As I press pause on the last six months and take a moment to reflect on all God has done over the last six months it has been such an incredible time. I also realize that it has been entirely too long since our last update. It always amazes me on how life and ministry can take off and before we even aware so much time has passed. The last short-term trip of the year has left to head back to the States and I wanted to take a moment to recap for you all that went on this summer and fall.

We had 36 teams come down on short term trips, now that is a lot of ministry! God blessed us the last six months and construction wise we have been able to accomplish great things. We built four rock cages to help protect the Church in Hoyo de Bartola from the ever changing and flooding river. Continued construction on three homes and they are now set to be finished and moved into by the end of November. We started building a new Church/nutrition center and dorm in Phaeton Haiti. Continued the construction of Church’s and feeding centers in Batey Nueve & Batey Cuchilla, also worked on the parsonage in Halto del Yaque. There were also a lot of little projects like painting homes as part of community outreach in Panta Suenta, building basketball courts, starting the process of building a baseball field for children to have a safe place to play. G.O. also started the demolition of our old central church in order to build the new three story medical facility.

That was just the construction part! We also had many, many children’s ministry, three dental clinics, four medical clinics, sports outreach, family counselors, Pastoral training, music training, sports outreach and so much more. G.O. has been so blessed to be able to start another nutrition center for needy children, and we now have 11 centers on the island. Under the direction of Will Partin, our sports ministry has started a daily basketball clinic four days a week. It is great to see so many kids learning discipline, basketball and the love of God via devotions by the coaches.

This past year we have also seen our main central church move from our old building to our new temporary sanctuary. We have also watched as God has moved the hearts of so many as we have gone from 75 people of well over 150+ and are already out of space! What a great problem to have as we get ready to start the second floor of the building and future main sanctuary. The youth of the Church are on fire for God and are representing a huge portion of the congregation. We have had countless new people joining the Church and the impact hasn’t just been with the Dominican and Haitians. As many of you know the Americans who come down on the short term trips are often searching for God as well. Just with the teams that I knew if we had eleven people accept Christ and be baptized while on their trip. Can I get an AMEN on that!

It has been a great time of ministry! We are looking forward to a short break and having teams start up again in the New Year. This past year G.O. Ministries also spent some time laying out a new vision statement and over the next month I will be updating the blog and breaking down the 5 key components of it. It is extremely important to know why we do what we do and how it plays into moving God’s Kingdom forward. So stay tuned for more…….

We will be heading to the states in the next few weeks. Sunshine and Colton will fly back to the states 11/28, and I will follow them in about a week on 12/5. We are looking forward to a time of relaxation, spending time with family, seeing friends, and celebrating the holidays with family.

We wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! We are all so blessed!

My summer of Medical clinics kicked off with Woodlawn Christian Church. I spent two afternoons with Nancy the Occupational Therapist and her assistants. This was our first OT clinic and I wasn't real sure what to expect. Let me just say that I was wowed. Those two afternoons we saw children with Cerebal Palsy(minor to really bad), club feet, and one little girl that was so crippled, neglected, and malnourished that it just broke your heart. Each child was assessed and dianosed. Most of the patients had been recieving therapy and good care. You could tell that they were loved and well cared for. After the assessment and diagnosis, Nancy would go through her toy bag, and would begin working with each child to see if they were age appropriate in thier coordination, checking thier reflexes, loving on them, and praising the parents for a job well done. One little girl was brought in by her grandmother. She was about one year old, about 28 pounds, had a mop of curly black hair and went by the name "princessa". She lived with her grandmother, as the little girl's father was dead. Princessa had been born with a blood cot in her brain, she didn't have very good muscle movement, couldn't hold her head up very well, and she had a lazy eye. But boy was she loved! Her grandmother would clap her hands and start singing the song " La Cucaracha" and this little girl was laugh and giggle and make this hissing noise. It was adorable. The grandmother was so good with her. Nancy showed her how to do exercises with her, and by just talking to her on the opposite side of her lazy eye would force "Princessa" to to use her lazy eye muscles more and strengthen her neck muscles as well.

