New Roles With G.O. Ministries
This past May as we were just starting our summer here Brook, the President of G.O. Ministries, approached Sunshine and I about serving in a new capacity within the Ministry. Brook asked us to consider splitting our time between the home office in Louisville, KY and Santiago, Dominican Republic. At first though we weren’t really too sure about it, we had just sold or given away pretty much everything that we owned in order to move the Dominican, we were just starting to get settled and we weren’t sure that we wanted to start another new transition process! So, we decided to seek council of friends and most importantly God.
As some time went by, we felt like God was telling us that either way we chose, we would be serving him. I then ran across some text in the Bible:
“Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers-not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve.” 1 Peter 5:2
What struck me about this verse is that we are to be willing to serve, not out of duty but because our heart with God is right. Our prayer about the possible change became more of how best can we serve you Lord because we know you will provide. It was after this, that both Sunshine and I had peace about our decision. The more we thought about it, it became clear: G.O. Ministries has grown very fast the last five years and currently has hundreds of Nationals in five Countries, one major school with eight satellite schools in churches, approximately seventy churches, eight full time feeding centers serving over 4,000 meals a month, eleven construction projects and countless other undertakings. I tell you this not to brag or boast, but simply to show you the scope of what G.O. does and why we have decided to go back and help out. All of these things are going on at this time with only four people working in the home office! What a huge undertaking. We have since brought on one more person to help, plus added some responsibility on to another so that when we arrive in Louisville there will be eight of us in the office.
What does this mean for Sunshine and I? We will be heading back to Kentucky on October 2nd and start working in the office right away. Our schedule will be flexible in that if there are medical teams or teams that we recruit to go on short term trips we will travel back to the Dominican. Ideally we would group them all together to spend a month there all at one time in the spring. After our big annual fundraiser at Churchill Downs with the Kentucky Derby, we will head back to the D.R. and remain for the entire summer through September each year. So it will look like 7 months in the States and 5 months in the Dominican. The time in Kentucky will allow Sunshine to make more contacts within the Medical field, recruit more medical teams, and work on a steady pipeline of medicine for our clinics. I will be working with Brook on the administrative business side, working on budgets, timelines, fundraising and coordinating various other projects.
We are excited about serving God in this new role. We will continue to fill you in as things progress, but one big praise; is that we have a temporary place to live in Louisville until the end of the year as we search for a permanent home. It is possible that we will be reaching out to you in the future for help in getting donations to set up our home. We want to thank you for all your love and support this last year and give God all the glory for the things accomplishes thus far.
Summer comes to an end
We have crossed the finish line...the summer finish line that is! For the last eleven weeks straight we have had some great people from churches all over the US come down to the Dominican Republic to serve. It has been our joy to work with these teams and share all that God is doing here through their dedication to serving. As we reflect on the highs and lessons that we learned, we are grateful to have experienced it all. We wanted to share with you some of the memorable things from this summer and some of things that God showed us during our struggles. Here is our final video of the summer.
Eric’s Highlights:
• Having both American’s, Dominican’s and Haitian’s accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.
• Witnessing American’s, Dominican’s, and Haitians being baptized in rivers & oceans.
• The starting of a new feeding center in Batey Cuchilla. The building is a year or two away from completion, but thanks to start-up funding, 50 new children six days a week will get a hot meal.
• Starting of several new construction projects.
• Learning the true power of prayer!
Eric’s learned lessons:
• God has showed me how to have patience this summer. Patience when things don’t always go according to plan, patience that things don’t operate here like in the States and patience that people are not all the same personality and that is a good thing.
• That it truly is all about Him and not about us. Often times it is difficult to check our own pride at the door and that in all that we do it should bring glory to God.
Sunshine’s Highlights:
• This summer in our traveling medical clinics, we were able to bring medicine to 3,726 people.
• We hosted a dental clinic this spring that was able visit our school, and clean about 400 students’ teeth.
• Our community medical clinic is doing well. Dr. Canela is treating on average 45 patients every afternoon. People are traveling as far as 2 hours away for medical assistance.
Sunshine’s learned lessons:
• God has really showed me the power of prayer this summer. He has shown me time and time again that He is faithful to do what He promises.
• To not be intimidated to strive to be the kind of woman that God has called me to be.
