Training the Trainers

Edouarnus Estivil, one of our Timothy Training Coordination Team members, teachings the Timothy facilitators how to develop good "Action Plans" which are at the heart of Timothy Training.

Larry Luth, Zach and Sharon's colleague, introduces himself to the facilitators that came to Port-au-Prince for the "Training the Trainers" Event on Dec. 6, 2013

If you have followed our ministry in Haiti at all during the last five years, you know that our core activity is leadership training.  We believe that the key to making a lasting change in Haiti is training leaders who give direction to their communities.  But who should be the one training the Haitian leaders?  Perhaps you would assume it would be us, or other missionaries.  While we love teaching and consider it our calling, we are always trying to find Haitians to teach Haitian leaders.  Why?  Haitians themselves are best placed to teach their peers important ministry skills and contextualize them for their students.  On Dec. 6 we hosted a "Training for the Trainers" event for Timothy Leadership Training.  We had a special blessing to have Gary Schipper, the Regional Coordinator for Timothy Leadership Training International (TLTI), present for the meeting as well.  During the training, we helped the Haitian TLT facilitators (our name for the trainers) from all over Haiti learn the skills necessary to lead TLT groups, assist participants to make work plans (after each lesson, participants must make a plan to say how they will use the training), and develop their own regional coordination teams.  One of the participants, Pastor Tardieu, shared his plan to start TLT in 350 churches in the Jean Rabel region.  In order for this very ambitious plan to come to reality, Pastor Tardieu will have to train 60-70 TLT trainers to go out to all the churches in the Jean Rabel region.  We could tell Pastor Tardieu was paying close attention during our event because he will soon be duplicating it in the Jean Rabel area.  But it is not only Pastor Tardieu that has a lot of work to do.  Gary Schipper shared his vision to have at least 50% of all Haitian pastors trained in TLT by 2023.  Please pray for our Haiti Coordination Team as we consider how this dream can be realized.

"Examine Yourselves to See Whether You Are in the Faith"

There is a tension in Scripture between accountability and grace.  It is clear that "It is by Grace that we are saved, though faith....not by works, so that no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9)."  And yet, Paul writes in 1 Cor. 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether or not you are in the faith; test yourselves."  How do we fit these together?  First, we know that God does not decide to forgive us and make us his child based on his evaluation of our life--we are all unworthy before God.  However, after he has saved us, God does call us to constantly evaluate how obediently we are living the Christian life and to work with the Spirit (Phil 2:12-13) to live more obediently.  Because of this conviction, Sous Espwa (the ministries of the CRCNA in Haiti) does an evaluation of its partner ministries every three years.  Last week Zachary organized an evaluation of the Christian Reformed Church of Haiti (CRCH).  Such evaluations are always bittersweet.  We witness the great things God has done in the last three years (such as growing the CRCH from 32 to 45 congregations and increasing the membership) but also noting some of the organizational weaknesses that must be rectified.  The biggest weakness we found was a continuing dependency on mission funds for the national administration of the CRCH.  At the end of the evaluation recommendations were made to leverage strengths and remedy its weaknesses.  Please pray for the problem of dependency as it is an epidemic in the Haitian church.  Pray that Zach and other staff can find strategies to help the CRCH become more financially independent.  Pray also the CRC of Haiti leaders will recognize the problem and seek other sources of income for important ministry initiatives.

The Battle

Life in Haiti is a battle.  But not just for us.  It seems like every creature, from human beings to the ants are constantly and forcefully battling for survival.  Last week we noticed a mouse running in kitchen.  While not unexpected, mice are definitely unwelcome since they get into your food and generally make a mess.  After two days of efforts, we got rid of all the mice, except one.  We heard rustling on the counter top and tracked it to the toaster.  Sharon picked up the toaster, reached her hand inside and touched what you see above--a mouse's tail!  After having a good scream and plenty of lamenting, she put the toaster in a cooler, closed it, and the next day we took it apart.  We found about nine large cockroaches and one mouse in our toaster which we were using every morning!  How such animals survive in a toaster is beyond us, but why they are in the toaster is obvious--bread crumbs.  Life is a battle here and animals are willing to live in the most extreme environments for food--even a toaster!