So, to tell you the truth, I am writing this blog all over for the second time. The internet suddently went out here, and I was trying to continue typing my blog, but it got lost.
#thirdworldproblems
So I’ve been in the Dominican Republic for a little over two weeks now, and (sadly) I have only a little over one week left to go. The ministry I’m working for is called Hope for the DR, which is cool, because God has been teaching me a lot about hope these past few weeks. We have really awesome hosts! We are sleeping about twenty to a room, taking cold showers, and eating chickens that we kill ourselves, but its been a great two weeks.
The way that this ministry is set up is that we do a different job in the ministry each week. It will most likely not be this way in my other countries, so I’m taking advantage of it and learning to work in different types of ministries and with different types of people.
Week one, my team and I were working on developing a curriculum for a discipleship program for adolescent girls here in Lajas. We got to visit a school where a lot of the girls go and meet them, which was the highlight of my week. Sexual abuse is a widespread and normalized problem in this area (Lajas/Santiago). The result is oversexualized children, and young women who depend on men for identity (not unlike the US). Often times the men make promises that they can’t keep. This results in early teen pregnancies, and a great deal of fatherlessness. Our program is designed to show girls that their worth and value is in Jesus Christ, and that there is grace and redemption, and security in Christ, no matter what battles they may have faced in the past or even continue to face in the present. My heart was so very much in this ministry. The program will have one lesson a week, focusing on one characteristic per month (i.e identity, purity, fearlessness).
Week two (this past week) my team and I have been prayer walking, which I have absolutely loved! Another team in our group was doing evangelism, and we got to go before them and claim victory over the houses and land that they would later be spreading the gospel in. This week has been really cool because the Lord has spoken to me a lot in words and images, which he hasn’t done a whole lot in the past. This happened a lot as we were praying and walking (we had like 7 hours a day) but there are two examples that stand otu the most. The first time was when we were walking past and praying for a two story, unfinished pink house. As I prayed over this, the Lord gave me an image of that house being a house of worship, where His name was proclaimed. Iliterally saw it in my head, and it was beautiful. I also felt the burden of prayer, that this wouldn’t come to fruition unless we really prayed for it. And so we did.
The next example was walking through a small community of maybe 7 or 8 houses. The Lord spoke to me the number 3. So I thought immediately of the verse “A strand of 3 cords is not easily broken.” I felt prompted to pray for 3 women to rise up as leaders in the community, and make disciples who would make disciples.We prayed for that concept alot. It was cool to be able to share the way the Lord was speaking to me to my team, especially since I haven’t always been one hundred percent open to things like visions.
(side note…I’m sitting outside right now and it just got down to like 60 degrees and I feel pretty freezing. Probably won’t get any sympathy from back in the states)
Another blessing from last week was getting to know an older woman named Maria. She lives in a house up the street from us. She is about 80 years old and a total fiestball. Super on fire for the Lord, which is pretty rare here. Heaven is commonly conceptualized as a place where good people go. So even people who are nominally christian or catholic in this town frequently don’t know the Lord.
So my teammate Kiersten and I had the opportunity of spending some of our free time with Maria, listening to her stories and hearing about how she came to know the Lord. My spanish speaking abilities really came in handy there:) It was so encouraging. She even joined us on our prayer walk yesterday….and let me tell you….this 80 year old lady kicked my 22 year old hiney walking up these mountain streets!! We prayed for people, talked to people, loved on people, and it was awesome.
Next week I will be working on construction, so prayers that I will be an asset would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you for all of your prayers and supports! I love you all!
