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.