We hope to visit with some of you all when we return to the states this Fall. Please send us a note and let us know how you all are doing.
Below is the last video of the Summer of a medical clinic in Batey Cuchilla.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Mathew 21:22 “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
Last week we had the opportunity to work with Great Expectations from Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY, Sunshine's home church. She had a great time catching up with friends from her Adult Bible Fellowship class. It's always an awesome experience to get to know new people, and to have a week of ministry and fellowship. This team was 12 people strong from the ages of 30 all the way up to 72 years young! It seems like every week I learn something new or God reminds me of something old.This week was no exception.
We arrived in Hoyo de Bartola, "The Hole" for our construction assignment. Construction is very difficult in the hole because everything is carried down to the church/feeding center by hand. It is about a 50-70 foot drop in elevation down uneven stairs and approximately 250 yards from the street down to the Church. We were at the point in the construction project that the roofing materials of the church needed to be carried down. This included metal tubing and steel "I" beams. The guys knocked out the tubing with no problem, but then came the "I" beams! There were four 7 ft. beams and four 9-10 ft. beams. We estimated that they weighted about 700lbs and 900lbs respectively. Talk about manual labor! There were three of us that carried down the first four beams. We had to stop about half way down each time to rest and re-grip the beams. By the time we finished with the smaller of the beams, we were dead tired! We still had the four larger and much heavier beams to go.
It finally dawned on us to stop and pray for God’s help and Chad led us in prayer. It went something like this…"Dear Lord, you know what we have to accomplish here and why we are doing it. It is for the church and the kids. Please send us some Angels to help carry this load or just send them to fly these beams down here for us. Amen." We all kind of laughed about the "angels flying them down there part." There were now four of us to carry the big ones down so we started. Saying that they were heavy and awkward is an understatement! Our team of four lifted the first beam and about half way down the stairs I was thinking that we would never make it. At that moment a Dominican man came up and grabbed the beam to help, about another 50 yards another man came to help.A few of the team members from Great Expectations were done with their project came over to help. By the time we brought the final beam down I was thinking, "Man, these are light as a feather."
We then took all eight beams and raised them by hand up two stories and onto the Church floor. We had to maneuver them through the school fence, down a small corridor, up onto a platform and then finally through the open Church windows. What a task!!
It wasn’t until we got done that it finally hit me and the Great Expectations team. We prayed and God answered our prayer! No, there weren’t literal angels but he sent two Dominican brothers to help us! We didn’t even get their names and never saw them again the rest of the week, but it was an experience that I will never forget. It is a reminder to us that no matter where we are or what we are doing, we have a heavenly Father that listens to our needs and will provide for us. I often have my own agenda and think I know how things should go. What I need to do is slow down and listen for God more. Sometimes it just takes an "I" beam and a daunting task to remind me.
Sunshine's Entry
I am having a great summer so far! Eric and I had a great time at our Partnership Conference. It was the first time Eric met a lot of our partners from Haiti. It was a great learning experience for us both. The topic of our break out sessions was "bearing fruit" in ministry. We had beach Olympics, and some major fun in the sun. It was a great time of fun and fellowship.
Right after conference, we jumped into our busy summer season. My first team of the summer was a dental team from Lakeland Dental College in Mattoon, Illinois. Let me share with you about how God provides...it always amazes me. So, about a month before this team was to arrive, I realized that we did not have the necessary tools for our visiting Dominican dentists to use (they were from a dental group here in Santiago called "Sonriesa"). I was able to contact a company in the states for replacements, but ended up with duplicate tools, not the missing pieces that I needed. I had one week before the team arrived. I talked with Lakelands team leader and she put me in contact with her dental representative that she works with. I placed one phone call, and ended up with close to $10,000.00 dollars worth of free dentaltools, hand pieces and things needed for our clinic like anesthesia, gloves, cotton swabs, cleaning solvent...It was amazing! Go God! The dental clinic cleaned 197 people's teeth, pulled 40 people's teeth, and educated about 400 students in our private christian school about dental care. We had too much fun!
