In the City

I continue to enjoy a change of climate and scenery here in Guatemala, as well as our ENOC conference. It is always fun to see colleagues from other parts. Some are “new friends” and some are “old friends.”

Quest Group and others who have worked with me in San Francisco: Please remember Alex and his wife in San Francisco- they lost their baby just before I left. I wasn’t able to visit with them but was thankful to speak with them by phone a word of encouragement. We don’t know why things happen as they do, but we pray for strength and faith through this hard time.

Next weekend we have our annual mission meeting. I know it will be a great time of information sharing, fellowship and maybe some rest. (I doubt it for me since I am in charge of logistics.)

The 8th (a week from Tuesday) the Civil Defense director will be going with me to the annual national Baptist children’t camp and later to the youth camp. We are excited with his involvement. He will be speaking to the kids about being prepared, how they work to prevent disasters and also what we can do to respond to a disaster. I am thankful for Arias, my friend, and continue to ask you to pray for him that he might become a disciple. Pray also that this relationship with the Civil Defense and our national leaders will grow as we develop a disaster relief ministry.

I travel Tuesday back to Santiago. I am looking forward to being home! I will be getting ready for Cool Spring, for the annual meeting, making a trip out to Perdanales to check on our wel project, as well as spending some time with a  missionary family who is transfering to the DR and going to live in Santiago! Yeah! Please keep all these things in your prayer!

 

What a wonderful experience in Costa Rica! It is always a treat to see old friends, and this time I got to meet new ones! I was able to have lunch with Emily and Ryan, who will be coming to the Dominican Republic next December. They will be a wonderful addition to our team! Please pray for them as they work on their Spanish skills. 

I arrived in Guatemala this afternoon- it is chilly!! That is different for me. I have a fireplace in my hotel room! That is definately very different for me! The meetings I am participating in here are related to my role as ENOC- Entry Orientation Coordinator- helping our new missionaries through their first year on the field. I am excited for what I will learn and very soon I will be able to put it into practice- first with Ryan and Emily and then we have several other familes coming to the DR.

I continue to be amazed with the improvement of my vision.  I have thought a lot of our Lord who gave sight to the blind. What a gift!

Even though we have a few more days of June left, for me, I feel like I am in July already! Mainly because I am leaving today for Costa Rica and then Guatamala for a training conference and won’t be back until July 1.  Let me share with you what is happening in July so you can be praying for a very full and exciting month…

July 3: Meeting with the community in Perdanales regarding the digging of a well- will be an important meeting and we will be painting our new church!

July 6-12 Our annual mission meeting with the Caribbean missionaries will be held in Puerta Plata. We have just over 100 folks who will be attending and it promises to be an inspiring week as well as informative.

July 12-19  Cool Spring youth group will be working here in Santiago. They are helping to build a basketball court at one of our Santiago church plants (Palmar Arriba), will be leading VBS in 4 different communities using a Walk Through the Bible motif, will be doing sports evangelism, construction and helping to install one if not two water purification systems. Oh, and they are helping me troubleshoot some “issues” with our water purification trailers! It will be an eventful week!

July 19-26  St. Giles youth group will be working in Santo Domingo with Don Gregorio and Pastor Melvin. We are excited about encouraging them and working with their youth group. This past year they have been able to reach out to the youth and have 30 youth participating together. We will be doing VBS, construction, prayerwalking and sports evangelism in three different locations. We are also working with them to help facilitate the purchase of their first lot/building.  Pastor Melvin’s wife is scheduled for a cesarian tomorrow and they are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their third child! A girl!

July 31: I fly to Boston to begin my Stateside assignment!  There is a lot to be done to get my house and “stuff” in order before leaving for 6 months!  But come what may (or not) I will be boarding AA flight #894 at 7:30am! 

I know I am going to get to see many of you- I will be in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, New England and who knows where else. If we haven’t already made plans, please get in touch- I would love to visit while I am back. And thanks for keeping all these ministries in your prayers!

Today has been awesome- my vision continues to improve and the headaches have diminished. I am so amazed at the whole process!! I gave my glasses away yesterday- Sol needs to get new glasses so now all she has to do is get new lenses.

Worship went very well- I shared a message about Barnabas- a man who lived out four important verbs in his Christian walk: Give, Risk, Encourage, and Trust.  Please continue to pray for the church in Villa de Yaque- we have had a number of challenges to confront but they are growing through it all. Not long I asked you to pray for two ladies who were at odds- they have now reconciled and what a blessing it is!  We are nearly finished enclosing the BB court with a chain link fence. The place is looking awesome!

I received my MagicJack.com  My new Florida phone number is 941-244-6280. You can call me for the cost of calling a Florida number- if my computer is on, I will get your call- if I am home, I will answer and if not, you can leave a voice mail. 

