolling they went very nicely and everyone who attended seemed to absorb the material and respond well to questions.

We talked about the structure of AIS Haiti and how we now are in 7 of the 11 departements or states in Haiti, are working with 50 teams and have almost 1,000 players on our teams. All this is run by approximately 260 volunteers.

We also discovered some problems with equipment distribution which we are hoping to resolve while we're here. After all, you can't play soccer is you don't have soccer balls - and some of our teams tell us that the ones they had are all ruined. We popped a ball on thorns just today when we were playing for fun.

First aid and ministry reports were also on the agenda today, as well as a form we are going to have all parents sign if they want their children to play on our teams. It talks about our responsibilities to our players and the parent's responsibilities in case their children are injured, etc.

It is amazing to see how our leaders have put what we have taught them into practice up until now. We are praying that this new set of leaders will do the same!

We Arrived in Port-de-Paix

After an 8 hour trip, half on good roads and half on terrible roads, we arrived safely to the north coast of Haiti.

Thankfully, my friend Jean Eric Duval helped with the driving.

We start our first day or training tomorrow with about 30 coaches, chaplains and team administrators.

Thanks for your prayers!

We're off!

We're just about to leave on our 10-day trip to Port-de-Paix, Jean Rabel and Limbe. Although the roads are greatly improved in some areas, there are still some rough spots.

We are taking with us food, equipment and Christian books for each region, and our truck is loaded to the hilt!

A special guest named Jean Eric Duval is going with us. He is the soccer coach at Union School (the OTHER English-speaking school in PAP), but since he got laid off after the earthquake, he is working for the ministry of youth and sport. He is going to help us train our coaches.

Please pray for a safe and effective time of training and visiting our volunteers in these regions!

Tents arrive from Crossing Community Church

Today I picked up 16 tents from the airport and within an hour had distributed two of them to some of our Ambassador in Sport leaders in Leogane, an area just outside of Port-au-Prince that was badly hit.

We thank God for this generous gift of badly needed tents. There are another 14 on the way, so this will make many of the people we work with very happy!

We also gave a tent today to a friend of one of our key leaders, Sylvain, who lost one of his 4 children in the quake as well as his house. Thus family of 5 has been sleeping without good shelter since the earthquake!

Another person we gave a tent to was the niece of Madame Levis, our housekeeper. I took her niece to the hospital a few weeks ago so she could deliver her 4th child, and she was thrilled to be able to give her newborn a cozy, dry place to sleep.

We'll keep you posted on how God is blessing other Haitians through our tent distribution.

Seminars in Port-de-Paix and Jean Rabel

Our plan since 2009 was to visit each of our Regional Committees and train the team chaplains in how to use the "Young Peacemaker" curriculum in Creole to train our players in Christian Character. Starting this Thursday, March 25th, Myself, Sylvain and Ronald William will be travelling up north to Port-de-Paix and Jean Rabel to do a 2-3 day training in each place.

We will also visit Pastor Peggy in Limbe.

We are thankul to the Lewis Evangelism fund of Crossworld for helping to sponsor this training and look forward to what God is going to do in the lives of our leaders and players through it.

Thank you for your prayers for safe travel and good communication with our regional committees and leaders, all of whom are volunteer.

Check out this blog

Check out this blog that gives updates on the earthquake recovery, especially on the Bolosse Campus (the campus of STEP seminary, where we lived before)

http://haitiearthquakerecovery.blogspot.com

If you click on the pictures to the right, you should be able to see a larger format of the pictures. I'm not sure if you have to have Picasa on your computer to do this.

Thanks, Amy Schmid, for this great blog.

The story of Francoise: tears and God's Grace mingled together!

Francoise is a single mother of three. Hers is a sad story, but also is a story of God's grace.

(She's wearing the white hat. This is her at work making beads at The Apparent Project)

She was sent to Port-au-Prince by her mother at age 5 to live with her aunt. Her mother had several other children to take care of and could not afford another mouth to feed. As is sadly the case in many Haitian families, her father abandoned his family, leaving her mother with no money to live on.

Her mother thought that her sister would take care of the child and send her to school. Instead, Francoise became a “Restavek”, a child slave to her aunt. She got up at three in the morning and sometimes worked until 10 PM at night fetching water, helping in the kitchen, washing and doing the hundred other jobs that children can do in a country with little running water, electricity or appliances.

