DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
JANUARY 2008 OUTREACH UPDATE:
Tropical Storm Olga, the second storm in a little over a month, rammed through the Dominican Republic displacing nearly 62,000 inhabitants and left some 190 towns isolated due to damage to roads and bridges. Missionary Tim Johnson called and expressed thanks to Feeding The Nations for all of the food that was shipped to help the hurting. Since Oct. 1, 2007, 223 people have been killed by flooding on the island shared by Dominican Republic and Haiti.
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Raining Down Supplies: Feeding the Nations Aids Post-Hurricane Dominican Republic
When Hurricane Noel made landfall on October 28 in the Dominican Republic, it dumped
what is typically three years worth of rain on the island in just two short days. Feeding the Nations heard the cries of those who lost their homes, villages and loved ones, and in response sent 65 tons of supplies to help ease at least some of their suffering.
Missionary Timothy Johnson of La Casa Grande de Centro de Misiones International in Santiago, contacted FTN after the hurricane struck. Johnson reported that due to the hurricane, 75,000 people had to flee their homes and are living in churches, schools and government buildings. The storm hit 100 towns and villages, damaged 18,675 homes and destroyed 2,000 homes. Over 100 people have died and several are still missing.
In response to that news, FTN assembled 65 tons of canned soup, green beans, potatoes, corn, mixed greens, and fortified rice and vegetable meals specially formulated for people who lack the recommended daily intake of vitamins, minerals and proteins. FTN hopes that these supplies can offer physical and spiritual nourishment, giving the people of the Dominican Republic the strength they need to rebuild their homes and their lives.
JUNE/JULY 2007 OUTREACH UPDATE:
Feeding The Nations partnered with Pastor Timothy Johnson of La Casa Grande Centro de Misiones International and Dr. Delron and Peggy Shirley of Teach All Nations to distribute 43,000 pounds of fortified rice and soy protein meals (270,864 meals) valued at $45,144
throughout Santiago and the surrounding villages. So far 40 outreaches have taken place with 900 people coming to know the Lord. More wonderful opportunities to share the Lord are still ahead as additional
outreaches are planned with the remaining portion of the food.
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JOURNAL - 2005 YEAR IN REVIEW
As FTN reaches out with our last project of the year, people will be ministered to by a team of youth who are giving up their Christmas holiday to go to the Dominican Republic to share the gospel and distribute food from two 40' containers valued at $85,000 as FTN partners with La Casa Granda International Mission Center.
FINAL 2005 OUTREACH
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In a recent issue of Missionary Ventures International, Mark Proffitt wrote about not only the benefit, but also the necessity, of involving teens in missions. He made the point that only four percent of American teens are being impacted by the gospel. Even though church youth leaders spend hours developing ways to reach the kids -- from games and events to concerts and cookouts -- they are still only reaching a few teens at a time. Teens find our Bible studies boring and our discipleship classes mundane. Teens are avoiding church like a plague. We may respond by calling our youth "spoiled," "lazy," and "underachievers." But Proffitt claims that this is far from the truth. He emphasizes that what our youth want is an opportunity to apply what they are being taught. They want to be "the hands and feet of Christ." They want to make a difference, and they will make a difference if we give them the opportunity to do so. Proffitt concludes that the most effective tool in reaching youth is missions. He says that youth group meetings are great and Bible study is necessary, but serving in missions has a greater long-term impact on young people. He has observed that teens who serve on missions teams are more likely to become active in their churches, which leads to their remaining a part of their church when they become adults living on their own.
This Christmas holiday, we had the opportunity to prove how much a mission trip can impact the life of a teen by leading a group from Christ Chapel to the Dominican Republic. Although we were only out of the country for a few days, the experience actually stretched over most of the calendar year. Late last winter, we began promoting the idea among the teens and the church leadership. By early spring, the church was "on board" with the idea and the teens were applying to be part of the team. Next came the big job of raising the money for the trip. Since the only convenient time for all the teens to travel would be during the Christmas break, we knew that we would be facing the highest airline prices of the year; therefore, we set a budget of $20,000 to cover the expenses of the trip. You should have seen the kids' mouths drop open when we told them how much they would have to raise! Of course, the parents and church leaders' jaws also dropped!!
The kids dedicated their summer to various work projects to earn the money. They had bake sales and garage sales, washed windows, did yard work, painted fences, and even remodeled a kitchen. It was an exceptionally hot summer, but the kids didn't let the heat or exhaustion slow them down; they kept working right up to the day that they had to return to school in the fall. By this point, they had over half the cash in hand; then, they wrote letters to friends and family asking for help. You should have seen the amazement in their eyes each time they received a check toward the trip! By the time winter hit, the money was all in and we began to focus on the trip itself -- learning a few key Spanish phrases, preparing dramas to perform in the meetings in the Dominican, practicing singing together, and trying to get over stage fright and shyness by giving testimonies in the youth meetings -- but most of all, praying together for the trip. This was not only the first time for most of these students to go outside the country; for most it was also their first time on an airplane -- so there were lots of fears to overcome, such as fear of flying and -- more importantly -- fear of bugs. These months of preparation had a powerful uniting effect on the youth group. Working together brought them to a place of trusting in and depending upon one on another in a way that would never have happened otherwise -- guys, gals, black, white, Hispanic. More importantly, it was as also a time of learning how to trust and depend on God! Oh, yes, and for the bugs; rather than running away when we found a tarantula in the dinning room, they all ran to see it and even gave it a name!
