Visit from my Daddy/Thanksgiving in the DR

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I do have a good excuse though-my dad came to visit me last week! It was the COOLEST thing to be able to share my ministry experience with him and such an answer to prayer as he provided much needed love and support from home. It was so encouraging for me to have him by my side and to watch him interact with my teammates and the Dominican students. Sticking out like a sore thumb with his “gringoness” and not having much practice with the language, Dad was so brave as he marched onto campus with us everyday (sometimes with more energy than me!) and talked to students about what life is like here. How much does Jesus love me to send my daddy here for a visit like this!?

The best part is that he got to spend Thanksgiving with me and the rest of the team! We surprisingly had a pretty legit American holiday (although it was a little strange eating turkey while looking out the window at the Caribbean Sea!) We found boxes of stuffing, cranberry sauce, Dad and Jimmy cooked a juicy turkey, Rob made mashed potatoes (the good kind, not the box), and Bri satisfied those of us with a sweet tooth with candied yams (ok they were really a local type called batatas), and apple crisp. My favorite part of dinner was explaining to Leyla that the cranberries and pumpkin bread and yams weren’t quite dessert. She couldn’t believe that there was still more food! 

We even got everyone to play a good 'ole game of holiday football!

Other highlights from the week were going to see our first baseball game at Quisqueya Stadium (where Sammy Sosa and other stars got there start), trying new food with my dad (his favorite was a quipe which is basically a fried meatball), and attending a graduation ceremony for a few of our friends from UASD who finished a hard year of study in the English Immersion program. More pictures will be up on my facebook soon!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are watching God provide for your needs. Never forget to thank Him! Thanks for reading and keep praying for us as we finish out our first semester!

What’s it like to Stint in the DR? Video now ready!

We had a visit from a CCC videographer about a month ago visit us in Santo Domingo to film a “commercial” directed towards students across the United States who are involved in Campus Crusade for Christ on their own campus. The goal in making this one-minute film is to get more laborers to come to the Dominican Republic to reach the thousands of unreached college students here. It turned out great and it was a ton of fun to make! Enjoy!

Dominican Republic Stint Commercial

IKEA treat

With seven more months left of my Stint year, I decided it was worth while to make my living quarters look more like a cozy bedroom and less like a place where I might pick up and leave at any second. I wanted it to feel like a cheerful sanctuary where I wake up excited for the day and relax before retiring from a long day.

The theme is based on my favorite flower: orchids! I was even able to bring comfort to my room with an ice cream scented candle—yum! Let’s hope that doesn’t attract the ants…

 

I almost didn’t buy this pillow, but I did a brief cost/benefit analysis and determined that the giddiness I would feel every time I saw it when I walked in my room was worth it.

 

Love black and white photos! Thought it would add a little sophistication to my bright green and pink room.

 

 

The finished product! I am love how it turned out—and it was fun for my housemate and I to get excited together as we now both have more personalized living spaces!

Sharing love for Christ…and chocolate!

I had my second meeting with three wonderful girls from Vida Estudantil. In our time together, we discuss the foundations for our faith in God and the implications of what His son’s sacrifice means for our lives. It is such a joy and privilege to be able to go through this material with them because these students will be serving as the foundation for generations of students to come who will be involved in this ministry. We are praying that God would give them such a confidence in their faith and sound interpretation of concepts including the Holy Spirit, communion with God, and prayer so that they will be able to pass on this wisdom to the many students we are trusting God to bring into relationship with Him through Vida Estudantil in the years to come. So cool!

It was such a sweet moment sitting under one of the girls’ favorite tree, enjoying the nice November breeze, and laughing about how grateful we are that God thought to create chocolate just for our enjoyment!

Does this mean I’m entering into the honeymoon phase?

I suddenly have the urge to put up pictures of how beautiful of a country I live in. When our team was at briefing back in August, we were told that we would experience peaks and valleys with how in love with life here in a different culture. They explained to us that during the first two months, you will likely go through the “honeymoon phase” where you are thriving off of the newness and excitement of starting life in a new country. Well, I can’t say that I’d describe the first two months being in the DR that way (it was pretty tough!) But I’m glad to say that I think I ‘m starting to really enjoy myself in all areas—being a part of the team, getting to know students and witness to them, and learning the culture. Praise God!

So, without further ado, I will now brag about how beautiful this place is through pictures:

View from our patio of the Caribbean Sea. Granted, this is what it looked like during Hurricane Tomas:

Colonial Zone, where Christopher Columbus resided back in the day.

