For Bryan Smith, Haiti has become a bit of home away from home. Smith first traveled to Haiti in 2004. For the last four years, he has been bringing soccer with him. It is the world’s game, after all. Last year, the Colorado Rapids donated a couple of boxes of equipment with many personal donations by Haitian Goalkeeper Steward Ceus (Rapids, 2009-2013).
This year, the Rapids donated enough gear to outfit a complete team with shorts, shirts, and compression shorts along with some miscellaneous gear. Smith, using some of his other connections, was able to secure additional equipment like shoes and balls for the young men of the village of Fedja, in the Mirebalais region of Haiti, northeast of Port-au-Prince.
For the past couple of years, Smith has been bringing whatever soccer gear he can get donated in order to outfit the teams that he has been working with – including a u-18 and u-15 team, as well as a handful of orphans that are also playing on the teams. Many of the players are also students at the Global Vision Citadelle Ministries school. This year, the teams played in an exhibition game with the gear donated by the Rapids.
The coaches and players were very grateful to get the Rapids gear. I was also able to give each player a new pair of cleats. It was an awesome time. Thanks again. We hope to continue the relationship with the Rapids in the future.
Haitian players stretch before taking the field sporting shorts from the Colorado Rapids.
Smith has high hopes for the young athletes that form this team,
We will be registering the FC-GVCM team for regional play. If they compete well we will enter them in the national league in Haiti.
Smith is still looking for sponsorships and partners that will help these boys make it to the next level and reach higher. If you would like to know more about Bryan Smith’s work in Haiti please contact CrossTraining at info@crosstraining-us.org.
If you would like to support future Timothy Project ventures, such as this one, please use the PayPal link below to make a donation. Your financial gift helps to secure additional equipment, sponsor a missionary or organization in an outreach effort, and cover associated costs of providing bibles, soccer equipment, and other outreach tools locally and around the world!
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Below are some additional photos of the soccer teams in Haiti.
A friend recently lost his job. Terminated without any warning, he expressed shock and dismay when the company that he had worked for over 8 years told him, “We’re going in a different direction.” Box in hand, he cleared out his desk and made his way home – bewildered and confused while coworkers looked on. Whilst we don’t often consider it in this way – a death had occurred. Relationships, pay, significance, identity, and much more all were “killed” in that particular moment for my friend and he had to cope with a great sense of loss that was compounded by the whole thing being confusing and unforeseen.
Losses like this are commonplace in life and also in professional sport – being traded or cut, a career-ending injury, or a personal trauma all represent a type of “death” that one can experience in the course of one’s professional career. In the midst of the dying process, as human beings, we search for redemptive and hope-filled moments – we await the next offer or opportunity, we hope for change or something different to come along.
When that new thing does come along it is almost like experiencing a “resurrection” of the soul. The sun shines clearer, we can see purpose in our situation, we are filled with a new found sense of hope. This Easter Sunday, as Christians, we reflect on the Ultimate Death and Life in Jesus Christ. The brutality of Friday’s crucifixion and the death – of Christ, and seemingly of so many others things (relationships, hopes and dreams) that occurred was heavy. Perhaps the heaviest time ever in the span of history, but Sunday was coming.
No matter where you are right now – whether approaching a seeming death, in the throes of pain and suffering, or just plain “dead” – you can have life again. Cry out to God – he has not abandoned you or I. He has the power to raise dead things to new life again. And he will do it – for you and for me.
First, making a distinction between superstition and rhythms can be helpful. There are some things that players, coaches, or teams out of superstition and there are other things that a team does in order to develop a rhythm or pattern. For example, warming up before a game with exercises and drills is more of a pattern than a superstition and a way of preparing the body for the task. In a similar way, an individual player may have their own pattern of preparing for a game – from taking a nap, to reading, to even praying. Sometimes, a rhythmic action can become superstitious (for example, a player who prays before a game having success and then determining that the prayer is what made him successful). This is an area where a chaplain must provide clarity and insight.
But regardless of the athlete and the environment of academics that they come from, one of the roles of the chaplain in professional sport is 
If helpful at a collegiate level, you can imagine how much more helpful at a professional level. I am coming to realize more and more, that some of my work as a chaplain is to help the young men that I work with to become more solid in life and not just in academics, but in life and faith. Part of my role is helping them in the process of going from boyhood to manhood. Helping them to become real men – men of integrity, men of faith, men of honor, men of valor – men that are not, paper thin.
Whilst scanning the Twitterverse a few weeks ago, former Colorado Rapids Forward Andre Aukpan (@auakpan), now with New York Red Bulls, highlighted a story on the National Football League’s 
First, with the popularity of sports in modern-day culture, many young athletes can feel trapped – they have sometimes abandoned education for the sake of entering sports early. Young athletes have many times even missed out on typical social and mental growth and well-being (sports taking primary importance in life). In some cases, they have missed crucial developmental stages or “rites of passage” moments for the sake of the sport. When it comes time for the end of a career – many can feel trapped because the sports world is all that they have known, all that they have invested in.
With World Cup 2014 Brazil, just a few months away, millions are preparing for the largest event in the world to capture the imaginations and dreams of people young and old, from hundreds of different countries, and many different backgrounds.
Athletes in Action is one such group and they have produced a DVD featuring soccer player testimonies for use around the world. The DVD known as 