June 2, Eric and I headed to Batey Ocho for a medical clinic. We worked with Eastview church from Rockford, Illinois. We had so much fun with them, and made some great friends. Our ministry is all about building relationships with church's from the states and national pastor's here in the D.R. and Haiti. It was awesome to watch Eastview build a relationship with Pastor Richard from Batey Ocho, whom they support. This was a full on medical clinic. The Batey's are communities built around sugar cane fields. We see a lot of machete wounds, mal nutrition, teen pregnancies, diabetes, high blood pressure, aids, and tuberculosis. We saw about 797 people in our medical clinic that week. We also gave out tons of hygiene packs and tooth brushes to the families. Everyone gets vitamins. More important, we hope that they all see God's love. That is why we are there.
Life is really desperate in many places in this country. When I see the children with their bellies bloated from starvation, or I see the little Haitian girl begging in the streets on a hot, sunny afternoon, it's still so hard for me to understand. I wonder to myself sometimes, "God, are you up there? I mean, I know you are but....why?" I think about all that I have and about what I think this child is missing. Sometimes all we see is what they don't have, we fail to see the Hope that God has provided. The medical relief teams, the food drives, the pesos given to the little hand reaching out, and the loving mother who is still trying to breast feed her toddler because it's all she has to give. We have Hope. God is always around us.
Last week we had the opportunity to work with Great Expectations from Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY, Sunshine's home church. She had a great time catching up with friends from her Adult Bible Fellowship class. It's always an awesome experience to get to know new people, and to have a week of ministry and fellowship. This team was 12 people strong from the ages of 30 all the way up to 72 years young! It seems like every week I learn something new or God reminds me of something old.This week was no exception.
We arrived in Hoyo de Bartola, "The Hole" for our construction assignment. Construction is very difficult in the hole because everything is carried down to the church/feeding center by hand. It is about a 50-70 foot drop in elevation down uneven stairs and approximately 250 yards from the street down to the Church. We were at the point in the construction project that the roofing materials of the church needed to be carried down. This included metal tubing and steel "I" beams. The guys knocked out the tubing with no problem, but then came the "I" beams! There were four 7 ft. beams and four 9-10 ft. beams. We estimated that they weighted about 700lbs and 900lbs respectively. Talk about manual labor! There were three of us that carried down the first four beams. We had to stop about half way down each time to rest and re-grip the beams. By the time we finished with the smaller of the beams, we were dead tired! We still had the four larger and much heavier beams to go.It finally dawned on us to stop and pray for God’s help and Chad led us in prayer. It went something like this…"Dear Lord, you know what we have to accomplish here and why we are doing it. It is for the church and the kids. Please send us some Angels to help carry this load or just send them to fly these beams down here for us. Amen." We all kind of laughed about the "angels flying them down there part." There were now four of us to carry the big ones down so we started. Saying that they were heavy and awkward is an understatement! Our team of four lifted the first beam and about half way down the stairs I was thinking that we would never make it. At that moment a Dominican man came up and grabbed the beam to help, about another 50 yards another man came to help.A few of the team members from Great Expectations were done with their project came over to help. By the time we brought the final beam down I was thinking, "Man, these are light as a feather."
We then took all eight beams and raised them by hand up two stories and onto the Church floor. We had to maneuver them through the school fence, down a small corridor, up onto a platform and then finally through the open Church windows. What a task!!
It wasn’t until we got done that it finally hit me and the Great Expectations team. We prayed and God answered our prayer! No, there weren’t literal angels but he sent two Dominican brothers to help us! We didn’t even get their names and never saw them again the rest of the week, but it was an experience that I will never forget. It is a reminder to us that no matter where we are or what we are doing, we have a heavenly Father that listens to our needs and will provide for us. I often have my own agenda and think I know how things should go. What I need to do is slow down and listen for God more. Sometimes it just takes an "I" beam and a daunting task to remind me.
Sunshine's Entry
I am having a great summer so far! Eric and I had a great time at our Partnership Conference. It was the first time Eric met a lot of our partners from Haiti. It was a great learning experience for us both. The topic of our break out sessions was "bearing fruit" in ministry. We had beach Olympics, and some major fun in the sun. It was a great time of fun and fellowship.
