March 17, 2011

Day 5: Groupo de Preguntas

Groupo de Pre­gun­tas (Josh, Julia, Kaden, Kassie, Ky, Lau­ren, Liz)

Today our group was again at the Uni­ver­sity. It proved to be a day in which God pro­vided many great oppor­tu­ni­ties for the gospel, as well as chances for us to build rela­tion­ships with the locals.

Lau­ren met a man named Steve. Steve is a believer, but wasn’t con­vinced of the impor­tance of shar­ing his faith. He helped trans­late for her today and will hope­fully be spurred on to con­tinue on his own time. Hope­fully we will be able to meet up with him again.

We also had a lit­tle bit of a wor­ship time in the mid­dle of the cam­pus. Josh played his gui­tar and as some peo­ple gath­ered around to see what was going on, our group had a num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties to share the good news with peo­ple who were interested.

Liz and Ky had an extremely grace filled day. Nei­ther of them can really speak Span­ish very well, but Liz got coura­geous and start­ing read­ing a tract to 6 or 7 girls at once. Peo­ple are very recep­tive to the word of God here in gen­eral. Ky also had a time where some girls were read­ing the gospel tracts to their friends for her.

Kaden and Kassie were shar­ing the good news with a man named Alexan­der. He seemed very inter­ested but there was some lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion due to the lan­guage bar­rier. How­ever, dur­ing this con­ver­sa­tion another Domini­can who was bi-lingual came up and trans­lated for them! Also, one of Alexander’s friends named Ral­phiel who only spoke Span­ish was a Chris­t­ian and asked them how to say “Chris­t­ian brother” in English!

That’s all for today. Tomor­row evening we will be hav­ing a large gath­er­ing at our hos­tel to pro­vide food and fel­low­ship for many we have invited. Pray that God will bless this time and that many would come to faith in Christ. Pray also for some local believ­ers that will began to take respon­si­bil­ity for the younger believ­ers around them and will help to lead the upcom­ing Bible study.

March 17, 2011

Group “Chica Por Favor”

Group “Chica Por Favor” — (Caleb, Israel, Shaly, Dot­tie, Stephanie A, Adam R, and Marissa)

This is our first blog. These past 5 days, the Lord has really been bless­ing our time here. We have had such a busy time talk­ing to peo­ple. It has been amaz­ing to see how God has been affect­ing people’s lives. God has answered so many of our prayers.

Shaly and Caleb were paired together and they met up with a girl whom they had met on Mon­day, Denisse brought her sis­ter Diana and then we met all of their friends. Caleb and Shaly were able to share with around 10 of them, each tak­ing turns, help­ing with trans­la­tion, shar­ing sto­ries of life, etc. One of Shaly’s prayers for the trip would be that she would meet a young woman in the first few days who would become her friend, some­one she would be able to spend a lot of time with over the week and that they’d have a last­ing friend­ship. Diana and Denisse were clearly the answer to their prayer and then the fol­low­ing night (Tonight) they came to the Hos­tel with Car­los, Diana’s brother who Caleb and Israel were able to share with ear­lier in the afternoon.

Today, we went to a large park in the mid­dle of cam­pus and brought the gui­tar. Israel began to play, we were able to sing and talk with sev­eral groups of peo­ple. Once the music stopped the seri­ous dis­cus­sion began and many peo­ple heard the Gospel. Three young women prayed to receive Christ with Israel. One young man who has been seek­ing out truth was able to talk with Shaly for about an hour, he firmly under­stood and expressed his con­fes­sion that he believed in his heart that Jesus was in fact the Son of God and God in the flesh and said that he would become a Chris­t­ian either today or tomor­row, but under­stood that this was some­thing so impor­tant it could not wait. We will meet up with him again.

We spent the after­noon in an orphan­age where the lit­tle ladies caught the “bieber fever” over Caleb, oth­er­wise known to most peo­ple as “Justin Bieber”. He begrudg­ingly signed auto­graphs and posed for pic­tures but refused to sing and dance. You can catch him doing those things on YouTube. We have sev­eral videos of the ladies chant­ing at him, but over­all it was an amaz­ing oppor­tu­nity to serve and love on kids. The orphan­age has over 70 chil­dren liv­ing there — babies through 20-yr olds. We were able to talk with many of them. They clearly have a Gospel Preach­ing atmos­phere, many had amaz­ing tes­ti­monies and one child shared hers and sang a very mov­ing song to Israel and Paco (we’ll post the video later).

