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Monday, August 23, 2010







The Ministry Center in Hato Del Yaque is a work in progress.
The first floor of the main building is finished. Short-term mission teams stay in the dorms while they do ministry here in the DR. The children and young people are always excited to see the bus arrive and love spending time with the teams. The kitchen is open and working. Nena and her accomplices work diligently to cook for the teams and for the 83 children eating in the nutrition center six days a week. All this takes place on the first floor.
The local church congregation meets on the first floor also while they are waiting for the sanctuary on the second floor to be built.
The teams have been working on the ministry house across the street which is where I will live eventually. It will be a duplex on the first floor, apartments for interns and staff on the second and an open area on the top where teams can meet for devos and etc.
That’s just what we are working on right now. We haven’t even started on the basketball and volleyball courts so that we can have before and after school sports programs. Or the playground so that the kids can have a safe place to play. There is so much potential there.
Not potential in the cement or block or re bar or our skills to build, but in every child that is eating at the center. For every boy that comes to play baseball even though we don’t have a big place for them to play yet. There is potential for every church member that comes to a meeting and prays for their neighbor.
My friend Tata and I were talking the other day. Her husband is out of work… again. Five of her kids are in the nutrition program. She said that sometimes the kids would cry and she didn’t know if it was because they were sick or if it was hunger pains. She didn’t have anything but a tiny bit of rice to give them. But now they are in the nutrition center. She said she didn’t know what they would do without it.
There is a bunch of potential in her and those kids.
The roads are really bad in this part of Hato Del Yaque. So the last couple of weeks the teams and I have been trying to even them out a bit with picks and shovels. The kids have been helping too by throwing rocks into the big holes. Pastor Aristides said it was a good example of the church to be working on the road for everyone else in the community. I started thinking that this is who is going to change this community. The church, missionaries and these kids. There is so much potential in these kids.
When Joshua was entering the promise land there was still allot of work to be done. We still have a long way to go, but lives are being changed at this moment.
Thank God for every opportunity to be part of something bigger than yourself.
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” ~Joshua 1:6



The baseball ministry meets and practices at the ministry center

Mixing concrete for the foundation of the ministry house

Kids are eating lunch at the building six days a week.






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