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.

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!

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.

Merry Christmas!

This is truly a wonderful time of the year for Sunshine and me as we close out chapters in our lives and start new ones. Sunshine and I can both get caught up in the holiday frenzy and the chaos of all the changes in our lives but we both love this time of year as we focus on Christ’s birth. We celebrate the fact that He became a man to ultimately die for everyone’s sins so that we can be restored to God. We rejoice in His birth, for He is the “Reason for the Season”. It is our prayer that as we spend time with family and friends that we never lose sight of that.

After spending the last two months in Louisville, KY we are celebrating Christmas in Nebraska. We had a great time in Kentucky visiting with supporters, friends, training with the ministry and making new contacts. It was a very busy time while we were there, but Sunshine enjoyed getting to spend some quality time with her family. While we are in Nebraska, we continue to raise support and recruit teams to go to the Dominican Republic.

Happy New Year!
Sunshine and I will ring in the New Year in a new city as we will depart for Santiago, Dominican Republic on New Year’s Eve. It is fitting that we start this new chapter in our lives in our new home. We are both so excited to go and become a small part of what God is doing there on the island of Hispainola. As we prepare to go please be in prayer for us. Prayer that we will be used by God for His glory, and prayer for Sunshine to continue to build relationships within the medical community for further outreach. Please pray for me as I learn a new language, that I may be an asset to the ministry and that I build life changing relationships with both the Dominican’s and Haitian's. It will be an adjustment on all fronts, but God provides and God gives us nothing more than we can handle.

We thank each and every one of you that we have gotten to know. We thank you for your faithful support of what God has put on our hearts for us to do in the Dominican. Know that you and your families are in our prayers weekly and it is our prayer that you have a blessed 2009.

Please enjoy a Christmas video below. It doesn't cost a thing! It's our Christmas present to you!

Merry Christmas!!

What a crazy and great time it has been for Sunshine and I the last two months. We have spent the last month in Louisville KY so that I can train and get to know G.O. Ministries better. We are also spending the time fundraising so that we can be full time missionaries in the field. We will be here in Kentucky until the first week in December and then head back to Omaha for several weeks and then off to the Dominican Republic on December 31^st.

At the end of August I resigned from my job with the Omaha Royals (AAA Baseball) team to start my transition into full time ministry. It was a difficult decision to make, I loved what I did in baseball and enjoyed my career but I could no longer ignore the call to make an eternal impact on the world. Many people have asked me about how I came to this decision, so I thought I would share it with you.

Restoration:

It was the first Thursday of September 2003 and I found myself in a place that I never thought I would be…the ICU. A short nine months earlier I had be diagnosed with a schwanoma tumor. While the tumor was benign it was in a difficult spot, in my right ear drum to the base of the brain. This was my second surgery for the tumor, it was supposed to be one and done but they ran into some problems on the first surgery. Turned out the silly thing was bigger than they thought, so I was back for round two.

I remember three things about that night in the ICU. First it was opening night of the NFL so of course I asked the nurse to turn on the game. I remember the Redskins were playing somebody, but I don’t even know the score of the game. It was on for the principal of the fact that if a game was on TV, I needed to have it on no matter what state of condition I was in. I remember asking to see my parents; they had gone out to eat! I forgave them after realizing that it was very late and the surgery had lasted about 10+ hours. The last thing I remember was having a conversation with God.

My parents raised me in a Christian home and my mom led me to the Lord when I was eight. Now in my adult years my faith was still with me, but it was on the back burner. I had my moral compass, but wasn’t involved in church or much of anything outside of my sports career. Well the tumor was my wake up call to say the least. After my first surgery I was angry, mad and just depressed. I was supposed to be fine! How could this be happening! That was my daily thoughts and process as a quickly head into a tailspin. That was until Carl Goodman stepped in to a networking group that I was a member of. Carl was a guest of another member and he was also the Associate Pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church. He didn’t invite me to come, but something about him being at our meeting was internally telling me to get off my backside and go to church. Carl was a good enough guy, that later became a good friend, so I went to visit Lakeside Baptist Church. I slowly got back involved in church, but was just sticking my toes into the water. Then it came time for the second surgery.

