Hello everybody from Arroyo Cano, Dominican
Republic.
I hope everyone is doing well.
Sorry if I haven’t emailed some of you yet or if I haven’t been able to
communicate as much as I’d like. While
in San Juan the
only internet connection has been at internet café’s and here in Arroyo Cano,
internet is a luxury that these people can’t afford. Some of us had to come down to San Juan for
supplies so I thought I’d upload a blog and let everyone know what all was
going on.
Arroyo
Cano is a beautiful mountain town about an hour’s bus ride from San Juan. It’s a very lush area where orange and
grapefruit trees grow wild like weeds and you can hike about an hour and get an
amazing view of the Dominican countryside.
Despite Arroyo Cano being a very poor town, the people are very
hospitable. During visitations it’s very
common for the host to get up and give you their chair and offer you some food
or coffee.
For
our ministry we’ve teamed up with our new friend Gregorio. He is the young pastor of the church we’re
living in during our stay. He’s been a
real blessing. The Lord has blessed him
with an incredible knowledge of the Bible but more importantly a deep
understanding of it. Which some of you
know are 2 completely different things. He
talks more smack then Mike and is about as competitive as Jess and Beth
(especially with dominoes). We’ve been
able to team up with him and his church to do home visitations to church
members and door to door evangelism.
Also since their Christmas was last week we had the privilege to help
his church and Samaritan Purse distribute Operation Christmas Child
shoeboxes. Also last Sunday I had to
preach for the first time with a translator, which was nicer then I thought it
would be. But after much prayer about
what our purpose is here we discovered that a fiesta had just started the day
we arrived in town and is going on the whole time we’ll be here.
At
first we thought our ministry involved the party and ministering to the
people. But it didn’t take long for God
to correct us on that one. One of the
teams biggest sources of frustration and anger has been the kids that play all
day on the playground beside the church.
While we’re in the church resting or having personal team the kids are
always opening the blinds from outside and yelling in at us or throwing stuff. They are disrespectful to us and the boys
hassle our girls. You have no idea how
frustrating it can be to have no privacy and for these kids to seem to have
zero respect for you and there’s not really much we can do about it. So you can imagine when some of us went to
God with the situation and asked God what we should do about these hellions, He
replied back to all of us with “Love them”.
It only took about a day for us to realize that none of us had the ability
to love these little monsters. But we
found it interesting when we went to Gregorio about the kids he said they are
only like this during the festival; because all of their parents are at the
party they have no supervision. It was
then that we realized that we weren’t put here for the parents but for the
kids. I’m not going to speak for any of
my other teammates but you can read their blogs to get their side of the
story. But God has asked me to love a
lot of people that I didn’t want to and I’ve always managed to get over myself
and do it. But these kids are the
hardest kids to love that I’ve ever come across. At first it was so frustrating because I
would continuously pray that God would enable me to love them but it seemed
like I would always fail when I would yell at them or entertain the thought of
hitting one of them with a rock. But
soon that frustration started to grow into humility, as the Lord kept leading
me to the books of James and 1 John during my quiet times. I was reminded that “…the anger of man, does
not produce the righteousness of God.” and “…he who does not love his brother
whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” All of those words cut me to the bone. Then I would read the teachings of Jesus as
He talked about hating someone in your heart is the same as killing them and if
you lust after a woman in your mind it is the same as adultery. All of this leading to the simple but hard
truth that my heart needs a lot of work.
I had fooled myself into thinking I had things pretty down packed, but
how far I was from being true! But
praise God that we serve a loving God that when He corrects us he also builds
us up. Because not far from Jesus’ lofty
lessons on the heart are his Beatitudes.
Where there is a promise, “Blessed are those who thirst and hunger for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.” That is
exactly what is happening inside of me now.
God is creating a thirst in my heart for righteousness because I see now
that I am lacking. And He is already beginning
to fulfill that promise! Today Sammie
and I went out to play with the kids and we had a pretty good time, but more
importantly He began to break my heart for these kids. I’m beginning to see that they just crave
love and attention because they don’t get it at home and they act the way they
do because it’s the only way they know to get it. So please keep me in and my whole team in
your prayers about this ministry. We want
to show these kids the love of God but we can’t do it on our own.
On
a personal note, I’m doing fine. Despite
the demolition going on in my heart, I’m in good health and spirits with
minimal stomach problems. It has begun
to hit me that I’m not going home soon and I’m starting to miss my family and
friends back home. But I’ve been praying
for strength to over come that, because we have a purpose here and I need to
stay focused. I hope to be able to write
to more of you tomorrow when I post this blog.
If I don’t get around to it before my hour is up please be patient with me. Please keep my team and I in your
prayers. That we would be able to
perform the work that is set before us. Also we all feel lead to spend some
time in 2 neighboring town’s, Los Montecito and Los Frios. We’re not really sure what waits for us
there. But we know God is calling us
there. So we’ll be there Tuesday and
Wednesday. Please pray that his
intentions would be made clear to us.
Well please keep in touch even if I can’t always reply right back. Thank you all for your prayers.
Grace and Peace,
Timoteo
