Haiti

Thanks for the prayers for the Haiti training by the way! We (LJ, Julio and Jacob) spent about a week training a group of pastors and leaders in the city of Grandgoave (the city where Julio lives). And then we spent a week just meeting one-on-one with some of the key leaders from that training.

            Most of the leaders haven’t really been exposed to the idea of discipleship/multiplication, so it’s really going to take a major lifestyle change for many leaders if this movement is going to be successful. The primary religion in Haiti is Catholicism, and hence the Protestants there have an unhealthy value for the institutional church. They work hard to draw people into the church meetings, and they spend as much time as they can ‘doing church’.

We did a Keystone training a few years ago, and what we’ve seen is that the 2013 training spurred on many leaders there to be engaging the lost through evangelism. But I can’t say that anyone really caught the vision for discipleship at that time, at least in the sense that Jesus modeled it. So we spent more time this training showing, practically, what discipleship looks like and how to effectively equip those disciples to multiply.

 There were many that came up to us throughout the week just to say that the training was exactly what they needed in this season. And the week that we spent following up with those leaders seemed to be really effective. We were able to sit down with them and write out some practical, strategic plans to begin launching movements. Within just a few days following the training, a few of them had already begun sharing the gospel with the lost, looking for their 1^st generation disciple.

We finished the training Thursday the 28^th. And one of the leaders went home that day and spent a couple days praying and fasting for a movement. God laid it on his heart to go to another part of the city, which he did, and he started talking to people there. He met 3 young men who were very interested in joining the vision, so this leader began discipling them. In the end, just a week following the training he was already taking some of his new disciples to share the gospel with others in the community.

Many throughout the city heard about the training, and so we received several invitations to teach at various churches. Jacob ended up sharing with 3 different congregations during his second week there, and every single person from those meetings made commitments to begin making disciples (almost 200 people). And after LJ and Jacob had left, Julio held a mini-training for many others that were begging to learn about discipleship.

Please be praying for all these leaders, that God would bring them the key disciples that will launch a movement. And pray that the leaders would have great wisdom to know how to disciple other leaders effectively, even though no one has necessarily shown them what each part of the process should look like.

Julio will stay there as long as he needs to help get the movement going. And if most of the people we trained work through the 2^nd generation within 6 months either LJ or Jacob will likely go back to follow up with everyone.