Greetings and Happy Holidays from the Dominican Republic! It has certainly been a different one for
Stephanie and myself. Although we have
missed our family and friends very much the Lord has been faithful as we
continue to serve Him. December was
certainly our busiest month since we arrived in the Dominican Republic.
This year the team at In Calvary’s Care did things
differently than they ever had for the Christmas season. At the beginning of December Pastor Lewis
encouraged us all to work on coming up with ideas for the children for
Christmas. As we talked about it we
decided that the week before Christmas would be a great time to do some
activities with the children since they were off of school and would have time
to come and visit us.
So we set about the task of coming up with different things
for each age group to work on. We
invited every single child that is sponsored in the child sponsorship program and
broke them up into 7 different time slots. We had various craft activities for the girls
and hacky sack tournaments and sports for the boys. Each group came for about an hour and a half
and in the end we were able to share a snack of cookies and soda with
them. For some odd reason the kids found
great joy in dunking their cookies into their soda (a gross combination if you
ask any adult).
It just so happened that during all these activities my parents and younger brother were scheduled to come down for a visit so they were able to help us with all of these activities as well. It was so very nice to have them here and they were able to provide us with much needed family time on Christmas day. I think my younger brother Mark had a little bit of a rough time while he was here but he was a trooper.
They left on December 26th with
uncertainty as to whether they would be able to get back home as Indiana was
having blizzard conditions on the day of their travel. They left at 8 A.M. from Barahona and arrived
back home in Indiana around 3:30 A.M. the next day. So it was a very long day
of traveling for them.
On Christmas day we had a very special church service here
at Calvary Chapel Barahona. The children
and staff had worked very hard to prepare some special things for the
service. The children performed a small
drama about the birth of Jesus and sang two Christmas songs as well. It was a lot of fun for the children and for
those that attended the service.
Afterwards the church staff prepared a meal for the congregation. The food was really tasty and everyone really
enjoyed the time together.
Stephanie, Johan and I continue to work with the youth on
Saturday nights. We typically have
between 2 and 6 kids attending. Please
pray for the youth that the Lord would become the center of their lives and that
they would see the importance of spending time in God’s word.
We are also continuing to pray about transportation. Please continue to pray for us as we attempt
to sort out what we should purchase.
Learning Spanish continues to be a big prayer request for
us. We are studying hard and can see improvements, but we would ask that you
continue to pray for us in this!
We miss you all very much and hope that each of you had a
wonderful Christmas and holiday season. Thank you for your support, interest and
prayers.
If you would like to learn more about what our team does here in Barahona, Dominican Republic you can check out the In Calvary's Care Facebook page found at the following link.