National Botanical Gardens

View from my bedroom window. Kind of reminds me of that scene in Aladdin…

And these pictures are just from places within a ten mile radius of where I live! We haven’t even been to a proper beach yet!

Lessons from the back of a classroom

I got a little more insight to what student life is like at UASD today. I went with a student to a classroom where her friends were working on a commercial they had to film for their publicity class. The class was initially empty—no desks even! But then students started pouring in, then, as if by routine, went into another classroom to carry desks into the empty room. Later, as students were giving presentations to the class, you could hear the uproar of conversation going on in the classroom adjacent. One would usually just close the classroom door at this point—but there are none!

A student said something very profound today as she was sharing with me her story about her family life. She told me about how her parents divorced when she was 2 years old and that she never had a relationship with her father until she was 18. He re-entered her life then and maintained frequent communication with her. She really enjoyed being able to finally connect with her dad and was just getting used to talking to him on a usual basis, when he passed away a year later. This led her to question why God would let her taste something so great only to take it away from her. In the few years that followed, she has learned to look at the situation with an eternal perspective. Having believed in God at a very young age, she knew that it would be difficult for the non-believer to find credibility in her story. I have also wondered the same thing: How would anyone who didn’t grow up learning to love and receive God’s love take my word for the good things He’s done in my life? Her face full of joy, she tells me that while it still hurts at times to think of what she’s lost, she now has experienced God’s love and comfort in much deeper way. She knows what it feels like to question God’s justice, to be confused, to be desperate for comfort. This, she feels, not only strengthened her relationship with God, but strengthens her testimony to others as it illustrates God’s plan to restore all things.

You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. –Genesis 50:20

Be encouraged by this student’s faith in the Lord’s intentions to bring upon us good things and not disaster. That “though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love (Lamentations 3:32).” How has God used the tragedies and times of difficulty in your life to bring upon good things? Have you yet to see the good come through? Then trust in His unfailing love which casts out all fear (1 John 4:18), promises us comfort (Psalm 119:76), and supports us when we are falling (Psalm 94:18).

Big Team Changes

One of our team members, Natasha was sent home today and will not be continuing Stint with us. You can read her own words from her blog here on why she had to do so.  We enjoyed having her as a part of our team and will miss her dearly. It will be weird getting used to being a team of just four now. But we all know that this this the best thing first of all for Natasha's health, our team's, and the mission's. Please pray for her as she makes this transition back home and is working with Red River Region with Crusade on finding placement in their regional office.

Brianna is currently in Panama for a women’s conference that Crusade is hosting for staff members throughout Latin America. This will be a great opportunity for her to connect with other women, learn from their experiences as missionaries in other countries, and be encouraged!

Jimmy is finally home from the hospital—turns out he had pulmonary fibrosis—and is resting as much as he can. Thanks for your prayers for his recovery!

It feels like our team of five shrunk to two! Even though it’s weird without my girls in the house, I am enjoying the time alone to reflect, pray, and get re-energized.

As for follow up with the outreach from last week, I saw one of the girls that we met at our meeting this week! I got to talk to her after wards and hear about her walk with God. The students in Vida have taken responsibility for sharing God’s fame throughout UASD as they follow up with the 100 and some students we met and them email invitations to join us in community as we learn about God together.

God is truly at work here in the Dominican Republic. And it is for His fame and our joy that we live out 2 Corinthians 6:4 “In everything we do, we show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.”

Does this look familiar?

It’s official. Both team leaders have now visited “Hotel Hospiten.” Jimmy has been diagnosed with pneumonia—thankfully it’s not as bad as what I had so he should be out either this afternoon or tonight. As the Fall Visit people (Cayla, Lis, and Keith) have been here the last few days, this is just another bump in the road that they have been able to support us through. In honor of all of these things and what God has already been doing in the last 10 weeks of our stay here, we threw a fiesta in the hospital (which we keep calling the hotel) room with a cake:

 

God is good! Praise God that in the midst of chaos and change, He has been providing our team with the guidance, affirmation, and encouragement that was much needed to continue our work here. Praise God that Jimmy is getting the medical attention he needs to get back on his feet and back to work! We need him!

Above: In the hospital with Stint Team and Cayla, Keith, and Lis.