Right after conference, we jumped into our busy summer season. My first team of the summer was a dental team from Lakeland Dental College in Mattoon, Illinois. Let me share with you about how God provides...it always amazes me. So, about a month before this team was to arrive, I realized that we did not have the necessary tools for our visiting Dominican dentists to use (they were from a dental group here in Santiago called "Sonriesa"). I was able to contact a company in the states for replacements, but ended up with duplicate tools, not the missing pieces that I needed. I had one week before the team arrived. I talked with Lakelands team leader and she put me in contact with her dental representative that she works with. I placed one phone call, and ended up with close to $10,000.00 dollars worth of free dentaltools, hand pieces and things needed for our clinic like anesthesia, gloves, cotton swabs, cleaning solvent...It was amazing! Go God! The dental clinic cleaned 197 people's teeth, pulled 40 people's teeth, and educated about 400 students in our private christian school about dental care. We had too much fun!
June 2, Eric and I headed to Batey Ocho for a medical clinic. We worked with Eastview church from Rockford, Illinois. We had so much fun with them, and made some great friends. Our ministry is all about building relationships with church's from the states and national pastor's here in the D.R. and Haiti. It was awesome to watch Eastview build a relationship with Pastor Richard from Batey Ocho, whom they support. This was a full on medical clinic. The Batey's are communities built around sugar cane fields. We see a lot of machete wounds, mal nutrition, teen pregnancies, diabetes, high blood pressure, aids, and tuberculosis. We saw about 797 people in our medical clinic that week. We also gave out tons of hygiene packs and tooth brushes to the families. Everyone gets vitamins. More important, we hope that they all see God's love. That is why we are there.
Life is really desperate in many places in this country. When I see the children with their bellies bloated from starvation, or I see the little Haitian girl begging in the streets on a hot, sunny afternoon, it's still so hard for me to understand. I wonder to myself sometimes, "God, are you up there? I mean, I know you are but....why?" I think about all that I have and about what I think this child is missing. Sometimes all we see is what they don't have, we fail to see the Hope that God has provided. The medical relief teams, the food drives, the pesos given to the little hand reaching out, and the loving mother who is still trying to breast feed her toddler because it's all she has to give. We have Hope. God is always around us. Thursday, April 9, 2009
First Experience's
Please take a look at the video that Eric created for Crossroads Church. It has some great pictures of what Batey Cuchillo looks like. Enjoy!
It has been exciting to see Eric have so many new experiences. Being a missionary is hard work. You get to travel, see new places, and meet new and interesting people. BUT nobody can really prepare you for the spiritual overhaul God begins in your life, the emotional struggles your heart goes through when you witness hungry children, and you have nothing to give them. On top of all that, your a newlywed, and you are adjusting to being married as well. Thank goodness God has BIG shoulders!
Eric was able to go to the Batey's for the first time in March. Eric's number one "job" right now has been learning how to facilitate teams. Eric's previous job experience as Assistant General Manager for Minor League Baseball has prepared him well. He has the drive, determination, and the personality to be a good servant and leader that the teams need. So, Eric along with John (whom most of you know) was able to spend a week in Batey Nueve for a week with Crossroad's Church from Morgantown, West Virginia. The mission that week was to start construction on a church and feeding center for the community of Batey Cuchillo (which means knife in Spanish). Crossroad's Church partners with Pastor Fransico and his wife Yolanda. The community there is about 1,500 people. Life in the Batey's is hard. I can't even put it accurately into words. There is very little electricity, very little running water, hungry families, sickness, and it's so dusty all the time. Batey's are little communities that formed out in the middle of no where sugar cane is grown. Families would settle out near the sugar cane fields where there was work, and that is how these communities came into existence. So the opportunity for ministry and meeting the needs of the people are endless. You are also able to witness first hand the spiritual battle that goes on in the communities. In Batey Cuchillo alone there are three witch doctors living and practicing. Pastor Fransisco has recently started to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with one of the men. It's awesome to be able to work with these pastors and their families to help share the love of Christ where life can be so desperate.
While Crossroads was there, they are were able to witness 7 Haitian men and women be baptzed. Eric said that is was soo exciting to see them make a public commitment to serve Christ. Strong Christan men and women in these communities are so hard to come by. Life is so hard. A friend of mine who lives there, his name is Alejandro, said that "Strong Christian Husbands and Fathers" would change the batey's. That the children need "Christian" role models, so that they can grow up and be good husbands and fathers too! How much we take for granted! Two of the "Americans" on the team were so touched, that they also decided to be baptized with their Haitian brothers & sisters.