When she was old enough, she ran away from her aunt's house and lived in the streets. Having never had the love of a Father or a Mother, she soon fell prey to a handsome Haitian man who promised her the world... but never married her. He was happy after she bore him a child, but after the second one he blamed her for getting pregnant again and they began to fight. By the time their third child came along, had already left her for another woman. Francoise has already experienced more hurt and rejection in her 24 years of life than some experience in a lifetime.

Francoise became depressed. Here she was with three children and no way to feed them. She didn't even want to feed her baby. But she said she kept going to church and eventually snapped out of her depression. However, things did not improve for her and then her 2 year old got burned on the foot from boiling water.

That's when she brought him to our house asking for help. I took him to a clinic and paid for his care and medicine. But it was a second degree burn and needed daily care. So we got to know her and her son, Emmanuel.

Then the earthquake hit and we invited her and her children to stay with us for a week (This is when we also invited two other families to stay with us, including Sophia & James family.)

We started to see her come out of her shell a little by helping around the house. Then we helped pay for her and her children to return to Les Cayes on the South coast so they could live with her mother.

But Francoise came back to Port-au-Prince a few weeks later, leaving her 3 children behind. Her Mother sent her back telling her to find a job and send money back to her for the children. But Francoise could not find a job – until we suggested she try and make beads for a Christian friend of ours who started a jewelry company to help Mothers be able to keep their children instead of giving them up for adoption.

At first Francoise came back day after day saying that it was too hard and she could not do it. Then when one of her friends, Sophia quit, she was tempted to quit as well. But she persevered and kept at it. Now she is doing a good job and is earning enough money to go an visit her children.

We are hoping to be able to help her and Venita find a place for them to live with their children close to where they work. Please pray that we will be able to find a place they can afford that will be big enough for 2 women and 5 children under 7!

Prayer Requests

We have some important prayer requests.

1. Please pray for Levy Vaillant who has prostate cancer and has been in a lot of pain the last few days. He has been told that he will be in a lot of pain right before he dies. He is the husband of Mme Levy who works for us in our house and the father of Elysee who is on the board of AIS-Haiti.

2. Another prayer request is also for Elysee and his fiance, Anne-Love. They want to get married and they came to us to ask us to be the "sponsors" for their wedding. We are honored to do it, but of course, life is not normal here yet. They did have a plan before the earthquake, but now they're not sure what to do and before Jan. 12th, Anne-Love was living with her sister, who left the city to return to their hometown up north. With things be so uncertain, we are trying to help them evaluate their situation financially, too. Elysee had an interview this morning for another position which could change things. Thanks for praying with us.

Good day of Training, and evangelization!

Today three AIS coaches (Dana McGregor, James Poole and Nick Donaldson) and 2 Haitian coaches (Ronald William and Ernest Sauvignon) joined forces to teach 21 young Haitian coaches the fundamentals needed to coach children between 10 and 15 years old.

We went over Dribbling, passing, shooting and defense.

Half the coaches were committed Christians, but the rest were not. So we also went over the fundamentals of the Gospel and here are what some of the participants wrote:

“I'm not a Christian yet, but I believe in God. I just need a little thought before I can make that decision.”

“I'm already a Christian, but I would like you to pray for me.”

“I would like you to help me understand the Bible.”

“I'm not yet ready to trust Christ, but I think I will be soon!”

“Yes, I'm ready to trust in Christ.!”

Here are some comments the participants made:

“I have no criticism because your goal is to help children”

“I'm happy with everything you did because you made me feel that I am not alone.”

“The fun we had was really cool.”

“I really liked the training today. It was like 1000 good days for me!”

Please pray for the training of chaplains we hope to do next Thursday,

Soccer Coach Training

Today we are having a training session for some of the coaches at the Delmas 48 (Petionville Club) IDP Camp.

We were suprised to find three AIS players in the country checking out what they could do to help Haiti. Richard asked them if they would consider doing a training day and they said "yes."! Since we had already done interviews in the Delmas 48 camp, we called the coaches (or potential coaches) and most of them were available.

One of the challenges in the country these days is where to play. Richard asked to use Quisqueya Chapel and that is working out.

Please pray for this preparation for ministry in Delmas 48. AND for so many homeless Haitians who had to endure a night of heavy rains last night. Many of them must get up and stand through the rain to avoid getting wet. Their belongings get wet, too. I'm not sure about those in tents either...if the tents held up under that long, heavy rain Most tents are not on top of tarps because there are so many people who still don't have their own tent or tarp.

Also, pray that the training will go well in spite of mud at the field.