A Little Piece of an Old Home

As we have groups come in here it is always a great surprise to get little reminders of things of the past that you love so much.

Cloverdale church of Christ is here right now. They are from Searcy, Arkansas. This is the third time that they have been here while I was here and it is so nice to see some familiar faces of people that have been here in the past. I also saw a familiar face come thru the airport. Jeremy Daggett was a friend and classmate in college at Harding and he is here right now with the group from Cloverdale. We were both Spanish majors at Harding and had quite a few classes together, so it has been nice to see him. And the little things too have been nice as good reminders of my time in Searcy. Just the way they sing songs and things like that and seeing some familiar faces and some small connections to people that I know and love and miss has been great. One girl from the group is actually in chorus at Harding Academy where one of my great friends is working, Elizabeth Harrell.

This group has been a huge encouragement and a great small reminder of a place I love and miss a lot.

LORD,

Thank you for the small reminders of things we love. Thank you for bringing great people into our lives and always looking out for us. I love you every day.

A Unique Experience.

This past week when the group from Indiana was here we had a very unique and blessed experience.

Brian and Tammie Wallace brought over themselves and the interns from Haiti this summer during their mid-summer break.

Brad and Monica Guatney flew into the Dominican and stayed here for a few days before going to Haiti.

Brian is the president of Manna Global Ministries (MGM) and is a part of the board of directors along with Brad and Norm, who is the director of Manna Dominican Republic.

Monica Gautney and Laura Beth Lamb are the administrative directors of MGM. Laura Beth was here with her church from Indiana.

I do not know how many times if ever that many people from this organization have been together. We did very much miss Tom Martin. It was a crazy few days with lots of people here at one time but extremely rewarding in the sense of having so many people here that have made so much possible in our organization.

LORD,

thank you for an amazing opportunity. I am so thankful for the time with so many people I love. I really believe we had some of the most amazing people in the world here and I was blessed to be in their presence.

Continue to be with us in our summer program and give an extra measure of peace to all those that are in Haiti.

I love you everyday.

answered prayer.

For a long time here in the Dominican Republic there has been the dream of having a community of believers in the city of Rio San Juan. We have been praying about this for a very long time, and this summer we have specifically been focusing on that. We have asked all the groups to pray that the Holy Spirit come and take reign over the city. We spend one full morning with the going to a hill to look over Rio San Juan and talk about our dreams and pray that the Holy Spirit covers them.

Though our whole team is focusing on Rio San Juan, we have two couples that work directly with this dream. Evan and Rachel Aldridge work with the children and the teens. This program was started a while back and has had others work with it before including: Kayla Sparks, TJ and Holly McCloud, and Kyle and Vicki Graham. Evan and Rachel are doing great things with those kids and in a very short period of time have really made some great relationships that I know will turn into soldiers for Christ.

Our other couple working in Rio San Juan is Ronald and Rosibet Mena. They are our new Costa Rican addition, and I might add are pretty amazing people. I knew they were pretty amazing on their survey trip and we have been so blessed to have them here. They have been specifically working with the adults in Rio San Juan and trying to find those people that the Spirit is leading us to.

This coming Sunday the first church service will be held in Rio San Juan. That is truly an answered prayer. We are so excited and a little nervous but know that the Spirit is going to be in control and bring the people to us that are ready to turn their lives over to the one and only God.

Thank you for your prayers and continue to pray for us and specifically that the Holy Spirit flows down on the people of Rio San Juan.

Dear God.

We are truly amazed at the things you do everyday. This community of believers in Rio San Juan is something that we have desired for a very long time and we are in awe of you that once we finally commit to prayer your will we can see it happen. We trust that you are with us and that you will reign in on that service on Sunday. We love you everyday.

Interns.

This Tuesday four of our interns arrived for the summer: Audrey, Carter, Jill, and Nikki. We spent some time together Tuesday night but they were pretty tired and off to bed right after dinner. Wednesday was a day of cleaning, and that we did. The dorms were cleaned before lunch. After lunch we had a pretty nasty task to do: cleaning the cistern at camp. Water here is precious and it is not always easily available. We are blessed enough to have a water pump. It uses solar energy to turn on the pump to give us water. When we have filled up the tank the overflow water gets pumped into the cistern so that when we have a few days with no sun we have reserve water. The cistern was very dirty so we cleaned it out. We all got in there and got our hands dirty but we are so grateful that got done. Today, Thursday, we all headed to Puerto Plata. We had lunch there and did some shopping then picked up Glenn, another intern. We headed back to camp for dinner and some quality time together.

It has been some incredible days here with the interns. We are so blessed and expecting a terrific summer. God has blessed us with these guys and two more who will be joining us later.

Keep them in your prayers this summer as they take on a lot of responsibility and are working very hard. Please, even more so to keep them in your prayers as they use this summer to grow spiritually in their relationship with God. It gets hard when things get so busy to keep your focus on growing spiritually. We all need that prayer.

Luckson and Jordan will be joining us later to keep adding to our amazing team.

