Followup Pictures

These pictures didn't make the upload due to slow speed during the week so here they are. Pictures of our farewells and sponsored kids visits, VBS, candy making(and eating) Dominican style and more.

Friday Comes fast... as Always

Friday morning, as always, it has seemed like the time has flown by to bring us to the end of our trip. We have been so blessed to continue relationships with the special people of Sierra Prieta and with the blessed FH staff.

As things began to wind down last night, Dan got to spend some time with Edwin and Jahira.  Dan has been sponsoring Edwin since Cornerstone connected with FH. Jahira, his mom, has been serving us in the kitchen on our trips since our first trip and blessing us with her infectious smile and servants heart.  In 2008, just as we began to get involved with Food for the Hungry and Sierra Prieta their husband and father died in an accident with electricity.  We didn't even know this for the first 2 trips as she was always so joyful and encouraging.  Dan has developed a special relationship with both Edwin, who is now 14 in the 8th grade and his brother Scarlin who is 11.  It was a great to watch them talk about life, future plans for Edwin and to just share life together.  These times make the relationships so much deeper, and make good-bye's harder.

Another young person who has been a blessing to virtually all our team is Rachel.  Her mother Juliana has helped often in the kitchen and is a strong Christian leader in the community.  Rachel, is now working for Food for the Hungry leading the Amo (translated love) Program.  It is also referred to as Feed my Sheep.  The program teaches children Biblical principles for character development.  It is an intensive program which meets weekly.  She works with 200 kids at a time in 2 different communities.  At the same time she attends University and will graduate soon with a degree in education.  She plans to be a teacher.  Additionally, She is moving from teaching 2 Amo sections to supervision the transition of Amo from being taught by FH staff like herself to being taught by local churches.  There will be a training for pastors and church members who will lead the groups.  Her role will be to help with he training and to supervise and be a resource for the churches.  The goal is to get more people connected with local churches.  Besides all this, she helped most of the week(when not in classes) with our team.  Coordinating our home visits, helping with our school interactions, serving in the kitchen and helping with the welcome and farewell.  We are blessed by her.

Our Team with Rachel and Taina

Another of the FH staff that has been a huge blessing is Taina. She serves as the local health trainer in Sierra Prieta as well as a number of other communities where FH works.  This week, she also supervised the kitchen staff and other aspects of our care.  She sends here greetings to past team members and told us to hug our families for her.  It was a touch good-bye to all of these special folks.

The journey home started today as we returned to Santo Domingo to fly out on Saturday.  We loaded all our luggage into a van and headed to the FH office for some last business and then on to a hotel near the airport for our departure.

Our FH team coordinators, Edwin and Nathan, have been an integral part of our team and Franchesca, the FH doctor,has blessed us by improving our effectiveness.  They blessed us by joining us for dinner with the guys wives and Nathan's daughter.

At our dinner tonight.

This year at the farewell ceremony, we did not receive the standard certificates of appreciation.  Instead, they gave us personalized wooden key chains in the shape of the Dominican Republic with our names on them.  They encouraged us to use them and to pray for the ministry here when we see them.  It was a very sincerely appreciated gesture.  

As always, we will miss the people here and are greatly encouraged by our time.  Now we look forward to 24 hours in and out of airports to return to our frozen homeland and our families.

God Bless Thank you for your prayers now go sponsor a child at the link above.

Thursday full of good things and good byes

Volleyball was a change from previous years, and a welcome change for us.  We went down to the school and helped set-up the net and soon kids were organized out of the classrooms to join us.  It gave us lots of opportunity to interact with the kids as we played along side them and different kids rotated in and out.  We played for about an hour and really enjoyed the time.

Returning to the community center we were greeted by a new group from Food for the Hungry.  The country director, Tom, our friend over many trips Carlos and a film crew came along with Chris Tomlin.  He will be promoting FH child sponsorships at his concerts and wanted to see the work first hand.  They were very glad for the opportunity to hear from us about the changes we have seen in Sierra Prieta over the years we've been able to be involved.  We enjoyed sharing what God has done and mope that it will open up vision in more people to become involved in this effective ministry.

Our next activity was Church Leadership training.  We were blessed to have representatives from 4 different congregations. Greg spent a little over an hour sharing principles of leadership selection and motivating leaders to keep their relationship with God of prime importance in their lives. 