The conversation with God was more like the tipping point in my life. I remember crying out to God on that night “Ok, ok, ok, you have my attention. Whatever you want me to do, I will do it. I can’t carry this load anymore. I am yours.” That was it and I can honestly say that it felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders.

Life did change for me after that. I became more and more involved at church, started volunteering and made some life changes. I also tried to utilize my role at work for Christ by helping organize and promote Faith & Family nights. I eventually got back on my feet health wise and I was a new person. Still human with struggles just like everyone else, but I had a renewed purpose to live for Christ. I turned over areas of my life one by one to Christ and made improvements until he challenged me for another area. It is never an easy thing to do, but once you put aside our human emotion it is amazing how blessed you can be.

I would NEVER do that!

I am sure that I have said I would never do something a million different times, but I only remember two of those times. In part, because I was so dogmatic in my proclamation about each one of the things I would never do! The first was when I was told a friend of mine was going to Grace University. I was like good for him, but I would NEVER go to school there! Only to end up going there just a short 16 months later. The second was a good friend of mine from Jr. High, Eric Gibson, was fulfilling a lifelong dream to become a missionary. I uttered the same thing…..That is great for him, I know that is what he wanted to do, but I would NEVER be a missionary. God must have a sense of humor, because he had to be laughing at me during those two times.

Eric Gibson would send me updates about his work as a school teacher in Africa. It was on one of these newsletters that had information about a new sports ministry that was starting up. I was like that would be cool, if I ever did something like actually become a missionary I could see myself doing that. I even went as far as to look at the website and then put it out of my mind. I was far too busy with my career in sport s to worry about that.

Several years went by between looking at the website and meeting Sunshine. I never gave much thought to the missionary thing until I met her. We decided early on in our relationship that we would both be open to each other’s career path, her working with missions in the Dominican Republic and me with sports in the US. She was back in the US for a break, so there wasn’t much of a sacrifice on my part, until I fell in love and she left to go back to the Dominican Republic. She asked me to come and visit, so in February of 2007 I went to help with at Baseball Clinic. After spending a week working and helping out I knew that this was something that I could do for the rest of my life.

The biggest hurdle to get over was my own ego. I had many conversations with God about why I couldn’t become a missionary. My career was going great, I don’t know the language, I am not good outside my comfort zone, I can be the guy that gives to missionaries . The big one was look God I am don’t see good out of one eye now, I am pretty much deaf in one ear and my face doesn’t work right how can I help. The really boiled down to excuses. God had blessed me with my health and everything that I had, the job, possessions and even Sunshine so it became clear that he was asking me to give it all up for him.

I don’t have a clue, but I have a purpose.

Together Sunshine and I decided to go for it which is where we are at today. People ask me all the time what I will be doing in the Dominican. I have an idea based on my experience and what other missionaries of told me, but let’s be honest….I don’t have a clue. That hit home to me about the first week into this journey as I sat trying to learn Spanish. The last ten years everyday that I walked into the office I knew what I was doing. Sure, each day can be different and curves thrown at you but for the most part I knew what I was doing and I knew how to get there. Now there are times that I feel like I don’t know my right from my left, up from down or 1, 2, 3, from uno, dos, tres. The thing that I do have in life is a purpose! A purpose to share the love of God by reaching out to others, it isn’t about me but about what he has in store for my life and the lives that we all can reach. God says,” Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6.

This is part of the process that has led me to this point. Sunshine and I are so excited about what the future holds for us over the next weeks, months and years. Sunshine will post an update next month about a great story from her trip this past summer. As we head into November it isn’t too early to start remembering all the things you are thankful for. I challenge you to not just think about them, but if they are about someone let them know, if they are for something then share it with others, but also be forever thankful of God’s love for us.

