Buenos Dias friends, family and those I have yet to meet.
Thank you so much for reading my blog and following this crazy adventure God called me on. I am currently curled up in a wool blanket, staring out our living room window at brink facades and strange trees contemplating hibernation in El Alto, Bolivia, about 20 to 30 minutes up the mountain from the capital of La Paz. I have a wonderful cup of black tea (with milk – thank you Benita!) and my Bible opened to Romans chapter 8. I cannot believe I never dug into Romans until now. It is such a powerful and encouraging book of the Bible, one which I hope to write more about later.
I am very sorry I haven’t blogged in over a month. Last month, while serving Hope Ministries in Lajas, Dominican Republic, God asked me to fast from internet so that I might dig deeper into the ministry, the squad, my team, and most importantly Him. I cannot express enough how amazing it was to feel the spirit move in me so freely when I obeyed. I grew a lot, and I will do my best to get you caught up before I get too far into month three.
February was All-Squad Month. That means that all 45 of us + 2 squad leaders lived, served and worshipped together. It was a very busy and planned out month. Every day we had devotions during breakfast and devotions, prayer or worship at dinner. By 8:00a our teams were each assigned a ministry for the day. Our ministries included: prayer walk in Lajas, work duty around the compound (cooking, laundry, general cleaning, etc), teaching a morning and afternoon English class to locals at the ranch, grounds crew (manual labor/muscle building duties), prayer walk in Santiago near one of their two church plants and teaching English classes at their small school in a nearby town (and by nearby I mean 45 minutes to an hour drive away from Lajas).
My team got to participate in every ministry and I got to admit that grounds crew was my favorite. We dug ditches for pipes (electrical and plumbing), broke up concrete, mixed new concrete to create in-ground sinks, started the hole that became the foundation for a new four-stall bathroom (we only had one bathroom on the property for all 47 of us…the 8 men on our squad were encouraged to use a second toilet and shower in a nearby empty stone house), we also transferred rocks from a stream on the property up the hills toward the ranch to create pathways and sculpted stairs in the side of the hills that connected the ranch toward said stream. The work was intense, exhausting, but so rewarding. I earned a few great nicknames from my squad-mates during these days, which you are not allowed to call me unless you were there: Isa the Riveter and Egyptian Stair Beast.
However, the most eye-opening moments in our ministry were watching the Dominguez family, owners of the ranch and creators/leaders of Hope Ministry work together to reach their dream of eventually building an orphanage on the property, improving their English classes and increasing their outreach through their two churches in Santiago and Mocha. Each and every one of the family members work as a unit, from the father and native Dominican, Ruben, to his wife Vicki, to 16 year old Junior and their youngest of eight kids, six year old Solimar. I have never seen a family love on, encourage and assist one another so fully, all while praising and giving each victory to God.
If the first two months can be this powerful, I am so excited to see how God moves in the next 9 months. I hope you all have a wonderful week covered in the grace of God.
Amen,
Isa
