Easter drama

Easter was a bit different for us this year. No special events. No new Easter outfits. The kids didn't get Easter baskets, or any sort of Easter candy. Maybe it was a bit too drab. On the other hand, we don't want our children to get caught up with all the "extras" of Easter that really have nothing to do with the real meaning. There is no awakening of spring. We've been in spring/summer since November. :-) It just gets hotter from here on out. So, while away from all the bunnies and chicks, we had fun and did an Easter skit on Good Friday. The children had a blast and hopefully will remember it for a long time.

Here Easter week is called "Holy week". All of the schools are closed and many have vacation from jobs the whole week. Everyone flocks to the beaches. There is no special Easter candy or such as we have in the States. They do have an Easter dessert that they make out of kidney beans called "sweet beans". It is tasty, but not necessarily our favorite cuisine. The city is pretty much shut down and there is little traffic on the weekend. Definitely different than Easter in the States.

They whipped him.

Mary cries.


It doesn't look like she's very sad here.

Jonathan watches the whole thing.

They tied him.

Then they put a crown of "thorns" on his head. Those thorns look pretty soft to me. :-)

Pounding the nails

Jesus on the cross

"It is finished"

They pierced his side. Mary cries.

Jonathan can't take any more.

The story will be continued..............

Finally - Holiness Convention pictures!

We were privileged to be invited to and participate in the annual Holiness Convention hosted by Evangelistic Faith Missions. There was a wonderful sense of God's presence each night and many received spiritual help. Our church sent 15 to 20 people every night and on Saturday night they packed out 2 vehicles with 28 people! (including our family) In this picture, most of the people on the left side are our church people. On the third row is Blenski (Pastor Euddy's brother), his wife and 2 children. We were so happy they could attend several of the nights. It is a joy to see this young family get their feet grounded in the Lord.


Hermano Douglas leading the service

Hermano Euddy also helped to lead the service. In case you can read the words behind.....The services were held in a beautiful Nazarene church. We were spoiled to enjoy air-conditioning each night.

Luis Miranda from Honduras was the evangelist. I mistakenly said he was from Guatemala in a previous post. He did an excellent job delivering the Word.

The oldest member of our group, 75, singing a special. Dios le bendiga, Hermana Chucha. [God bless you, Sister Chucha]

Hermana Dionelly (Euddy's wife) singing a special

Praying with seekers at the altar

On Friday night after altar service, the Lord settled down on us in a special way.

Euddy presents Luis with a gift from our church. Our church so appreciated his ministry and received much spiritual help.

Euddy with his brother, Blenski, who was able to make it for 3 nights of the convention.

Some may remember a few years ago when 3 girls were forbidden by their father to return to our church. Here are the 3 girls. They all were there for one night of the convention. The middle one is now our pastor's wife. The one on the left, Cindy, still comes to our church for S.S. Leidy, on the right, attends her father's church some.

It was so good to have Bro. Don Mobley visiting us. He was a great babysitter while we participated in the service. In this picture Jonathan had his fill of convention.

We enjoyed having David & Marilyn Middleton, Don and Luis in our home for a meal during convention.

Enjoying fellowship with Don & Luis Miranda.

Pictured from left to right: Pastor Euddy, Doug, Luis Miranda, Lewis Wheeler (visiting Middleton's on his spring break from AWC)

Misc. pictures

Barefoot brothers

We saw this cloud with a silver lining on our way to the first night of holiness convention.

I thought this was a neat view of the sun in the early evening.

Holiness Convention

We are in the middle of Holiness Convention. Services will close tomorrow night. We have been sensing a wonderful work of the Holy Spirit. We are physically very tired, but thrilled with what God is doing among us spiritually. Pictures coming soon.......I hope!

Holiness Convention next week

A virus hit our family last week and put the blogger nearly out of commission. We are up and functioning again, yet with not as much spunk as before.

Next week we will be participating in the annual Holiness Convention hosted by Evangelistic Faith Missions. Luis Miranda from Guatemala will be the evangelist. We are looking forward to great services! You are welcome to join us in prayer that God will move among us. He already has been moving so beautifully here. We desire to see what else He has in store!