Oh, and I know this is random and unrelated but best of luck to the Boyd-Buchanan soccer and baseball teams on Friday, who will both be playing for state championships.

Lord, thank you so much for these guys. They are awesome and are going to be awesome. I know that my summers here as an intern truly changed my life and I pray that it can do the same for them. Help us all as we get really busy here really fast to keep our focus on you and to see you in everything we do and do invite you into every interaction, every step, and every breath that we take. I am just so grateful for the opportunity to be the best I can be. I love you every day.

firsts.

There are always firsts in life, and today I experienced a first.

I was at Carmen’s house, one of our Dominican friends who, I might add, is one of the most hospitable people I know. Well, we were drinking coffee one of her neighbors called her and told her that there was a cow trying to give birth but was having problems and to call the vet in Rio San Juan to come out and attend to it. Well I decided I wanted to see it and to see the vet deliver this baby calf. We, Chiquito (Carmen’s husband), Porfi, and I, went to see the cow and wait for the vet to arrive. He finally arrived about a half an hour later. The problem was the calf was trying to come out feet first. So the vet, with some very large gloves helped the poor little calf be born.

Wow, it was so interesting and so weird. Never seen anything like that before, but I guess there is a first time for everything.

Lord,

wow. What a weird experience that just seems so normal to so many people here. I know it is natural but for me to see it was definitely a first. I love you everyday.

home

I am not really sure what that word “home” means any more. I have always been from “5713 Browntown Road Chattanooga, Tennessee 37415”. I have had that memorized for as long as I can remember, and for a long time that was “home”. When I went to college at Harding University that sort of became “home”, but even when I returned to Chattanooga for a holiday or just for a long weekend I would say that I was going “home”. But it was that time in school that the term “home” began to change and take on a different meaning. And now that I live in the Dominican Republic it has taken on a whole new meaning yet again.

For my whole life this meaning of home has been thrown at me.

We had this thing in my house that I think my mom made that said “Home is where is heart is”.

I remember the hymn that says “This world is not my home, I am just a passin’ thru...” and along those same lines but a different song sings, “I am a poor wayfaring stranger just traveling thru this world of woe...I am going there...I am only going over home.”

My home now is in the Dominican Republic and that is where I feel at home because that is where my heart is. Though I am so thankful for all the friends and family that welcome me back to what was once my home and make the United States at homey as possible when I come to visit.

And even though I say that Bobita is now my home I realize that I am just passing thru this place called earth waiting to go home and no longer have to wander around here as a stranger.
Lord,

Guide me here and help me to remember that I am just a stranger. Help me to stop looking for home here and realize that home will be the reward at the very end. Help me to keep that quote from my mom in the front of my mind “home is where the heart is” and to always have my heart and mind focused on Jesus and the home he has created for me and for every child of yours. I love you everyday.

retreat

The weekend before I went to the United States for Trent and Micah’s wedding our team went on a retreat in Puerto Plata. Even though we had spent some time together, it was a time for us to really understand each other and to become the team that God wants us to be in the Dominican Republic.

Norm, our director, did and amazing job of putting the retreat together. Our theme for the week was all about the battle we are in. We were joined on our retreat by some members of our team that live in the United States. Tommy and Jill Reese and Mark Gibson are three people that have been a part of what is going on here on this island for a long time and they are huge people in our lives as a team. I am so grateful they were able to come and share in our weekend and help us be a team.

The first part of the retreat was spent getting to know each other. That might sound silly but it really was an amazing time. We did a personality test and within each personality understand how to interact with it. No one test came out the same, and I am thankful for that and I pray that we can learn to understand each other and our personalities. After learning more about ourselves we spent some time talking about the battle and what that means. We can not sit back and lie to you or ourselves. Being on the mission field, where ever that might be is a battle. It might look romantic at first but we must be honest, that romantic view goes away pretty fast. When it does go away you are faced with a bloody battlefield ahead that so many times looks so incredibly scary. But that is what we are here for we are here to fight for a cause we believe so much in. We watched the first scene of Saving Private Ryan and made analogies from the movie to the battle field that we are on. If you have watched that movie you know just how intense it is. As christians we are all on that battlefield, running on to that beach trying to take the front away from Satan. We know that God has the war won, but living day to day with so much war going on around us is oftentimes discouraging. Please continue to pray for us as we are on the battlefield and we will continue to pray for all of you as you are on the battlefield, fighting the same enemy, just in a different part of the world.

The last part of our retreat was focusing on our ministries in the Dominican Republic and how we are going to pull all of them together so that we do not have four or five separate things going on but that we have one team with one purpose working together for one goal and all of our works are working together for that one purpose and goal.

It was an incredible weekend together. Please pray for us as we learn to work and live together and as we try to be the team that God has called us to be.

GOD,

Thank you for giving us this past weekend to be together as a team. We all believe that you have called us to this place to be a part of what you are doing here. Help us to be the vessel you have called us to be to bring the Spirit into this place. Thank you for winning the battle already. We have no doubt that the war is won but give us the strength to fight every single day to keep fighting. I love you everyday.