Dot­tie, Stephanie A, and Marissa were paired together. A few days ear­lier we had talked to Nathalia and Isabel. They were awe­some girls and had both heard of Jesus. Nathalia truly knew about Jesus and his sac­ri­fice and knew she had to ask God into her heart, but wasn’t quite ready to make the deci­sion. She said she needed time. But yes­ter­day, Lau­ren Dybing, Ky Fuchs, and Kaden Bronzyn­ski talked to her and she decided to take the step and trust Jesus with her life. It was such an awe­some bless­ing and answered prayer. We were so excited.

On Tues­day we met a man named Jose who was a Chris­t­ian and he was really inter­ested in what we were doing. He asked if we had an Eng­lish Bible on us, and we said not now, but when we get back to the states we can mail you one. Our con­ver­sa­tion lasted for a while and we were able to leave him with the book More Than A Car­pen­ter to read. We began talk­ing about music and found out he plays the piano, and he really likes Hill­song. He wants to be involved with the bible study and church plant along with lead­ing wor­ship. We met a man named Denny on Mon­day who loves the Lord and strives to tell peo­ple about Jesus. He was a bless­ing because he was able to inter­pret for us the rest of the after­noon and he met up with some other peo­ple in our group on Tues­day. He met with us yes­ter­day and brought some friends along. He has a desire to spread the good news of Jesus to the peo­ple of Santo Domingo. God really answered some prayers these past few days send­ing some English-speaking peo­ple our way. Our group speaks a lit­tle bit of Span­ish, so Denny was an extremely great bless­ing to our group.

Israel and Adam R were paired together. They met a young man named Roman on the first day. He had a lot of ques­tions and doubts. We’ve been able to meet with him every­day this week and God has really been on his heart and mind. He has not made a pro­fes­sion of faith yet, but he shared with us a bless­ing he expe­ri­enced the other day. He was tak­ing a taxi on his way home and didn’t have enough money for the com­plete ride, so some­one blessed him with money for the remain­der of the ride home. Roman said that he did not believe it was a coin­ci­dence that that had hap­pened. Please pray for his heart and his abil­ity to accept truth and trust God with his life. We also met Waldin. God really blessed us with his soft heart. We were able to talk to him and he made a pro­fes­sion of faith. Please pray that Fer­nando that he would keep think­ing about the deci­sion and see the impor­tance of hav­ing Christ in his life.

Thank you for the prayers and sup­port. God has been work­ing won­ders down here.

Keep it up,
“Chica, Por Favor”

March 17, 2011

Groupo Sosa Amarillo Squares

Yes­ter­day we bar­be­qued by a pool, under some banana look­ing trees, in 80 degree heat, life is good in the Domini­can. More impor­tantly, most of the day we had the oppor­tu­nity to share the good news of Christ with many stu­dents through­out the day. The peo­ple here are so wel­com­ing and desire to talk about God, it has been great.

In the morn­ing we met with Joel again, the same young man that played squares with us the night before. He is still on the edge and has not sur­ren­dered his life to Christ, but his desire is so obvi­ous. Pray for Joel, that today in humil­ity he would stop liv­ing by his own strength and put his trust in God for everything.

There were too many great con­ver­sa­tions through­out the day, and we are excited to go back out again, so for now we will just list the names of all the peo­ple who heard of Christ’s death and res­ur­rec­tion. Please pray for them, if they know Christ they would be grow­ing, and if they have never trusted in Jesus for their sins that they would believe in Jesus.

Be pray­ing for Cesa­rina, Angel, Yolanda, Omar, Car­olina, Angelina, Mayelin, Raul, Landi (that she would be read­ing the Bible, because she loves to read), and Sammy our cab driver.

March 17, 2011

Day 5 for Team Awkward

Day 5 for Team Awk­ward (AB, Allie, Kari, Mandy, Matt, Parker)

Today was prob­a­bly the most encour­ag­ing day from every stand­point, com­pletely because of God’s grace and desire to use His kids for His own pur­poses. It’s such a joy to be able to bring the mes­sage of the good news to so many peo­ple. There’s no way to tell for sure, but prior to the trip our group has been pray­ing that 2,250 peo­ple would hear and UNDERSTAND the Gospel. Based on some wild cir­cum­stances and a ton of grace from the Lord, it really seems like that’s a real­is­tic esti­mate of how many peo­ple have con­versed with us about the Gospel. Con­tinue to pray for our group that we would fin­ish the trip strong. Also pray that God would con­tinue to do REALLY BIG things here in Santo Domingo. Pray that the church start­ing here would be faith­ful in keep­ing in touch with con­tacts that we’ve made for the Gospel.