June was an exciting month for me for a few reasons. We had basketball camp on June 25th, and my husband's brother Charles came over to help coach basketball camp(Charles is the tall guy on the right). At this point, I had not seen my husband for 3 weeks, and so hugging Charles was the next best thing! Charles was the first member of my husband's family to see the ministry, and I had a lot of fun watching him have an amazing time.


I really enjoy sports camp. I am not much of an athlete myself...as a matter of fact, I want to share a little story with you. When I came down to 2005 on a construction trip, we played softball. Now I know that I am not an athlete, but I was cajoled into playing, and so since I didn't want to be a party pooper...I played. It was a hot day, and it was the American's verses the Dominican's. The Dominican's are a lot of fun, but anything involving a ball and bat is serious business. So the bases are loaded, we really needed a run, I hit the ball and took off for first base! SO, did I mention that I am not a graceful runner either? I was so entertaining playing this game that the Dominican's gave me their team ball and everyone signed it. I tried to find the picture of me running in this game that my Jen took (my co worker with GO) but
I must have lost it along the years!
On a more serious note..we really had a great week. This was the first time we had a All Sports camp week. There was volleyball, baseball, aerobics, and basketball all going on at the same time! We'd meet every morning at the same court for chapel, break up into teams for training sessions, have memory verse sessions, and then in the afternoon they play games against each other. I was involved in the memory verse sessions, and it was a lot of fun. It was interesting to see how many of the campers were Christians. I had fun sharing with them funny stories from my child hood in church and I encouraged them to share with me as well. My role foremost is first aid nurse. There is always lots of scrapes, but this is the first year that we had to give stitches. Those kids were tough. I remember holding their hands, and telling them not to look, and helping them take nice deep breathes! I really enjoyed cuddling and loving on these kids! Since my job is facilitating the teams, the team members are usually the ones who get to do all the loving on them...but as we all know..there is nothing better that snuggling with a child on your lap. Especially these little kids. They look forward to seeing the "Americanos" coming because they know for a little while they are going to get somebodies undivided attention. It's not that their parents don't love them. Most of these communities are single moms who have 3 or more kids to take care of. If they are lucky, the dads are away working and sending money home. More often than not though, the dads are either strung out on drugs, alcoholics, or have just abandoned them.



We hosted another medical clinic July 8th, they were a brand new church(Pathways) from Fort Wayne, Indiana. That week was a pretty special week for us. Not only did we have a medical clinic, but we also had a special clinic for the hearing impaired. As a lot of you know, we have a couple who works with GO that their twin girls were born profoundly deaf. Jeff and Vickie were flying in for a visit anyway, so they came early to be a part of this clinic. We had two audiologists there with us. They spent the week having hearing screenings and fitting children and adults who were either hearing impaired or completely deaf. People brought their children from all over Santiago to have their hearing tested. There are really no words to describe the look on a childs face when he hears sounds for the first time! Most of these kids were around the age of 8 years old...and hearing sound for the first time....I just can't imagine it. We saw about 650 people in the medical clinic that week, about 65 were screened for hearing issues, and 20 recieved hearing aides.
I am amazed at how huge God is. How He pays attention to all the details, just how faithful He always is. My prayer is that as we are working to build relationships to spread the gospel of Christ, that the people we are ministering to...see His reflection in our lives. It is the sole reason that we do what we do. As I look back over the summer, I hope that I did a good job. I hope that as I played with the kids, cleaned wounds, and worked with the teams...in everything I did....I did for the Glory of God. It's a hard task to accomplish everyday. There are days when I am really proud of myself. Then there are days when you just want it to be all about yourself, and I wonder when I am going to get it right! On those days I think of the scripture in Malachi 3:3, "He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify sunshine, refining her like gold and silver, so that she may once again be a acceptable sacrifice to the Lord."

Well, the summer has finally kicked off! I arrived here May 27th, and I have had an exciting time of ministry so far. We have had three medical clinics, and every one of them have been so incredible!