At the training we met the new pastor of the church.  Santiago has taken over the pastorship from Pastor Juan Segundo.  He seems to be full of energy, but has 5 congregations to serve as pastor.  We pray that he leads well and develops good leaders.

Following the training we transitioned into the farewell ceremony.  We were blessed to hear from so many of our long time friends.  Monica, Jocasta, Guadalupe, Juliana, Rochelle, Joel, and Taina From FH.  There were tears for our departure, but more so there were tears of gratitude for what God has accomplished in Sierra Prieta.  They thanked us for being the conduit God has used to bring so much encouragement and motivation and hope to Sierra Prieta. 

The dynamic with the women of the Sierra Prieta is different with our team as we have no ladies with us this year.  But the depth of emotion shared in the farewell, has impacted us.  It revealed that despite our lesser emotional connection on an interpersonal level, there is still real and genuine emotional connection in Christ and through the hope and vision the people of the community have gained through this process.  They invited us to please come back and asked that we bring our whole families.

In addition to thanks to God for working in us they expressed thanks to all of those who made it possible for us to be here.  They thanked each of us for leaving our families to come here and asked us to express their gratitude to our families for allowing us to leave.  There were also words of thanks to Cornerstone Church and to all who gave generously to make this trip and the building project possible.  It is our desire that more people will come with the team next year to participate in the blessing that we gain in being here.

Following the farewell ceremony Bob and Austin completed their Sponsored child visits.  They met with Elva and Leysi.  It's always a blessing to see these kids and the care and concern that Bob shares in his meetings is a blessing to us all.  I hope the Picture of Elva's beautiful smile with Bob and Austin comes through.

This evening we are showing a movie for the children of the community.  It is a special treat of entertainment that they rarely get in this setting.  The movie is Finding Nemo and the crowd is huge.

Thank you again for your prayers and encouragement.  I once again apologize for the blog and lack of pictures.  With our internet connection it is difficult to get much out.  Thank you for your prayers we look forward to sharing more of our blessings and experiences once we return.

Wednesday Upon Us

Wednesday allowed us to sleep in a little bit.  This morning we headed to the school to speak to the 7th and 8th grade students.  Franchesca, Tood for the Hungry's staff doctor and medical trainer is with us today again.  She has arranged for us to speak to the young people at the school particularly about issues of sex. We had a conversation together with all the kids and then they wrote questions down to be answered.  Then we split up the boys and the girls.  Franchesca and Taina took the girls into another room and we spoke with the boys.  They had questions about when should have sex, and when to get married as well as a number of questions about std's and some questions about marriage.

During the introduction Franchesca challenged them to change the future of their country.  She said that they have one of the higher young pregnancy rates and a high infant mortality rate.  The young pregnancy rate keeps the country in a cycle of poverty and the number of young parents have an influence on the infant mortality rate because young people are unprepared to be parents. We pray that this time and Food for the Hungry's continueing efforts have an impact on these challenges.

We all enjoyed being in the school and are still amazed at how different it is than when we had arrived.

Leaving the school, we went out to where the men of the community were continueing to trench for the water project.  We are so encouraged to see that they are making huge progress.  It will be incredible to see the impact this will have.  Hours each day will be relaimed for each household and I believe that things will be much cleaner and there will be time for other things in each household. And on a selfish note, we'll have real showers and regualr flush toilets when we return.

After lunch Franchesca and Bob led a health and nutrition clinic for mother's with young children.  It was well attended, and of course the mothers brought their kids along, ranging in ages from 25 days to 2 years.  They shared a lot of great in formation and encouraged thim in many ways.

In a little bit of down time Dan and Bob wondered over to the home of Vasilia, a frined from our first days here, and got pictures of here making cany and sweets.  The coconut mixture came together over the open fire under a tree and mixed with a stick. it ended up beaten flat on a table with the same stick.  In the end, she was gracious to bring us over a jar of the mixture and even those of us who don't enjoy coconut found it to be delicious.

The afternoon concluded with VBS on the sight of the other church.  As it is under constuction for expansion and upgrade, we met in what will be a very nice building once completed.  Dan is in his element speaking to the kids and they enjoyed some singing and the story of Daniel and the Lion's Den.  We wrapped up with come coloring and really enjoyed time with them.

