Happy New Year!

Doug has gone to the all night service. A regular service is held 10:00 - 12:00 a.m. and then the rest of the night till the sun comes up, the youth will be together. It is custom for the Dominicans to stay up all night tonight. Doug felt the Lord lay it on his heart to have something for the young people. Perhaps it will keep some of them off of the street and out of trouble. We don't know exactly what the Lord has in mind, but we have sensed opposition in the lives of the young people and we have made a chain of prayer and fasting for the past 12 days as a church. We believe God is working! We simply obey, pray, and leave the rest to God!

It was astounding as Daryl, an 18 year old son of one of the ladies from our church, told his mom he has never fasted before, but he was going to be joining us in fasting for the young people's service tonight! He's not even professing right now that we know of.

If you receive this in time and think of it, I'm sure Doug would appreciate your prayers that: 1) he can stay awake all night :-) 2) that the Lord will help them in the service and 3) that the Lord will grant him protection in traveling back home in the morning - as he will be very sleepy and there may be drunks out.

I'm thankful for the way the Lord has helped us this past year! He has provided for our needs and given us wisdom and help in the work here. To Him be all the glory!

Thank you for your support for us in the past year! It takes all of us working together - praying, giving, and laboring to advance the Kingdom. We couldn't have done it without you! Thanks for your part in the ministry of the Dominican Republic!

May God bless each one and draw each of us closer to Him in 2009!

Spiritual battle

Until I get my hubby to get the pictures downloaded from Christmas and I get a chance to upload them to the blog, I wanted to share a little of what is going on here.

For the past while we have been in an obvious spiritual battle. The Lord has been moving wonderfully among our young people. You can sense a deepening of conviction as Doug continues to work through the "Firm Foundations" curriculum in Sunday School. God is at work! Only 2 or 3 of them are Christians and it is amazing how the unsaved ones come week after week to hear the message of the Gospel.

Recently we have felt an onslought of the enemy. He is putting up a fierce fight in the lives of these young people. We have a good group coming (10 to 15) and there is much potential if they would surrender to Christ.

The Lord led Doug to have an all night service for the youth on New Year's Eve. Somehow we feel God wants to do something through this. The devil has fought that service so we feel God is up to something!

Our church is praying and fasting starting last Friday through the end of the year - Dec. 31st. We would invite anyone that wants to participate to join us!

This Christmas season has been a bit different as we've turned our attention to this spiritual battle. Even Christmas morning, the Lord awoke me early prompting me to fast and pray. It was not necessarily my physical desire to do so that morning, but my spirit was willing, so with the Lord's help, we did it.

It has come to my mind numerous times of the soldiers in Iraq (of which my brother-in-law is one) and how even though it's Christmas, they cannot quit! They cannot sleep even when they're tired! So it must be with us. He who sleeps loses the battle! Win we must! Persevere we will! Victory we await!

Merry Christmas!

More than any other presents for Christmas, I want HIS PRESENCE!!

We've had a wonderful day so far. After an exhausting week, we took our time getting up this morning. The children opened their presents, I warmed up leftovers from our Christmas meal last night, and we've spent the rest of the day relaxing and playing with the children.

Thank God for His most wonderful gift to us!

Prayer for Wesson family

The Wesson family (pictured below under "Thanksgiving pictures") took an emergency trip to the U.S on Saturday. Their 8 year-old son, Stephen, had a sore throat on Friday and they took him to the doctor. The doctor called them Friday evening and told them to take him immediately to the emergency room. They had done bloodwork and it came back showing his blood platelets were extremely low. The doctor ordered an immediate blood transfusion and told them it may possibly be leukemia.

They flew out at 7:00 a.m. Saturday. Upon arrival at the hospital in Miami, they gave him a blood transfusion. They transferred him to Houston, TX so that Josh and Joy could be near family to help take care of the other 3 children.

Yesterday they did a bone marrow test and it was confirmed that Stephen has Acute Lymphatic Leukemia. They already gave him a shot of chemo and will continue the treatments.

Pray for the Wesson family that God will help them during this difficult time and give them wisdom to make future decisions.