June 3rd, was the arrival of my first medical clinic of the summer. We had this clinic at a church in a area of Santiago called Los Guandules (means "the peas") I'd like to tell you why this place is called "the peas" but nobody knows. What I can tell you is this church is a beautiful place. The property where the church is located, use to be a gambling house and disco. The ministry purchased the property and began building a church in 2004. Not only does the church host Dominican and Haitian church services, we have a feeding center and the church is used for Pastor training as well. We had two days of medical clinic there where we treated about 1,000 people! It was awesome! While these clinics are going on, we encourage the team members to talk with their patients, and to also pray with them. We can give them free medicine, but nothing beats the power of prayer! There was a lady that apparently came on the first day of medical clinic. She had a protruding growth in her throat. As the team members gathered around her, they began to pray. The next day of clinic, the lady came back. She said that she went to the hospital and had xrays done (we had told her that was what she needed to do) and when the doctors ran the tests, THEY COULDN'T FIND THE GROWTH!!
On June 10th, I had my second medical clinic. This team had a pretty unique story. The team started out with 10 people(they were a family) who wanted to go on a missions trip. A member of this family, she was the mother, well her husband died. The mom decided to sell some of the property her husband left her, and helped to fund this mission trip which ended up numbering about 50 people. Half of this team worked on construction, while the other half of this team was stuck with me! They were such a big group, we broke them down into two medical teams. One team went to Los Perez, and the other half worked here in my community of Hoya del Ciamito. In all, we saw about 850 people that week. About 150 of those people were treated by two dentists that came. So, in two weeks time we were able to show the love of Christ to 1,850! Although we have not heard of any conversions yet, thats a lot of seeds planted.

There are so many things that impress me about life here. I suppose that the thing that really touches my heart is how that in so much poverty, you see the beauty of God. That He has not forsaken this place. I call these my "beautiful moments." One day last week, we took the medical team down to "the Hole". The Hole is a land fill where about 650 families live. Raw sewage runs through the streets, live animals relieve them selves where ever they want, it smells, and it is a area where drugs, alcohol, and prostitution is a way of life. As I was leading a team down to the church and feeding center that we are building there, I stopped so that the team could go ahead of me. I stopped to talk with this cute very elderly woman. As we were talking, I heard this little, bitty chirping noise. I looked down and I noticed this stream of sewage running down the path, and in the middle of it was this cute, little, fuzzy baby chick. It was trying to walk upstream, and was getting caught in the current. This sweet, little old lady bends over and fishes the little chick out of the nastiness, and with such gentleness, puts the chick into her house. It was so touching...that in the middle of all this poverty, that this little old lady had any compassion left. I can't imagine growing up in a place like that. Had she been there most of her life? Probably. Was she a Christian? I don't really know. But to me in that moment, she represented the face of God. She was the picture of wisdom and tenderness. And I think about all the times my life gets mucked up, and I get myself in a swirling mass, and God plucks me right out again.

I love going to church here. I love that God understands every language, and that every Sunday, He hears millions of people worship in so many different languages. A few Sundays ago, I was sitting in a Haitian church. Haitian people are so beautiful, and I love to watch their expressive worship. Haitians are really mistreated in this country. They flee to this country, because they see it as a chance for a better life. In Haiti, over two thousand people inhabit each square mile of tillable soil, and what farmers manage to grow, is taxed heavily to and from market. Here in the Dominican Republic, they are considered the inferior race, and they do the labor in this country that no Dominican would ever do. They are refugees here. Their history has been a long one of oppression, deprivation, and suffering. Where we live, it's pretty peaceful, but every now and then we hear stories of the horrible treatment of Haitians, and of the injustice that they have to endure. That's the reason I love to visit their churches. The church that I visit here in Santiago, is a cement building with a HOT tin roof, very little breeze, and the building is packed. You have a people that are strangers in a strange land just so that they can survive. As they begin to sing in Creole, you can feel Gods love and His presence.... I am always awed. I ask my self if I could rise above my circumstances if I were in their shoes. Could you?