We are all a little worn down at this point and are thankful for a cooler night.  We look forward to a vollyball game at the school tomorrow, church leader training and the farewill ceremony. 

It was really something to look around the school room today and to see so many kids taht we have known for years, Jairon, Michael, Edwin, Juan Martires, Angelo, and more.  Many we know through sponsorships, and others from our time in the community. 

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. 

Milestone Tuesday

It seems every year Tuesday seems like Thursday in terms of what has transpired and then Friday seems like Tuesday in terms of how long we've been here. This trip is no different.  Already lots of trench has been dug and we've seen so many old friends and connected with so many new friends.

I need to ask you to please excuse any typo's and the less polished look of the blog this year.  In order for the wifi device to connect we have to walk a ways through the community and stand on a street corner for 20 minutes or so to upload.  In order to make this a little more convenient I've been typing the blog on my phone and uploading from the phone as well.  This is better than trying to balance a laptop on the street corner.

This morning we all awoke being well rested.  The initial sleeping issues seem to have been overcome and it was a cooler night as well. Thank you for your prayers.

After breakfast we headed out to dig more water lines.  This time we started at the well and pump location and began digging another of the supply lines.  And as yesterday, we got started and soon were overrun by a large group of local men and young men working hard and owing their project. Momentarily we thought we had been abandoned, but once we walked around the corner we saw they had just moved on and continued to make progress without us. A perfect picture of what we have hoped to to see God accomplish all along, to be a part of encouraging them to take the lead and carry the vision for improving their community.

We were invited to participate in the Dedication of the community center after lunch.  It was a real ceremony, starting with prayer and the playing of the Dominican National Anthem. A number of community leaders including, Vacilia, Juliana, and Guadalupe shared words of encouragement and praise to God for the promise that the community center shows. They are proud to have such a beautiful building in their community and of the development it shows to anyone coming by.  It will be a place for meetings of all kinds that relate to the development of Sierra Prieta.  Greg was asked to share a few words and then was surprised when they asked him to do the official ribbon cutting. We are blessed to be included as a church in such a special way.

After the Dedication and ribbon Cutting we had a brief meeting with the community leaders.  We reviewed the development God has enabled in Sierra Prieta since we were able to first visit in 2009. At that time the children were very skinny, the community leadership was very loosely formed, the school had only 4 classrooms, no one drank purified water, lots of families had no outhouse, there were lots of families without proper homes, few children attended high school, there were many families without a father and numerous girls got pregnant at a young age. 

We asked the leaders to reflect on the things that they have seen God accomplish in their midst since that time.  They spoke of coming to a much better understanding of health and hygiene, of the improvements at the school, of finally seeing the result of purified water on the health of their children, gaining confidence to work together to improve their community, and having hope for things to improve.  They all were thankful to God for using the teams from Cornerstone and Food for the Hungry to inspire them and motivate them as well as provide for their development.  The leaders meeting ended on an  note of thanks to God for his work here.  We encouraged them to carry the vision forward and to work together in God's service.

As the dedication started late and the impromptu leaders meeting took a little longer than anticipated we had to cancel the VBS program for this afternoon.  But Dan headed out on his sponsored child visits and had a great time meeting with them and especially enjoying the time with Edwin, his mom Jahira and brother Escarling.  They have been special to us all for a number of years.  It is amazing to see these little sponsored children grow into young men and women and to continue relationships with their families.

Tomorrow will be a day full of things new and old.  There will be a meeting with the teenagers at the school in the morning.  Austin and Holden will share with them, please pray for a fruitful dialogue. After lunch Bob will join the FH doctor, Franchesca, will  have a meeting with the expectant mother to discus health issues.  Then we will continue with VBS and more Sponsored Child visits.

This day seemed full of milestones, with the dedication of the community center and the vision session with the leaders. 

One of the pictures is of women carrying 5 gallon buckets of water on their heads and one gallon jugs. It is the old way of water supply walking next to the men digging the trench for the new way.  What a blessing that will be for everyone here.  There is also a picture of the map showing where the supply lines will run to bring a water tap to every home in Sierra Prieta.  In addition there are pictures of the dedication/ribbon cutting and sponsored child visits.

