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. 