“My job is to trust God”

When I was told that a man named Keith Onishi, the CCC Campus Ministry Director for Latin America (pretty much the head honcho for university ministry in this part of the world) was coming to visit us in the Dominican Republic this week, I had a few expectations. I was told he had spent the past eight years living in Venezuela leading Stint teams and national directors in the mission. Expectation number one was judging by the last name, he's probably Japanese (are we sure this is the Latin America leader guy?) Expectation number two is that his Spanish is probably superb by now, given his experience in Venezuela. Now, I've already personally said this to him and he laughed, so I know it's ok so say out loud (or in blog or wherever this ends up), but when we picked him up from the airport, two things were confirmed: he is indeed half Japanese, but his Spanish sounds less like a Venezuelan national and more like I did in high school when I had to do an oral exam. In his defense, he totally understands Spanish that is spoken to him and can speak it clearly. It just wasn't what I had expected.

But the coolest part of this surprise was that I was able to actually believe him when he said every day it is by faith that he trusts the Lord to give him the tools he needs to do his job. He even shared about a time from his first year or two in Venezuela where he was listening to this student just pouring out his heart to him, telling him personal pains that he hadn't revealed to anyone else. He admitted that he actually only understood about 25% of what the guy was actually saying and felt like it would kill the mood to stop him and ask for clarification. Years went by and Keith was able to build a deeper relationship with this student and be a crucial part of his spiritual growth. Although it was embarrassing for him to ask the student questions about his personal life years later that he had actually already told him those things in that first conversation, he realized that what the student needed more than anything was to know that someone cared. That someone would represent Jesus in that moment and sit in the grief and pain he was going through and intercede with prayer. How precious is that?

Friends, praise God with me that He has--in his perfect timing--sent Keith and the rest of the Fall Visit team here to us now as an encouragement to our mission at UASD. This exact frustration of not being able to connect with students on heart issues for the language barrier had been wearing me out, causing me to doubt my ability to be an effective instrument of God. But to hear that the Campus Ministry Director for Latin America--a Japanese, English speaking guy with no previous life experience in the area--has been trusting God with His purpose in placing him in that specific position, and in the midst of that witnessing an abundance of fruitfulness result from that trust, fills me with hope that our team can do the same in the midst of our weaknesses.

Keith's visit also helped revive my heart for the ministry here specifically in the Dominican Republic/Latin America as he shared some ways that God has been moving here in the last few years. Just a snapshot of how God is working through campus ministry in Latin America:

• Campus Crusade for Christ movements currently exist in half of the 42 countries in the Latin America/Caribbean area!
• Many countries now have movements in multiple universities in different cities, rather than just one. For example,
• A Venezuela national was just sent to pass on what they received through CCC by ministering to students in North Africa!
• CCC has presence in Haiti, a nation that is not only hurting from the aftermath of disaster, but also in spiritual darkness as voodoo and witchcraft remain a common practice.

Read more about Keith Onishi, his decision to follow the calling to Venezuela, and his ministry here. Pray for him, his wife, and three kids as they have just made the move back to the States this summer after 8 years of life in a completely different culture.

Mourning into Dancing

This song popped into my head today and can I just say, it’s funny how sometimes the songs you least want to sing are the ones you need most:

This is How We Overcome-Mourning into Dancing by Hillsong

Up until the last week I really hadn’t experienced much homesickness. But this week, it hit me pretty hard. It’s probably a combination of being in the hospital without the family, being tired, feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing, and missing the easiness of some parts of life in the States that is contributing to this sadness. I know that “a cheerful heart is good medicine and a crushed spirit dries up the bones (Proverbs 17:22),” but some days it’s really hard to move past the flurry of emotions that comes with working overseas.

It was totally a God thing that I ended up watching the video for this song rather than just listening to it. There’s a part where they sing “This is how we overcome” and they make this “raise the roof” motion with their hands. At first this just looked silly to me and I wanted to laugh. But then I thought about what this posture means. It’s lifting your arms to God and with each pumping of the arms you’re pressing the praise back into His court. None of it belongs to me. And He is deserving of my praise regardless of the kind of day I’ve had. This is one of the weirder things I’ve done alone and I’m glad my roommates weren’t around when I gave it a try to see what it felt like. I felt awkward at first, raising my hands to God…by myself…in my room…watching a youtube video. But it was actually medicating as I began to think of more reasons that I could lift my hands in the air and praise my God in the midst of my homesickness. I’ve been able to bless people through prayer. I’ve received so much care from our church family and Leyla and Prospero. I am receiving peace that passes all understanding as I come before God and ask him to comfort me. I’m glad that God doesn’t ask us to forget about our problems and just move on. He invites us to lay our burdens on Him and find rest (Matt 11:28-30). Sometimes it’s hard to praise God when your sadness and anxieties are at the forefront of your thoughts. But try it—and watch Him turn your mourning into dancing!

You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever! –Psalm 30:11-12