So my time in the Dominican Republic is over. Tomorrow morning I will board a plane to Miami, then on to Ecuador. As I look back over my time in the DR i’d like to share about my team’s ministry and some of my favorite moments.
Our team ministry was in a village called Las Latas. It is a poor neighborhood surrounded by much neighborhoods. We worked with a relatively new church there with the pastor whose name is Rafael. Our first week was a little rough…just trying to feel out the situation and what ministry would look like. We did a lot of kids ministry and door-to-door evangelism. After the first week our team felt the need to change things up a bit. So we began prayer walking the village in the afternoons before the evening services. Yes…this church has a service every night of the week…i’d like to see a church in the states try that.
At any rate, my team formed lots of relationships with several families in our village. The one relationship I made that meant the most to me was with a boy named Alwin. As I said, we started prayer walking through our village on the start of our second week of ministry. That day me and two of my teammates walked down a long dirt road simply praying and as we were about to turn around and come back we come across three youths sitting outside their home and I approached them to start a conversation. We weren’t getting far with our limited spanish skills, but then something funny happened. The boy, whose name is Alwin, says to me “Do you speak english?” I laughed out loud and replied, “YES!”
What makes this so great is that before we started our ministry that day, I prayed for our team to have a “silver platter”. The Lord is so generous that if you ask him for something, He will give it to you. Alwin then invited us into his home where we met his family. We explained to him what we were doing in the DR and he wanted to meet the rest of our team. We must have went to his house twice or three times a week just to visit and pray with him.
In return, he blessed our team so much. There were a few times when our translator was late and we needed to speak with people in the community and Alwin was more than willing to help communicate for us. This young man will be a leader for his family, community, and the Dominican. I see this vision for him and how the Lord will use him in the future.
