wow…sad! I had written up a couple big blogs for you all and put them on a zip drive but my computer that I´m on here in San Juan won´t upload anything but squares…so I will give you the short versions…
To find discriptions of where we are living, you can read some of my teammates blogs…Also, Nick D, Steph C, Hollis L and Melissa B among others have been taking plenty of pictures so check out those as well when you get some time…
We were getting set to head into the mountians and then change happened…change is pretty much the only thing I assume will stay constant this year besides God… Instead, we have been heading out to a little village called Mogollon in the mornings and coming back home at night. Each day has seen a little something different but here is a brief list of what we have been doing…
cleaning the church inside and out
moving piles upon piles of dirt
cutting down trees
leading bible classes for local kids in a couple areas
door to door evangelism
prayer meetings
leading worship (at least the singing portion of it)
preaching…in Mogollon and last night in Las Zanjas…pretty neat place and a cool story to come maybe? In the meantime, be praying for a gift of a man named Reye who is the janitor of a church who has a meek spirit and God will use mightily…
we will soon be painting the church as well…
So far we have been learning to drop our desire to measure our productivity the way most americans do…instead, we´re learning to measure it the way God does- by faithfulness and obedience…God is good and while we have been pulling some crazy hours, He´s molding us and working through us…
Today is our first half day off since we really got started and I look forward to having Saturday off…I will try to fill you in a lot more then…
Anyway, I´ve neglected to tell you our situation…We are working with a man named Pastor Manuel. He lost his wife less than a year ago and one of his sons (25 yrs old) a week before we met him…Another of his sons left to do missionary work in Chile and to top it all off, he will be getting married on our last day in the DR…talk about a roller coaster ride. Our ministry of course is to the people of Mogollon and the surrounding villages, but also to refresh this man. We are here to transition his grieving into gladness, his mourning into dancing and his sorrow into joy…In the mean time, we are learning to serve and we are being stretched in the meantime…
That is a little of the logistics of what is going on…life has been pretty busy and our squad has been hit with sickness and all sorts of random things… the week of training was very good and God has been messin me up …in a good way! I thought I knew what love was and I thought I had loved all of you and God for most of my life…wow, the sweetness of what love really is!!! Love is finally awakening in me and I´m just starting to taste it´s delight…I´ll give you a piece of my journal maybe sometime soon…On the flip side, it didn´t take but a few days before we had people casing out the house, trying to get in, trying to break in at night…yada yada yada…God is good, and we´re all ok…and will be- thanks for your prayers of protection…ok, I have to head out, but I will hopefully be back on Saturday…
take care my beautiful friends and family…may His grace and peace be multiplied to you…Dios ven diga