They knew Stephen had been sort of tired the past few weeks but they thought it was because he was still recovering from Dengue fever, which he had about a month ago. No doubt this has changed their world.

Update at last!!

I've been spending any free moments I've had the past few weeks to order Christmas gifts for some of the children here. We were able to find much nicer stuff for much less money in the U.S. One of my orders said it wouldn't even be shipped till the 18th - probably not making it to FL to be brought over on the plane before Christmas. We prayed and asked Jesus to PLEASE help it to come before Christmas so the Dominican children can get their gifts on their King's Day - January 6th - for there will be no flight from Agape after Christmas until the 7th.

It appears that Jesus is answering our prayers. It was surpisingly shipped on Saturday and may make it to FL in time for the plane to bring it over on the 22nd!! I'm so glad God cares about the joy we want to have in blessing the church children!

Now that the ordering is over, I have some time to blog! So, here's to catching up the past few months!

Ministry update

This is a picture of our newest convert, Vladimir. He has been pretty faithful to attend the services.

God is helping and moving among our young people! We have seen a growth in the Sunday school class. They have been running around 13 the last few weeks. Praise the Lord.

We sense God is really moving among them. It is exciting to watch so many come so faithfully and be able to hear the Word of God. Several seem under conviction and very interested in becoming a Christian. However, the devil is really trying to destroy what God wants to do. This past week in S.S. Doug said was his worst week since we've been here. There were distractions, feuding between the young people, and a lot of pessimism toward the all night service we have planned for the youth on the 31st. God led us to do this all night service focusing on the young people and we feel He wants to do something special in it. We would covet your prayers that God would break the chains of the devil and these young people would surrender their lives to Christ. Some of them are bound to drugs, peer pressure, drinking, street life etc, but God is able for any need!

Jimmy, first pictured on the left, is a faithful Christian and has been helping Doug out by going and visiting the young people through the week. It has been a real help! Doug also goes calling to their houses on Saturdays. We're doing our part and trusting God to do His!

Algenis (second guy standing in on the right) came back from the States for a week for Christmas break. He is a magnet for young people and always brought a pile of young people with him to church before. He made sure there was a full house last Sunday when he was here. Here is part of the group that came out to S.S., part of them because of Algenis. Some of them had already left when this picture was taken.
This is what Doug has been up to! He is trying to put a finished look to the building. The side still needs stuccoed and painted, but God is helping him to get it done. That concrete job he had in the U.S. has really benefitted him.

This is his next project - painting the roof with a sealer to keep water from filtrating through. He has tried the last 2 weeks to rent a pressure washer to strip the rest of this paint off before applying the sealer. They will not reserve one in advance. You have to call the day you want it and all the days he's called, they haven't had one available. Life here sure is interesting! So....we wait until he can get a hold of a pressure washer to strip this before he can finish the job. Looks like it will have to be after Christmas now.

Miscellaneous pictures

I tried to do these in order from top to bottom, but to do so you have to think backwards. I missed these so these are after-Thanksgiving pictures. :-)

Jonathan & Ryan are tuckered out after a hard day of playing in the jumping castle.

The children listen to an Odyssey cassette while Mommy gets supper.
Brandon helps wash the truck. Good job, Brandon!

This kid is a nut. We walked into the bedroom one night and this is what we found. He had unsnapped his jammies and they fell down when he stood on his head. That is why he looks undressed.

Thanksgiving pictures

I better get Thanksgiving pictures posted before Christmas gets here!! We were invited to spend Thanksgiving with some other American missionaries in the capital. They are young families and our children are about the same ages so we always enjoy our time with them.

This is Josh & Joy Wesson and their four children.

This is the Scheper's with their 4 children - the hosts of Thanksgiving dinner.
Stew likes optical illusions and has a whole case of them that he uses to work with children. He always presents the Gospel message along with his tricks. Doug is also interested in tricks and was thankful Stew shared some of his with him. For those of you interested in tricks and optical illusions, you will have to visit Stew when you come down. He has a load of them.
Scheper's have a jumping castle that someone donated for their ministry. They set it up for the missionary children to enjoy on Thanksgiving. They sure had a blast!!
Jonathan was content to sit at the end of the slide and enjoy the "bounce" the others gave him as they came down.