Another video about Agape's plane

This video is an interview of the pilots that survived the plane wreck. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "more pictures" to see the damage done to the plane. Also included in the page is an email that we sent to Agape.

http://www.agapeflights.com/caravan.asp

Agape is not out of commission! They work hard each week to find a way to get our mail and packages in. Sometimes they borrow a plane, sometimes another carrier will bring it in for them. They have been using a variety of ways until they get another plane. Their dedication in helping us has meant so much! So keep the mail and packages coming - they'll get here one way or another! :-)

A peek into our community

Living in this community has been like a dream come true. We fell in love with the community and the house in an instant, but our biggest holdback was the question of "Where would the children play?" It hasn't been a problem. They have spent most of their time in the street. The park just beside the community also provides a lovely place to relax as well.

Since living here we have realized how much stress it placed on us to live in the mission house. Once we enter our "home", we can leave all the stress and care of the mission behind. We have left the noise, the dust, the violence, and the feeling of "being on duty" behind. We can take off our shoes, relax, and be a family. Even entering the community gives a sense of security and relaxation.

Here is the guard to our community. There is normally a gate across here and he has to see who you are, push a button that electronically opens the gate, and you drive in. We just found out the reason this community is guarded with military men is because the colonel lives here. They are guarding him. If he were to move away, we would be left with regular street men to guard it. We feel a little safer with the military men that carry big guns and keep a close eye on the place.


This is our classy trash truck. :-) A man rides or pushes this cart like contraption each morning and picks up the trash bags waiting outside.

This is the walkway to the park that is located beside the community. The park provides a place for the children to get out their energy. Here Doug and the children are playing with some other American boys that live here, too.

The community is just on the other side of the park. Some houses even have gates that open up directly into the park. This house even made its own sidewalk and hedge entering the park.

Burn out!

I call this country "the country of burn out". We have more things burn out here than you can imagine. And if you're not careful, you'll burn out, too. :-) Since we've been here we've had our printer/copier/scanner machine burn out as well as the new computer Doug bought for Euddy's studies. Just a few weeks after we purchased this invertor for our house, we thought it burnt out, too. Ugh! Thankfully, Doug was able to take it in and they put on heavier cables and it has worked great ever since!

Now the children's computer that they use to do school will not turn on. We have to investigate to see if that's burnt out, too, or if there's another problem.

Lunar eclipse

We had a science lesson last night on the patio watching the lunar eclipse. Doug set up his tripod to experiment with taking pictures. Here is what he designed from the pictures he took.

The children "camped out" to watch the big event. They were covered to keep from being bit from mosquitoes, not because they were cold. Although Brandon did keep saying he was cold. There was a nice, lovely breeze blowing and it was pleasant (maybe just a tad on the cool side for us).

The freedom of biking

We are immensely enjoying the freedom of living in this gated community. It is like a whole new world. We are all free to be on the streets without fear of being mugged. Here is Brandon with a group of boys racing on their bikes.

Ryan enjoying a "lift" from Daddy.

Even Jonathan enjoys bike rides this way.

Regina loves to pull Jonathan in his wagon and he does, too. If you ask him if he wants to go in the wagon, he immediately goes to the wagon and gets in. He's glad for anyone who will give him a ride.

This is a neighbor's house just across the street. I think it is so pretty. The lady owns 4 car lots in the country. As we get to know more of our neighbors, we're finding we're the poorest ones here. There are Embassy people, people working in high security in the country, car dealers, etc. We can at least act rich - after all we are Ambassadors for the King of Kings.

Finally - a Valentine's date!

Thanks to my mother and brother who were here visiting last Thursday, Doug and I actually got to take a Valentine's date! I believe it was the first we've taken on Valentine's day since we've come to the D.R. 9 years ago. Someone offered to keep the children for us last year and we ALMOST got to take one, but then that fell through.

We decided to try a restaurant in the city we've never been to - Tony Roma's. It is a restaurant from the States that must be mostly in the Southern U.S. We ordered hamburgers and they were DEE-LICIOUS! Here I went around all deputation saying how bad the hamburger is here and now I found out a place where we can get a good all-American burger! We're not as deprived as I thought. :-)

It was wonderful to be able to get out and spend Valentine's day with my favorite person. Thanks to our babysitters for making it possible!

God is moving!

I have not posted for a while due to preparing for and taking care of my company, my mother and brother. It was so nice to have them here. We all had a wonderful time together. They are returning home today. I have a lot of pictures I've been taking and things to blog about, but will take it one thing at a time.

I wanted to get this post done this evening since it is so important.