Thank you for your prayers.  We ask that you pray for us to have continued good health, good rest and opportunities to share Gods truth with those we encounter here.

VBS begins

After a brief siesta Dan, Bob and Austin headed off to lead VBS with Nathan and Taina. They taught over 60 kids the story of David and Goliath. And despite a shortage of coloring papers they had an effective meeting.

Greg and Holden headed out to visit sponsored kids across the community. They missed one but had a good time speaking with Anna-Rosa, her sister and mother. It has been amazing to see her grow into a young lady over the years.

Then they went to visit Christopher ,who was still at High school, so went on to Angelo's house. He has shot up in size and shared some small gifts, which was very sweet.  He and his mother were very grateful for the visit.

It takes some time to connect with some sponsored kids but they all really appreciate the involvement offered weather from letters and cards or direct visits. 

We hope to sleep well this evening and look forward to more ditch digging, and VBS tomorrow as well as a dedication ceremony for the community and some more home visits.

Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement!

Monday morning

Good Monday morning!  Still no Internet
So while I take a break from the pick I'll share a bit. This morning was a bit tough, please pray for team members who aren't sleeping well.

At 7am we arose to a nice breakfast of oatmeal, guava and much needed coffee. Still the ability to get to the bathroom without going outside softened all blows.  We were joined by out dear friend Taina who works with FH. She was like a team mom to us last year.

After breakfast we headed out for our construction project. We were part of breaking ground for a water system that will bring running water to all the homes in the community.  The town mayor, Guadalupe took the first swing, and we joined in from there. After 20 minutes the group of locals far out sized our team. It was a great time to see the vision these young men have for the betterment of this community.

By the time we had been working for about 90 minutes we had seen the shallow trench reach well over a quarter mile. The end of the community center where we are staying has a flat cement roof.  That roof will hold a large tank acting as a water tower to provide pressure for the system that will bring running water for cleaning and bathing to all the homes in the community who purchase a tap and connect to the line.  Currently they carry water in 5 gallon buckets from the central well. A pump will fill the tank from that well and then the tank will feed the rest of the lines.

Lunch today has been excellent as usual.  We are well served here.

At our current location the cell signal is weak so we can't get connection. So we'll walk a few blocks to a better spot to upload our updates.  Our schedule will be off but we will keep updating as possible.

Thank you for your prayers!

Arriving In Sierra Prieta

It was good to arrive in the Dominican Republic, after so much traveling and the threat of weather delays, finally at 12:30 this morning.  We slept well at a hotel near the airport and arrived at the community just before lunch. 

The first thing we saw was the new community center, Wow! It is incredible.  As you can see from the pictures, it is huge, clean, and complete with bathrooms.  While we have been pleased to stay in many deferent circumstances, these are some very nice accommodations.  There is no running water but the toilets flush with the help of a bucket.  They are inside with clean tile floors and a nice shower space.  The main room is split up by tarps to give a nice meeting/dining rom and our sleeping quarters.

Once getting settled in and being treated to a nice lunch of Holden’s favorite yellow rice and ham, we were greeted by over 80 members of the community at the welcome ceremony.  There were presentations by a number of groups of young people from dance numbers to skits. And 6 or so different members of the community spoke very graciously of their thanks to God for Cornerstone sending our teams for these 8 years.  As always they tell us this is our home and we are so welcome here. 

We are blessed as a team to be joined by Edwin, a new Team Coordinator with Food for the Hungry and to be reunited with Nathan who was with us last year as coordinator.  It is always good to be reunited with those we have grown close with over the years.

At the welcome ceremony, we saw a few of our sponsored children and their families as well as many other familiar faces both young and old.  We look forward to seeing and spending time with many friends here.  In the morning we will begin a work project have a VBS meeting in the afternoon and visit some sponsored kids and their families. 

Bob and Austin visited Paquita, one of their sponsored kids after the welcome meeting as she attends high school far away and lives with a family member closer to her school during the week.  They were able to speak with her mother and pray with the family.  We also delivered a gift to Ronibell.

Web connectivity is a little tough so we are glad to just get the opportunity to post the blog.

Thank you to everyone who is praying for us and the community of Sierra  Prieta.

Off we go

This week is an adventure ready to be unwrappped.

We are about to take off from Cody and hope to be in the Dominican Republic by midnight.  Thank you for your prayers!