Christmas village

The "in" thing this year in our neighborhood is to have a Christmas village. Four ladies in the community took a class on how to make these villages and each one has a village displayed in their foyer. Our closest neighbor, Ally, invited us up to see her village. We were intrigued at the details and that most of the pieces comes from used or everyday items. One lady said to us, "You know this is all made from trash, don't you?" :-) She used leaves from banana trees, bark, sticks, different leaves and many natural things to make this village. It was quite interesting! It is supposed to be a village similar to the time when Jesus was born.

Her display goes from her foyer clear around to her stairs banister. You can see how high she built it. She has lights weaved through it so at night it looks really neat.

The manger scene. She did not make the figures, but she did handpaint them.

These "houses" are made out of orange juice cartons.

This one is out of order. It's the saw to the blacksmith shop. Notice her saw - the blade off of a saran wrap or foil carton. Pretty creative!

Notice the details in this one - some of her vessels are thimbles.

Marketplace.

Village blacksmith

The details are intriguing. Notice her "tools" are electrical terminals. I like her drill - looks like a headphone plug.

Village florist.

The bakery

These rooves are made out of straight noodles.

Our neighbor, Ally, with the results of much hard work.

Ally gave Regina this house.

I really didn't forget

I did not forget about the picture of the new convert. I really did remember the camera and remembered to take the picture and remembered to post last Monday (that was half a miracle!) BUT I am waiting on my overly busy hubby to download the pictures to the computer. I haven't learned how to do that yet. So I patiently wait until he has a few minutes to collect himself and download them. Hopefully I'll still remember to do it by the time he gets it done. :-)

Memorial service

Doug is gone today to a Memorial service for a brother of a lady in our church. Our adult Sunday school class was interrupted a few weeks ago when one of our ladies received a call that her brother had been killed in a car accident. She came in S.S. crying. Pastor Euddy responded immediately by handing the lesson book to one of the ladies and left to take Esperanza to be with her family and start the funeral arrangements.

When they arrived at the funeral home (burial is normally done the same day here since they do not normally embalm the body), they learned that he really wasn't in a car accident, but that he had died of a heart attack the evening before! The funeral was held at 4:00 p.m. Sunday. Doug found out he was to preach the funeral message about 5 minutes before the service started. :-) He said the Lord helped him.

It is customary to have a memorial service for the deceased person about 10 days after their death. I think it is based on the Catholics praying them out of purgatory, but the Christians turn it into a memorial service and use it as a time to evangelize the family.

Ryan's birthday pictures

Somehow I missed posting these. Oops! Ryan's birthday was 2 months ago already! We invited some American friends to go out for lunch with us to celebrate. They have a little boy, James. He also turned 5 in October. He and Ryan sure are a pair. As you can see from the pictures, there's never a dull moment with these 2 together!

Ryan got a sword and patch for his birthday.
Ryan and James on their "twin" bikes.

This was the cake I did for him. The writing is really sloppy because the icing was way runny!! It's always a challenge to work in such high humidity.

The big 5-year old with his cake and matching shirt.

Miscellaneous pictures

Alexis is our neighbor at the mission. He came to Christ in our first term when he was about 10 years old. Over the years he has gone his own way and strayed from Christ. He is now 19 and we sense he is empty and looking for hope again. We are praying he will return to Christ. We believe God is dealing with his heart. We invited him to our house one afternoon to spend some time with us. Just before Doug took him back, I served them tuna wraps, popcorn, and Pepsi. Alexis loved the tuna wraps and has talked about them ever since! He also enjoyed his time and is asking Doug when they can play soccer together. Doug is going to try to take some time out in the next few weeks to be able to spend some time with him playing soccer.

Alexis

Jonathan likes to line his cars up in his bed before sleeping.

Regina & Ryan put on several layers of shirts to keep warm in the 70 degree weather. :-)