When former high school PE teacher Michael Ogden decided to leave his position in October of 2013, alumnus Ericlee Gilmore stepped in to take his slot. In the past, Gilmore had taught campus elementary PE and coached the high school track and field team until December 2008. Now he is back, this time to coach high school PE.

Since his early childhood, Gilmore has been involved with mission work in Haiti. Although he went to Haiti for the first time as a two-year-old, his family’s history with Haiti extends even further back.

“I have a long history with Haiti,” Gilmore said. “My grandparents on my mom’s side went there in 1947 to be missionaries, and my mom was born there in 1949. She first brought me to Haiti when I was two and then numerous times thereafter so I could learn about her childhood, see my grandparents ministry and fall in love with the people and country of Haiti.”

It was not until his trip in 1997 that he knew he was supposed to work in Haiti, incorporating his abilities and passion for sports with his call to share the gospel with the Haitian people.

“I led a short-term missions team to Haiti using track and field as a platform to share Christ and to teach people how to be a muscular Christian,” Gilmore said. “We used Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire) as the example, and it was a great success.”

Due to his work at FC, he and his wife Dorina were unable to fully devote themselves to the work down there. However, their lives were shaken up with the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and they dived into the ministry 100 percent. Recently, Gilmore began training a small group of guys to become coaches for the ministry’s newest project, a CrossFit gym in Pignon.

“I worked with four young men in training them to be CrossFit coaches since we are opening a gym in Pignon, the town where we stay,” Gilmore said. “It will be the first CrossFit gym in the country. I was very excited about this since it was Peter’s {family friend and ministry partner} idea to open a gym for the community to improve their health and create some more jobs.”

The achievement of this dream, the completion and opening of a CrossFit gym in Pignon, has led to a bigger goal of extending the sport of fitness to the rest of Haiti, and an even greater dream of ultimately coaching a Haitian athlete to compete in the Olympics.

“In a way, God has given me my desire and that is teaching Haitians the sport of fitness,” Gilmore said. “I hope that this will overflow into the schools and into the national soccer team. My ultimate dream would be taking a Haitian to the Olympic games.”

Gilmore says that there are times when he wants to give up. However, he knows that God has called him to this ministry, to these people, and that his work there is not accomplished yet.

“To be honest, it is hard work,” Gilmore said. “Many days I want to give it up, but I am a fighter and an overcomer and God says not yet. I am called to this ministry because it is my family’s legacy, and I have fallen in love with the Haitian people. After 67 years we are on the third generation of leaders and followers, and I cannot tell you how many people have accepted the Lord.”

The work in Haiti began as a family effort, and Gilmore and his wife have kept it that way with their intentional involvement of their three daughters in many parts of the ministry.

“We always do ministry as a family, and we love that part of it,” Gilmore said. “My girls, Meilani (7), Giada (4) and Zayla (2), love playing with the kids in the orphanage and living life without the distractions of media and traditional toys. We believe that ministry should be done as a family unit so the next generation understands what it is all about instead of having a bad attitude about it because they never see their parents.”

Since his time working down in Haiti, Gilmore has become the director of Christian Friendship Ministries, an organization dedicated to moving away from Haitian relief and closer toward development, offering more of a hand up than a handout, and empowering Haitians to share the gospel message and disciple others.

“Now that I am the director of Christian Friendship Ministries, I have learned to step out of my comfort zone to do things that are hard to do,” Gilmore said. “My role is to develop leaders with the help of Peter through our eight schools, 33 teachers, 30 life group leaders and four pastors. In addition to raising up leaders, I must also raise up funds.”

The funds required for a non-profit organization to run and accomplish all that it is working toward are tremendous, but Gilmore has learned through his years of working in Haiti to trust God in all that he sets out to do, even if it seems unattainable by human standards.

“My faith has grown the most since being a missionary and director of a non-profit in Haiti,” Gilmore said. “Each day God gives me mercy and strength to accomplish the tasks at hand or to fix the tasks that I messed up. This quote helps me a lot: ‘Attempt something so impossible that unless God is in it, it is doomed to failure!'”

Currently, Gilmore and a team of eight others are down in Haiti on an eight-day trip from January 10-18. This time, they will be completing a project to provide running water for the Kay Cadence Orphanage, home to around 15 orphaned children, in the St. Raphael region of Haiti.

“These orphans are the next leaders of Haiti,” Gilmore said. “Water is health, and the more health, education, time and value you put into them and this project, the better prepared they will be to lead their country.”

In addition to the water project, the men on the team will also be working on various interior construction tasks to fix up the orphanage, while the ladies will be holding a music camp with the help of the local church’s worship leader and teaching some English to the children.

According to Gilmore, mission work is important for any believer, not only for the help that is needed everywhere in spreading the Gospel but also for the personal and spiritual growth it will cause.

“I believe everyone needs to be involved in missions,” Gilmore said. “Outreach can be done in your neighborhood but missions is sharing the good news of Jesus to a different culture. Maybe we can take a team from FC next summer. We need to understand that we are world Christians and not American Christians.”

Gilmore knows that once we realize that we as Americans do not deserve the privileges we have, we can then more openly pass what we have on to others.

“Every American has been given a great gift ? the gift of being born in America with all the freedom, wealth and privileges it has,” Gilmore said. “Once we are humble about that then we can answer the question: ‘What am I going to do with all this freedom, wealth and privileges?’ We can either go or send. And I am sorry to say that many Christian families in America are doing neither one.”

This writer can be reached on Twitter at @JennaWeimer42. Follow The Feather Online at @thefeather.

For more information on Gilmore’s work down in Haiti, see Christian Friendship Ministries’ website or the January 19, 2010 article, Haitian earthquake impacts Valley residents.

For more features, see the Jan. 7 article, How to: Spaghetti Bowl.