Parker and Kari pretty much didn’t do any­thing all day. Mean­ing that we didn’t have to approach any­one because God, in His grace, decided instead to bring peo­ple to us. We were in the mid­dle of talk­ing about how the lan­guage bar­rier has been hard and how we felt, some­what, that we were inad­e­quate, when peo­ple started to approach us to talk IN ENGLISH. What a bless­ing from the Lord! The first per­son to do so was Eric. Pray for him that he would under­stand grace, but that God still calls us to live a holy life. Next was Jesúss. He flagged us down to ask us why all of us white peo­ple were on the cam­pus. We pro­ceeded to start going through the Gospel with him. It was hard, though, because he had so many friends that we could barely carry a con­ver­sa­tion. This turned out to be a huge bless­ing because we were able to share with many more peo­ple who kept stop­ping by to prac­tice their Eng­lish. Pray for Kelvin, Diana, Emmanuel, Franco, Davíd, and Jef­fery who all got to hear the Gospel in Span­ish because of God’s awe­some grace. Pray that they would come to one of the par­ties we host and that they would believe that liv­ing for Christ is bet­ter than liv­ing for this world. Now, back to Jesúss…

Jesúss sat and talked to me (Kari) for an hour and a half about the gospel. I went through a Span­ish tract with him and made sure he under­stood it using my bro­ken Span­ish and his bro­ken Eng­lish. There were many dis­trac­tions, but Jesúss always brought his atten­tion back to me and the con­ver­sa­tion we were hav­ing about the gospel. The peo­ple Parker was shar­ing with left and he came back over to sit with Jesúss in time to go through the good news and how to become a Chris­t­ian. Jesúss said that he wanted to accept Jesus into his heart, so we talked about count­ing the cost of being a dis­ci­ple of Jesus Christ. He said he under­stood. We had some really funny lan­guage bar­ri­ers when it came to Jesúss pray­ing to receive Christ, but even­tu­ally we got it and he lifted his face up to the sky and prayed to him­self and fin­ished with “Amen”. He came to get gro­ceries with us for our group lunch and said he would come to our party tonight. Pray for him, pray that the wor­ries of the world would not choke out the word and that he would get con­nected with the bible study that is start­ing next week.

Another answer to prayer that I received specif­i­cally was a prayer for grace with under­stand­ing Span­ish spo­ken to me. Terry approached an older man and had me come over to trans­late. This man spoke no Eng­lish and had a growly voice and a thick accent, but by the grace of God, we were able to clearly com­mu­ni­cate the mes­sage of the gospel. He said he would pray to receive later at his house and come to the party. His name is Pablo, pray for him-he could be a man of great influ­ence. Praise the Lord! He is faith­ful in answer­ing prayers– these are only a few of the ways He has shown up here in Santo Domingo

Matt and Allie love talk­ing to huge groups of peo­ple as of yes­ter­day but only by Gods grace. We were walk­ing by the library to find an inter­preter, a group of 12 peo­ple wanted to speak to us because we were Amer­i­cans. Five peo­ple knew Eng­lish in the group. God pro­vided Eng­lish speak­ers, so we didn’t need one. Praise the Lord for pro­vid­ing. Mari­nal was a girl who knew Eng­lish and was excited. While the gospel was being shared with Mari­nal, another guy who knew Eng­lish wanted to lis­ten to the gospel. Mari­nal had a super soft heart and admired us shar­ing our faith. One other girl Janelle’s eyes grew larger dur­ing the gospel. Praise God. Another guy, Gabr­ial, whom we shared with, had such a soft heart. He said that he knew a lot about the con­cepts of Catholics, Chris­tians, and Mor­mons but didn’t really fol­low any of them. Allie was talk­ing with him and real­ized his face changed com­pletely from the begin­ning of the con­ver­sa­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, right when they were get­ting to a good spot in the con­ver­sa­tion, he had to go to class. The whole group of peo­ple that we had talked o were extremely recep­tive and curi­ous as to why we were in the Domini­can. God has really been answer­ing prayers like crazy this whole week and it’s amaz­ing to see the work that He has done right in front of our eyes.