The surgery went very well yesterday. There was only minor discomfort. The worst part of it was riding to and from the capital- we spent nearly 5 hours traveling for a 10 minute procedure!  What amazes me is that less than 24 hours after the surgery, I am feeling perfectly fine (minor headache) and have 20/15 vision (as compared  to 20/100 at this time yesterday).  And the procedure just took about 5 minutes per eye!  Bascially, after the computerized test was done on my eyes, they made a small incision on the skin of my cornea, lifted the resulting flap back, beamed the laser directly onto my cornea for about 2 minutes, and then closed the flap back, washed my eye with a sponge, and then did the next eye! And I left the surgery room seeing as if I had my contact lenses in or my glasses, with just a little blurriness due to the anesthesia!  Like I said, it is amazing what technology can do!  The doctor told me this morning at my follow-up exam that even after 12 years of doing the surgery, he remains competely amazed at the process. Yesterday he saw me with 20/100 vision, today I have 20/15 vision and he looked into my eyes and couldn’t even see that a surgery had been done! 

The only draw back to this is that I now will need reading glasses along wth the rest of the folks in my age category! 

I am going to try to stay quiet this weekend and hopefully catch you all up on some ministry developments from this past week.

Where do the weeks go? I wouldn’t have guessed it had been a whole week since I last updated!  This past week has been a busy time with getting my medical clearance work done- and out of that came the opportunity to have the eye laser surgery done. I am leaving right now for Santo Domingo where they will do the surgery and I should be home by 4pm. Keep me in your prayers if you happen to check this! I will write more tonight!

What a fruitful week this has turned out to be!  My trip in teh earlier part of the week was great- I was able to meet with several pastors, work out plans for future projects, dream a little bit of what could be, we got our legal papers for the house/land in Nueva Rosas, met with some of the landlords there and have begun getting them involved in helping make the well a reality, and have an itemized cost for building the well- we took a well-digger with us. Tuesday’s trip out to Perdanales was a LONG day- 15 hours of mostly driving but we got a lot accomplished and enjoyed our time to visit.  Wednesday Pastor Melvin and I were able to find just the kind of housing (for the volunteer team) we were looking for and very close to our work sites to boot! 
I continue to be excited about our volunteer projects this summer. I ordered another water purifier today for the Cool Spring group. 

I had an incredibly exciting meeting with Dr. Cornelio- I thought it wasn’t going to work out but I am so glad I persisted because I am now convinced she is part of God’s plan for the foundations work and our medical projects.   Let me share with you some broad strokes of where I think God is leading us. We want to engage more of our medical partners in our ministry here in the DR- I am requesting 20 medical teams for next year- 10 medical/10 dental.  I have been praying and searching for how we can take that ministry deeper. I am now in the process of putting together two mobile labs: one will be for the dental clinics- equipment which will allow us to do restoration work as well as cleaning and pulling teeth.  The other lab will be for glaucoma and cataract screenings and we are trying to put together the equipent to bring in teams to do cataract surgery several times a year. That is a huge unmet need here in the DR.  Obviously, there are details and details and more details that have to be worked out. Equipment needs to be secured, etc. BUT, I sense this is not “my project” but something that has come from God’s heart so I am very confident He will make it all happen. Please join me in praying for all the issues to be worked out, for the equipment that needs to be acquired, and for the volunteers to help it all come into place. 

I am leaving in the morning to make a visit in Nagua and from there will head to Santo Domingo in order to leave early Tuesday morning for Perdanales. It looks like that trip will FINALLY take place- I have talked to the well-digger twice to make sure there is no mix-up.
 
And then on Wednesday I will be meeting with several folks about upcoming projects- with Pastor Melvin and with a Dominican doctor regarding some medical projects. More about that later.  I will either be home Wednesday evening or sometime on Thursday.  I will do my best to check email as available but don’t count on it! Any emergency you can call me on my cell 809-258-6353.

I wanted to let you know that if you have an aol email address, for some reason all my emails are being sent back. It must be some sort of problem with my server. Wierd! I will try to get it fixed but in the meantime please know I am trying to respond and can’t!  If you have another email account I can send something to, please let me know.  It is only aol accounts that are coming back undeliverable.

I have been preparing for the summer ministries with Cool Spring and St. Giles this week. It is so exciting to see how volunteer groups minister so effectively together with our churches here.  There are many incredible developments I could share, but let me just share this one because I need you to be in prayer this next week.  (I will share more at a later time.)

Most you regulars to the DR may not know Pastor Melvin- he is pastoring a relatively new church in the capital. I met up him this winter in a meeting and was impressed with their ministry and yet troubled (maybe not the best word) about their rental situation- a new church, paying rent for a building which basically took all their monthly offerings. I never have liked renting so immediately began asking the Lord to change that situation. And lo and behold, we are on the verge of seeing a change. Through the church’s savings, some help from St. Giles, and a lot of God’s power, Pastor Melvin is about to ask the owner of the building they are renting about purchasing it.  Please join me this weekend praying for him, for his congregation (about 60), and for this Christian owner of the property to open the door for them to purchase this building, doubling their space (they only rent the upstairs part) and getting away from throwing their money away in rent.

Melvin also told me, “It is so incredible to see how God provides. So and so usually does our VBS and they can’t this year, and this church promised us their leftover VBS material, but somehow it went to another church, and we were left without. And now this church is coming to lead us not in one but in three VBS!”  God is amazing, isn’t He?

Please keep this church, Don Gregorio, in your prayers, and the St Giles church as they make their final preparations.  They come July 19-26.