One other neat worship experience for Eric was that at church he was able to hear God praised in 5 different languages. The team from Crossroads sang some songs in English, there was one lady on the team named Marium who sang a song in German, and Pastor Francisco lead songs in Spanish, French, and Creole.
As for me, I have been busy with team activities as well. During the day, I have been cleaning and organizing in the medical clinic, getting our apartment settled, building relationships with women and kids in the community, and helping medical teams collect their medicines for the summer. It's been awesome to talk with medical team members and hear their stories of how God is working miracles. With the economy getting hit the way it has, it's awesome to hear stories of how generous people are being. It seems like every time some one calls me in a panic....a few prayers and phone calls later....it's all good!
Eric & I will be flying to the states April 14th! We are so excited. Our first stop is Omaha, NE...or as Eric says the "Land of Milk and Honey." I use to think so until I barely lived through a -30 winter with 55 mile and hour winds!! We will be in Omaha visiting Church's and spending some time with Eric's family. April 23rd we will be off to Louisville, KY...that's what I call the "Promised Land." We will be visiting my family and working the Kentucky Derby. SO, if you have not signed up to volunteer yet, there is plenty of time to. We still need about 20 more volunteers. You can go to GO Derby to sign up! We fly back to the D.R. May 10th and begin to prepare for our "Celebration of Partnership Conference, 2009. You can still sign up if you want to come to the conference, just go to our ministry website to find all the information that you need.
Please take a look at the video that Eric created for Crossroads Church. It has some great pictures of what Batey Cuchillo looks like. Enjoy!
It has been exciting to see Eric have so many new experiences. Being a missionary is hard work. You get to travel, see new places, and meet new and interesting people. BUT nobody can really prepare you for the spiritual overhaul God begins in your life, the emotional struggles your heart goes through when you witness hungry children, and you have nothing to give them. On top of all that, your a newlywed, and you are adjusting to being married as well. Thank goodness God has BIG shoulders!
Eric was able to go to the Batey's for the first time in March. Eric's number one "job" right now has been learning how to facilitate teams. Eric's previous job experience as Assistant General Manager for Minor League Baseball has prepared him well. He has the drive, determination, and the personality to be a good servant and leader that the teams need. So, Eric along with John (whom most of you know) was able to spend a week in Batey Nueve for a week with Crossroad's Church from Morgantown, West Virginia. The mission that week was to start construction on a church and feeding center for the community of Batey Cuchillo (which means knife in Spanish). Crossroad's Church partners with Pastor Fransico and his wife Yolanda. The community there is about 1,500 people. Life in the Batey's is hard. I can't even put it accurately into words. There is very little electricity, very little running water, hungry families, sickness, and it's so dusty all the time. Batey's are little communities that formed out in the middle of no where sugar cane is grown. Families would settle out near the sugar cane fields where there was work, and that is how these communities came into existence. So the opportunity for ministry and meeting the needs of the people are endless. You are also able to witness first hand the spiritual battle that goes on in the communities. In Batey Cuchillo alone there are three witch doctors living and practicing. Pastor Fransisco has recently started to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with one of the men. It's awesome to be able to work with these pastors and their families to help share the love of Christ where life can be so desperate.
While Crossroads was there, they are were able to witness 7 Haitian men and women be baptzed. Eric said that is was soo exciting to see them make a public commitment to serve Christ. Strong Christan men and women in these communities are so hard to come by. Life is so hard. A friend of mine who lives there, his name is Alejandro, said that "Strong Christian Husbands and Fathers" would change the batey's. That the children need "Christian" role models, so that they can grow up and be good husbands and fathers too! How much we take for granted! Two of the "Americans" on the team were so touched, that they also decided to be baptized with their Haitian brothers & sisters.One other neat worship experience for Eric was that at church he was able to hear God praised in 5 different languages. The team from Crossroads sang some songs in English, there was one lady on the team named Marium who sang a song in German, and Pastor Francisco lead songs in Spanish, French, and Creole.
