First of all…. I need to say THANK YOU JESUS!! Thank you Lord For helping us finish this month of ministry strong!! And second of all, I’ll like to say THANK YOU to all of you who have prayed for me and my team! Your prayers have been felt in my heart, specially in tough times!
Also, I’ll like to apologize because my first pictures posted on FB were all of my day off. And you may be thinking why do I feel like I need to apologize about that? Well I feel as if I didn’t give you a good picture of how ministry has been here, or how life has been here in th DR. I want you all to know that no… I am not on a vacation, and beach days is not an everyday thing. Just in case any of you may have felt like this is what a mission is about. We get one day off during the week, and we enjoy it thank God! I just felt like I needed to apologize because I feel like I didnt give you a more clear picture of what I’ve done with God here on the DR!
But… Let me tell you a little more on how my month went!
We partnered with a missionary ministry called HOPE for DR, in which Vicky and Pastor Ruben are the founders of this ministry. God called them and their 8 children to come to the DR from the lovably and comfortable home in Texas to here and minister and love on the Dominican people, this was about 8 years ago.
Ministry: This month was full of different ministry areas in which we had the opportunity to work on! My favorite one, and one that I learned a lot was the first week, which my team and I were chosen to do Prayer Walk! It was my favorite one because prior to me coming to the DR, I’ve been asking God to help me grow in my prayer time with Him! And through the prayer walk, I learned a lot! I’ve learned to listen to God more, I’ve learned to love prayer! I’ve learned to communicate with my Abba Father more! And We literally walked around the town of Lajas, which is where we are staying in, and we prayed over houses, schools, around the neighbourhood in which the compound that we are staying in, we prayed for the women of Lajas during one of their meetings. It was a week full of blessings!
We also had the opportunity to be part of the English teaching camp that Kristan holds every Friday. kristan is a beautiful missionary from Detroit, and she has been here for 18 months now, and she just has such a beautiful heart for God! She teaches English every Friday and she just loves on these kids so much, she’s an admirable person! Anyway… We had the blessing to be part of helping write her English curriculum and on Friday we had the camp with the kids! These kids are so beautiful! So willing to learn! They embraced us and we loved on them! It was such a blessing to teach them English through bible stories!
We also helped put together a curriculum for women Who are being thought about their worth and God’s love through it. Unfortunately many Dominican women suffer physical and emotional abuse since a very young age, and they don’t know what real love is, and unfortunately many times they end up being subjected to prostitution because they don’t know otherwise. And through the teachings that they receive, they learn that there is a God who loves them and created them as His image and who gives them true worth! So yeah we were part of that!
other teams did some construction around the compound, and others got to do door to door evangelism!
Food: well…. We are a LOT of rice and beans!!! pretty much every single day! And we would eat s lot of oatmeal and some other mushy stuff for breakfast and dinner! Not my favorite, BUT I thank God for having food to nourish us!
The bathroom situation was always funny! We were not able to flush toylet paper down the bathroom because if we did, we could clog the whole draining system. So if we did throw some paper into the bathroom, we literally had to get it out with a little stick to avoid touching it! And it wasn’t pretty let me tell you!! But thank God we had good bathrooms, and also cold showers! Yes very cold showers! but thank God for it all!
We also went to the local “colmados” which are the stores sround here, and we went almost everyday to buy chips and cookies! We had one special guy named Mr. Hamoncito (which it translates to Mr. Little ham!) and he was one of our favorite ones because he sold the wifi cards and he started to give us free bananas because we would visit him so much! And we had the opportunity to pray over his store and for him and his wife! It was a blessing! All dominican people are really nice and loving! They embraced us with so much love, it was beautiful!
sleeping quarters: we had plenty of space to sleep in! Some people chose to sleep in their tents, some on their hammocks, and some in the dorms which we had some mattresses and some pads to sleep in! I chose to sleep on the dorms, it was crowded, but hey I loved it!
Over all God moved greatly this whole month! We are truly learning what it is to live in community! We are learning more about each other, the good and the ugly and we are learning to love on each other no matter what! With God’s help we have all started this race together, and with His help we will ALL finish this race strong!
Today we will leave HOPE for DR, and we are driving down to Santo Domingo for debrief, which will consist of some days off and some teachings from our World Race coaches. And around the 6th we wil be driving up to Haiti and start our second month of ministry!
i thank God for all that He has done in my life so far! This month was not so easy, yes of course I missed my family and friends, but I was blessed to know that they are good and in God’s hands! And I am ready for month 2! I’m open to whatever God wants to show me and teach me in Haiti!!
I love you Jesus!!
and I love each and everyone of you who love me and pray for me!!