We had another beautiful service last Sunday morning with much of the Lord's presence. Ramon Vargas (pictured above), Pastor Euddy's father, came to church! This was wonderful and astounding as he has been so self-confident and not at all open to the things of the Lord in the past and certainly not coming to church! This was the only service we know of that the whole Vargas family was together for, except for a wedding or special occasion. Everyone was thrilled to have him show up!

He recently told Anna, Euddy's mother, that he thinks he's going to get saved. This is a huge milestone for him for having shown little interest before. The Lord is definitely dealing with his heart!

He said he's going to get saved, but, he said, not as we do. He said he will not get saved in church, just sometime he'll show up to church and preach. :-) He is a very intelligent man and will no doubt be of great blessing to the Kingdom of God once He gets in. We are praying that God will continue to deal with him and Ramon will humble himself before God.

He told Anna later that he wanted to leave the service. She asked him "Why?" and he said, "Because I felt like crying." She said, "Ramon, why didn't you leave?" He said, "Because I didn't want anyone to see me cry." It is very evident God is doing a mighty work in Ramon's life. We wait in anticipation for the day he surrenders his life to God.

Anna is here in the country for a few more weeks until she plans to return to the States. Her plans at this point are to return again to the D.R. in about 6 months to stay permanently.

Another young man, Moreno, is seriously considering being a Christian. His only holdback is that he can't imagine passing his enemies on the street and having to "love" them. God is moving! We got to visit Moreno tomorrow. If you think of it, pray that God would fill our mouths with his wisdom and that Moreno would give himself fully to Christ.

Kitchen tip

Did you know you do not have to cook the noodles for lasagna before you assemble it? You don't even have to buy the specialty noodles that you don't have to cook. I buy the regular kind - that's all there is here anyway. I just add a little water to the sauce to make it "saucy". Apply the sauce directly on the layer of noodles, making sure it covers every part of the noodle. If there are parts not covered, they will be hard. Assemble the rest as usual. Cover and bake for one hour. (If you do not cover it, noodles will not cook). If desired, uncover after 1 hour and bake a little longer. It is a real time saver and easy dish to prepare with avoiding this extra step. Try it and let me know how it works.

Another funeral

A brother of a lady from our church passed away yesterday. He had been suffering from cancer for a little while. We are a bit torn, because we don't have the assurance that his heart was ready to meet God. The only hope we have is that he told his sister, "I have faith". Perhaps this meant he had faith in God. He did not live for God in his lifetime, but we can only hope that in the final moments, he made his peace with God.

Doug will be tied up all day today in the funeral and burial. No doubt this lady will be torn, not having the assurance that her brother is with Jesus. If you think about it, pray for Mercedes that the Lord will comfort her in this difficult time.

New Convert and testimony of God's miraculous provision

The Lord has been meeting with us faithfully in our services. This past Thursday night a lady came to Bible study and gave her heart to Christ!

Sunday morning the Lord met with us in a special way. Lissette, pictured with her family on a recent post (sister-in-law to pastor Euddy) gave a tremendous testimony of how the Lord helped her this past week.

She had to schedule a check up for her little girl. She scheduled it so that it would be after her husband got paid. Something happened and he did not get paid on time. When she arrived at the doctor's office, she only had 90 pesos. The checkup cost 200 pesos and she needed 40 to get home. Evidently they let her pay 50 pesos and she can pay the rest later.

After leaving the clinic and on her way to a public transportation stop, she was telling her son, Davy, to help mommy pray because they only had 40 pesos to get home and that was it. They had run out of gas for the stove and she didn't have anyway to cook and they were also out of food. She didn't know how she was going to feed her family.

A lady pulled over in a truck and asked Lissette where she was going. Lissette told her and she said, "I can take you part way. Get in." Lissette got in and was thanking the lady telling her she didn't have enough money to get home, but that this ride would be big help.

As Lissette got out of the vehicle, the lady handed her 120 pesos. Tears came to Lissette's eyes and the lady said, "Don't cry. It's nothing."

Lissette happily walked to the next public transportation stop. She was waiting for the next car or bus. A little bit later, the lady in the truck came running after Lissette, saying, "I was on my way to the bank and something told me that the 120 pesos wasn't enough and that I should give you more. Here take this." The lady handed Lissette 1000 pesos! She told Lissette to go buy her and the kids a "pica pollo" (a Dominican "fast food" from a stand usually consisting of fried chicken and rice or plantains). This gave her enough money to feed her and the children for lunch, plus buy gas for the stove and enough food till her husband got paid. Isn't God awesome?!!