As for me, I have been busy with team activities as well. During the day, I have been cleaning and organizing in the medical clinic, getting our apartment settled, building relationships with women and kids in the community, and helping medical teams collect their medicines for the summer. It's been awesome to talk with medical team members and hear their stories of how God is working miracles. With the economy getting hit the way it has, it's awesome to hear stories of how generous people are being. It seems like every time some one calls me in a panic....a few prayers and phone calls later....it's all good!
Eric & I will be flying to the states April 14th! We are so excited. Our first stop is Omaha, NE...or as Eric says the "Land of Milk and Honey." I use to think so until I barely lived through a -30 winter with 55 mile and hour winds!! We will be in Omaha visiting Church's and spending some time with Eric's family. April 23rd we will be off to Louisville, KY...that's what I call the "Promised Land." We will be visiting my family and working the Kentucky Derby. SO, if you have not signed up to volunteer yet, there is plenty of time to. We still need about 20 more volunteers. You can go to GO Derby to sign up! We fly back to the D.R. May 10th and begin to prepare for our "Celebration of Partnership Conference, 2009. You can still sign up if you want to come to the conference, just go to our ministry website to find all the information that you need.
Please take a look at the video that Eric created for Crossroads Church. It has some great pictures of what Batey Cuchillo looks like. Enjoy!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Cannonball!
Someone once told me that there are two types of people in this world, those who stick their big toe in the water to see if it is hot or cold, and those who run and do a cannonball! While I am sure that a person’s entire make-up can’t be defined by how they approach the water, I have found this to be an accurate description of the start to my new life in the Dominican Republic…Cannonball!
We ended up getting into Santiago a day late on January 1st, due to plane difficulties in Chicago, and the first team arrived on the 2nd.
The first team coming down was a small group of four from North
Carolina for a soccer clinic. It was lead by Caleb Narks, a professional soccer player who played at University of North Carolina. He also played professionally in Germany, Chile, Puerto Rico, and the in U.S. It was a huge blessing that Caleb, Danielle, Alexis and Casto all spoke fluent Spanish as it makes the clinic run much smoother.
On the first day of clinic, we really didn’t know how many kids to expect since soccer isn’t very popular amongst the Dominicans. It is however very popular in the Haitian community, so we knew that some of the kids would come from there. We had 40 kids on the first day of clinic, which was awesome! On the second day, our numbers grew by another 10 kids. Caleb was able to teach the kids basic soccer skills, and have them go thru drills during the sessions. At the end of each session the kids would play games against each other.
The whole team that came was very gracious and nice. They had brought enough cleats for us to pass out a pair for each kid at the clinic. You should have seen the faces on the kids when we fitted them for shoes! For all most everyone, it was their first pair of cleats. As the week continued on, Caleb and Casto would share with the kids that the reason that they were here wasn’t just for the clinic, but to share the love of Christ with them as well. The last day the players shared their testimony with the kids and had a great time of prayer and fellowship. Caleb and Casto played in a couple of games at night with two of the church outreach soccer teams. The purpose of the teams is to reach out to non-churched men by inviting them to play on the soccer teams. It is by this relationship with the pastors on the team that they start a relationship with the men and have opportunities to witness to them. Caleb scored the first goal of the game and it was very neat to see how he was able to gain instant credibility with the players. It gave him an awesome opportunity to share his testimony with them.
My roll for the whole week was a support one and it was a great way for me to get started. I helped build goal posts, dig holes, haul equipment, pass out water, pump up soccer balls, help get people to where they needed and many other things. I was there to take care of the detail things so that the team could maximize their time with the kids. It was a great week of service.
Sunshine was busy the first week unpacking our suitcases as we attempted to settle into our temporary house. She spent a great deal of time re-connecting with everyone here that she hadn’t seen in almost six months. It was cool to observe the ladies in the community come running up to Sunshine to greet her. It says a lot about her and how valuable her friendship is to them. Sunshine also spent time showing off the neighborhood medical clinic and talking with Vladimir, the Dominican physician on staff.
For the last week and for those weeks that there aren’t teams here, you may wonder what we are doing. For me it has consisted of working in the new ministry storage room constructing shelving out of wood. Dave Schwultz on staff has started a Men’s Fraternity group that meets every Friday. We have about 30 Dominican and American men that attend, including myself. On Saturday’s we have our sports team leadership Bible study that consists of three Americans and eight Dominicans. We have a church service every other Thursday that the Sports Ministry hosts right next to the Basketball court. Often times the guys just go right from the court to church and it has started to gain some good traction after being launched less than five months ago. Oh, Sunshine and I are also in Spanish classes twice a week for 5 ½ hours. The class is taught all in Spanish, our teacher doesn’t speak English, so it takes everything that I have to keep up! Plus there is about 5 hours of homework from each class.
