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.