The following two weeks I had medical/dental clinics with Harris Praire Church and the Dr. Veal dental team. Harris Praire's first stop was to Pastor Nico's church where we saw about 250 patients for medical/dental. On the second day we visited a rural community called "Cinco" and treated about 90 patients. On our third day of clinic we visited a Haitian church plant in the downtown Santiago area. We saw about 180 patients that day. It really was a great day there. We were introduced to the Pastor of the church (about 50 people)and learned that by having a medical/dental clinic we were really putting the church on the map. Every person who walked through the door of that church left knowing about service times, and had a chance to meet the Pastor of the church. The church was located in the business district, and was extremely busy all the time. It's hard to say how many people in the church, or who visited the clinic were there as refugees. It was a good feeling to know that we were a small of what God is doing for the Haitian commiunity in downtown Santiago.

Dr. Veal's dental team was a part of our basketball camp week. In 2 1/2 days of dental clinic we saw about 150 patients. The dentists were there to pull teeth, and they also did some cleanings as well. There really are few of us who enjoy going to the dentist...I am one of them. As I was watching our dentists pull teeth, I was thinking about the amount of faith it takes for those people to get into that chair. In the states you have xrays, they speak your language, and it's a great comfort to know that you know exactly whats going on all the time. That's not true here in one of these clinics. Sure we have Spanish and Creole translators...but it takes a lot of gumption and pain to blindly put your trust in a strangers hands. Know what I mean? Some of these patients teeth were so bad that they spent hours getting them out. The other day Eric and I were walking to a friends house to have dinner. One of our Haitian construction workers named Fran stopped me and smiled. He said "Thanks again for helping me get rid of this tooth. I feel like I have a new life without the pain I was in." The picture above...that's Felix in the chair, and that's me holding his tooth. Of course I had nothing to do with it! I mean I hear the sounds of those tendons breaking and I feel faint! Literally. One of the dentists that was working asked me to say a prayer for a young guy who was in the chair getting his tooth pulled, he was shaking like a leaf. So I am standing there at the head of the dental chair trying to pray and all I can hear is the sound of tendons breaking. I had to quickly walk before I vomited on the patient!

It's been great to walk around our community here and recognize the people that I saw in the OT and dental clinic. I see the moms and ask how their kiddos are doing. They smile and say that they are well and so grateful for the advice they recieved. I see the folks from the dental clinic and ask them if they are having any pain...big grins light up their faces! I love it that I had even a small part in that!!

Faith, Future and putting it into Practice

I wanted to share with you some things that have been on my heart and let you know where we are at as a family working in ministry.

2 Corinthians 5:7 “We live by faith, not by sight”

Faith is a word that at its core is the very fabric of belief in God. Looking at the words FaithFaithful it is used over 300 times in New Testament. and People put their Faith in Jesus, their Faith healed them, Faith guides them and the Lord is Faithful to all his promises. With the basis of our religion and all the references to Faith in the New Testament why then is Faith so hard? I believe that if you ask the majority of all people, Christian and non-Christian, that they would say that they have Faith in something. Conversely all Christians have Faith in the fact that Jesus was the son of God, he died for our sins and rose on the third day. The verse above 2 Corinthians 5:7 provides great insight to the fact that we can’t see Christ here with us, but we have Faith that his presence with us is a reality and that is how we are to live.

So why do I say living in Faith is so hard? Most people, and at times even I, think it is very easy. As I look back it was easy to put my complete trust and Faith in Christ when I accepted Him. It wasn’t until later that it became hard because He wants us to relinquish areas of our life that we simply don’t want to put our full Faith into believing that He will take care of us. At the root it is because we are control freaks! It is easy to be in Church and say that I trust the Lord and have Faith that He will provide. It is another thing completely when you have $5 left in your checking account and $400 medical co-pay due. We rack our brains on trying to figure out how WE are going to fix it and often times forget about the most basic thing of including God into the picture. I know that I do this a lot and people think that because you are a missionary that we are sort of super Christian, but in reality we have struggles just like everyone else. Jesus tells us many times in the New Testament that if we ask in His name that He will do it, John 14:14 “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Pretty cut and dry right! We ask, then after period of time we doubt and don’t have Faith in the very thing that He said that He would do. This is where I find a great challenge, to have complete Faith in his provisions.