Prayer requests- For the teams that are coming at the end of January and beginning of February, for our language studies, that God provides us a germinate place to live (the house we thought we were going to move into isn’t going to happen) and that our financial support would continue to grow.
Someone once told me that there are two types of people in this world, those who stick their big toe in the water to see if it is hot or cold, and those who run and do a cannonball! While I am sure that a person’s entire make-up can’t be defined by how they approach the water, I have found this to be an accurate description of the start to my new life in the Dominican Republic…Cannonball!
We ended up getting into Santiago a day late on January 1st, due to plane difficulties in Chicago, and the first team arrived on the 2nd.
The first team coming down was a small group of four from NorthCarolina for a soccer clinic. It was lead by Caleb Narks, a professional soccer player who played at University of North Carolina. He also played professionally in Germany, Chile, Puerto Rico, and the in U.S. It was a huge blessing that Caleb, Danielle, Alexis and Casto all spoke fluent Spanish as it makes the clinic run much smoother.
On the first day of clinic, we really didn’t know how many kids to expect since soccer isn’t very popular amongst the Dominicans. It is however very popular in the Haitian community, so we knew that some of the kids would come from there. We had 40 kids on the first day of clinic, which was awesome! On the second day, our numbers grew by another 10 kids. Caleb was able to teach the kids basic soccer skills, and have them go thru drills during the sessions. At the end of each session the kids would play games against each other.
The whole team that came was very gracious and nice. They had brought enough cleats for us to pass out a pair for each kid at the clinic. You should have seen the faces on the kids when we fitted them for shoes! For all most everyone, it was their first pair of cleats. As the week continued on, Caleb and Casto would share with the kids that the reason that they were here wasn’t just for the clinic, but to share the love of Christ with them as well. The last day the players shared their testimony with the kids and had a great time of prayer and fellowship. Caleb and Casto played in a couple of games at night with two of the church outreach soccer teams. The purpose of the teams is to reach out to non-churched men by inviting them to play on the soccer teams. It is by this relationship with the pastors on the team that they start a relationship with the men and have opportunities to witness to them. Caleb scored the first goal of the game and it was very neat to see how he was able to gain instant credibility with the players. It gave him an awesome opportunity to share his testimony with them. My roll for the whole week was a support one and it was a great way for me to get started. I helped build goal posts, dig holes, haul equipment, pass out water, pump up soccer balls, help get people to where they needed and many other things. I was there to take care of the detail things so that the team could maximize their time with the kids. It was a great week of service.
Sunshine was busy the first week unpacking our suitcases as we attempted to settle into our temporary house. She spent a great deal of time re-connecting with everyone here that she hadn’t seen in almost six months. It was cool to observe the ladies in the community come running up to Sunshine to greet her. It says a lot about her and how valuable her friendship is to them. Sunshine also spent time showing off the neighborhood medical clinic and talking with Vladimir, the Dominican physician on staff.
For the last week and for those weeks that there aren’t teams here, you may wonder what we are doing. For me it has consisted of working in the new ministry storage room constructing shelving out of wood. Dave Schwultz on staff has started a Men’s Fraternity group that meets every Friday. We have about 30 Dominican and American men that attend, including myself. On Saturday’s we have our sports team leadership Bible study that consists of three Americans and eight Dominicans. We have a church service every other Thursday that the Sports Ministry hosts right next to the Basketball court. Often times the guys just go right from the court to church and it has started to gain some good traction after being launched less than five months ago. Oh, Sunshine and I are also in Spanish classes twice a week for 5 ½ hours. The class is taught all in Spanish, our teacher doesn’t speak English, so it takes everything that I have to keep up! Plus there is about 5 hours of homework from each class.
Prayer requests- For the teams that are coming at the end of January and beginning of February, for our language studies, that God provides us a germinate place to live (the house we thought we were going to move into isn’t going to happen) and that our financial support would continue to grow.
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