Hello from Los Montacitos!
A
fair bit has happened since the last time I updated; between building the new
church, door to door evangelism, and hiking to a different village, the team
has been busy. A lot of our time, especially the guys, has gone into the church
building effort. We dug out for the footings, tied and cut the rebar, poured
the concrete footings and we are now blocking up the walls. Everything is done
manually… ha I definitely had some major blisters on my hands, which I then
covered up with duct tape in replacement of gloves. It really makes me
appreciate technology at home, especially back-hoes!
In
other news a group of us hiked to another mountain village called Montecafe. It
was a five hour hike each way – without a doubt the hardest hike I’ve been on. With
thirty pound packs on our backs, it turned out to be a bit of an adventure with
people getting sick and what not, (which is a whole other story) but we did
eventually make it back to Los Montacitos! We went for an overnight trip with
our main purpose being intercessors. We prayed for the people of the village,
that God would prepare them for the salvation message which will be presented
by the pastor and his team when they go up in a few weeks. It was a great
couple days, and the people received us very well. The Dominicans we went with
thought that we might be the first white people to go there. It turns out we
weren’t, some people from a group called ‘Lifewater’ had been there and had
talked about doing something to filter their water. So that got me wondering if
they were connected to Les Babcock at all because of the wells and water
filtration they do in Haiti.
God
is definitely at work here in the DR as eight people have made decisions for
Christ that we know of since we’ve been here! Everyone says they are Catholic but
most are not. They say they are because it’s the national religion; also mixing
idol worship within Catholicism is very common.
We
will be leaving Los Monacitos tomorrow (the 31st) and going down to
San Jaun to be with the other teams for a couple days before we leave for
Ecuador on the 3rd. Pray for safety and that things would go
smoothly as we travel, also pray that God would prepare the hearts of the
people he is going to bring us to next!
I
hope all is well back home!