A great question is, that if Faith is a cornerstone of our way of life, what areas are you actively living out in it?

Future

As we mentioned in the previous blog it is our hearts desire to move back to the Dominican
Republic on a full-time basis. When we started to split our years by spending part of it in the Dominican and part in Louisville we agreed to a two year commitment. While it has been wonderful to serve in the home office it has also been made clear that our hearts are with those whom we work with and serve in the Dominican. Sunshine and I have been talking a lot about the Future and what we feel that God has in store for us. It has been much more challenging than I expected as we always expect a clear cut answer. Often times I feel that it would be so much easier if the answer was clear, but alas that is part of where Faith comes back into play.

What we do know is that the work that we do in the Dominican is a vital part of who we have become. We both want to continue to invest in the lives of the Dominican’s and Haitians that we have gotten to know over the years. Spend time at the feeding centers playing and teaching the kids, work with the children in the sports ministry, helping build homes, churches, feeding centers, reaching thousands via medical clinics and reaching the lost for Christ. As much as we love the people of Hispaniola we equally love working with the teams of Americans that come down to serve. We have a deep rooted passion to serve and to continue to serve in this capacity.

In Practice

Here is where Faith and our Future come together. We are putting our Faith in God that He will provide the resources for us to realize the Future.

Matthew 7: 7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

We are fervently in prayer, and ask that you pray as well, that God will help open doors so that we financially can continue to do ministry without going into debt. We were blessed before joining the ministry to start fund raising for about 10 months and built up a reserve. Our first year of ministry we were very close to our minimum budget needed and we were able to offset the small difference from the reserve. After that first year is when the economy in the US took a big step back and unfortunately we had several supporters whom could no longer continue on with us. Simultaneously we have had a large increase in expenses to our budget. All that being said we had a monthly shortfall of $1000 per month in support. We were able to add some supporters over the last couple of months and that allowed us to get that total down to $700 per month. In addition, our reserve was set to run out in July of 2010, but it was amazing to see that as each month that passed God has provided one time gift for us to where we have not run out of funds for the last seven months. We recently received our last ministry statement and we are down to $100 left in our reserve. This is a very difficult position to find ourselves in, but we have Faith that God will continue to provide for us. The most difficult part is checking our own ego, the nervousness of asking for financial support, and know that we can ask you as brothers and sister in Christ to help us meet our need.

Here is what we are asking:

First: Prayer that is always first and foremost. Pray that God will allow doors to be opened and hearts softened so that we will receive what is needed financially. Pray that the 115 letters we sent out last month would be fruitful. Also, since you are praying already, pray for those lives that we will come in contact with this year.

Secondly: For those of you that already support us we want you to know how appreciative we are of that. We would like to ask you if possible to make an increase to your giving. Also, and perhaps more importantly if you know of anyone else who might be interested in supporting missionaries that you share our passion with them. We need advocates on our behalf to take our work and share it with small groups, churches and individuals.

Thirdly: We ask those of you who are not supporters of ours to consider becoming a partner with us TODAY! As mentioned above we need to raise $700 a month in donations or $8,400 per year. I know for some it is easy to budget in a monthly amount, but for others it is easier to send in a one-time gift per year. Either way is awesome!

You can send in your gifts to the address below, Please make all checks out to G.O. Ministries but remember to put Eric & Sunshine Leach in the memo line. You can also click on the “Give” tab on the top of the blog page and follow the steps there. As always you can contact us and we would be happy to send you a copy of our ministry budget, as we always want to have transparency in our ministry.

Peace & Blessings

G.O. Ministries

11501 Plantside Dr. Suite #14

Louisville, KY 40299