For Adam and Mandy, it was also a day of many answered prayers. We had been pray­ing that God would really give us a con­tact who would con­tinue to inter­act with us upon our return to the States. For a while in the morn­ing, it didn’t seem like any­thing was going to hap­pen. We had a few con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple where the gospel went out, and only God knows the heart, but it didn’t seem like much was hap­pen­ing. Because most of our con­ver­sa­tions had been in Span­ish, and Mandy doesn’t speak it very well, she asked that we go over to the Eng­lish Immer­sion build­ing. When we were over there, we met Miguel. He spoke some Eng­lish, but not all that well. He had a really soft heart and really wants to come to our get-together tonight.

The most encour­ag­ing part of our day was right after this, when we went to the library for the bath­rooms. Oscar walked up to me and asked why there were so many Amer­i­cans on cam­pus this week; I explained to him what was going on and started to ask him about what he believed. At first, he said that he didn’t sin and was a good per­son. But it was amaz­ing to see how God con­victed him of his sin and changed his heart right in front of us. He under­stood it and we were able to share about how his life must change if he wants to become a Chris­t­ian. He also gave me his Black­Berry Mes­sen­ger pin and he told me that he has been think­ing about what we told him and was read­ing the tract that we gave him. We are meet­ing with him later on today and I am so excited to see what God has done in his heart. God is faith­ful to answer our prayers in crazy ways.

March 17, 2011

Day 3 Update: Groupo “Que Chevere!”

Day 3 Update: Groupo “Que Che­vere!” (Elena Clark, Collin Cameron, Stephanie Schlar­mann, Lisa Scott, Megan Lyon, Jacob Bennett)

HOLA, AMIGOS!

Many many thanks to God for YOU, prayer war­riors, as we con­tinue to rely on the LORD’s strength and pro­vi­sion this week in Santo Domingo! We have many praises to report…oh, GOD IS SO GOOD!!

I can­not express my excite­ment for all that He has done in these past few days! Jacob last updated on our safe arrival here, and since that time God has been con­stantly reveal­ing His amaz­ing power before our very eyes. We have been SO blown away by His grace and His bless­ing here in Domini­can Repub­lic. This place is full of men and women who are so hun­gry for the truth of the Gospel mes­sage, so thirsty for sal­va­tion! We have wit­nessed God soften the hearts of many to receive Christ as their per­sonal Sav­ior and enter into a rela­tion­ship with the liv­ing God—and our group, like many oth­ers, has found a lot of favor on the uni­ver­sity cam­pus and has found COUNTLESS stu­dents whose hearts are on fire for the Lord. We have gath­ered sev­eral con­tacts and infor­ma­tion from stu­dents who are very seri­ous about join­ing in fel­low­ship with other believ­ers to study the Bible and con­tinue spread­ing the gospel around cam­pus. Two of these are men who are very closely con­nected with pro­fes­sors and other stu­dents of the Eng­lish immer­sion school on cam­pus. Man, God has taken your prayers and has COMPLETELY blown them up, show­ing us His power is far greater than we could ever ask or imagine!!

Yes­ter­day, by His grace, our two friends led us through­out the Eng­lish immer­sion pro­gram and LITERALLY opened doors to class­rooms in which we were able to walk in and pro­claim the mes­sage of the gospel to at least six dif­fer­ent class­rooms of stu­dents (we still have not been able to count all of the con­tacts), result­ing in over 150 stu­dents reached. God’s plan for this incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity came because the power went out yes­ter­day after­noon on cam­pus, and classes were can­celed, but pro­fes­sors for these Eng­lish classes wanted to bring in dis­cus­sion in English.

We have con­tin­ued to build rela­tion­ships with many of these stu­dents, and many oth­ers we have come into con­tact with today and this week. PRAISE GOD! PRAISE GOD! PRAISE GOD! This is the song that is on our hearts this week, and we praise Him for answer­ing your prayers! We are so unde­serv­ing of His grace and SO THANKFUL for the abil­ity to par­tic­i­pate in His glo­ri­ous plan to reach this island!

For His sake, we also pray Psalm 67:

May God be gra­cious to us and bless us
and make His face shine upon us,
that Your ways may be known on earth,
Your sal­va­tion among all nations.

May the peo­ples praise you, O God; may all the peo­ples praise You!
May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for You rule the peo­ples justly and guide the nations of the earth

May the peo­ples praise You, O God;
May all the peo­ples praise You.
Then the land will yield its har­vest, and God, or God, will bless us.
God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear Him.

AMEN!!!!!!
We love you all and can­not wait to report more praises!