Finally, Christmas break arrived and we were off on the adventure of a lifetime. Though the trip was short, it was intense and packed with lots of activities. We arrived in Santiago late on Tuesday night and only had time for a midnight snack before settling into our rooms at La Casa Grande, the mission base run by a couple from our church. Wednesday was to be a big day in that we were expecting to receive two forty-foot containers of food from Feeding the Nations, a humanitarian organization associated with our church. Although the containers had arrived two weeks earlier, they had not been cleared because one key agent was on Christmas vacation. Now that he was back, the containers could be released as soon as the extra storage fee was paid. Although the delay was the vacationing official's fault, the missionary was responsible for the late charges. It would take most of the day to get the money transferred, but we didn't worry too much since we didn't need the food until Friday. We spent the morning visiting the neighborhood announcing the children's meeting which was scheduled for Friday. This outreach gave the teens an opportunity to visit in homes and pass out gospel tracts. This was the first time any of our team had ever seen people living in shacks made of scrap wood and sheets of tin with only dirt floors, and it made them thankful for the nice homes they have back in America. Before we completed our sweep through the neighborhood, it started to rain. At lunch we prayed for the rain to stop because the afternoon schedule included an open-air crusade in the city park. The rain stopped just as we got to the park; so, we set up the portable sound system and began to sing. As a crowd began to gather, the teens presented a drama entitled "Bondage," which depicts a young lady who wants to come to Jesus but is bound by chains representing lust, greed, and addiction. After the missionary preached, almost a dozen came forward to receive the Lord. The youth team helped pray for the people and went throughout the crowd passing out tracts. After the program, we visited the open-air market and the local shopping area to distribute tracts. That evening we participated in a local church service where the team presented the drama, sang, gave testimonies, and prayed for the individuals who came forward at the altar call.
Thursday we awoke to the news that our containers were still not out of customs. This time there was a problem with one of the documents; the officers had a photocopy of one form but insisted that they have the original. We knew that we had to pray because we could not wait any longer since we had two big food distributions scheduled for the next day. Before the prayer, Delron shared from Romans 8:26-28 concerning the necessity of having the Holy Spirit's assistance in our prayers. When we don't know how to pray, the Spirit intervenes and prays in perfect alignment with the will of God so that we can know that all things will work out to our best. At that point, several of the students admitted that they had never experienced that kind of Spirit-led prayer but said that they needed it for the present situation and for their lives in general. Our prayer focus shifted from the containers to the team members. As we ministered to each individual, everyone was deeply touched and many began to sob as they experienced deep inner healing. Some testified that the Lord had drawn them into a closer relationship with Himself so that they knew they could now make better decisions and live better lives even around their non-Christian friends and classmates. One girl who is nearing her senior year of high school said that she had no idea what God is going to do in her life but that God used this prayer session as a time to answer many things she had been praying about and showed her what she going to be doing in her future. After the prayer, we spent time learning some songs in Spanish and went to the supermarket to pass out tracts. About mid afternoon, we received word that the containers were released from customs but that the delivery company wasn't going to bring them that day since it was about a four-hour trip and it too late in the day to start. Again we prayed, and suddenly we received a phone call stating that the trucks were on the road heading toward Santiago! We used the rest of the afternoon putting together gift bags for the next day's children's outreach. By divine provision, we had toys with us in our luggage rather than in the containers! When the work was done, the kids had free time for a swim -- something they really enjoyed, especially when they remembered that it was freezing back home!
When the containers arrived at 7 PM, the drivers told us that it would take until 2 AM to unload them since we were going to do the job by hand. But when the team, along with some local volunteers, jumped into the trucks and started hauling out the boxes, they amazed everybody by finishing the job in one hour and fifteen minutes! Then we turned our energy to getting everything into storage -- a job which took the next two and a half hours. The missionary was amazed to hear the kids singing while they worked because he wasn't singing as he labored with the task. He said that the kids' joy was an encouragement to him. Once everything was in storage, we turned our focus to packing the food boxes which were to be distributed at the pastors' conference the following day. It was well past midnight when we folded the last flap on the final box, but the kids were still laughing and singing!
We realized that it was perfect timing that containers came when they did, not only because they arrived just in time for the two distributions scheduled for the following day, but also because we were able to unload them at night without attracting a lot of attention from neighbors who would have lined up at the gate asking for handouts if the trucks had arrived during the daytime. If the containers had been released when they first arrived, the missionary would have had to unload them without the help of the youth team and the team would not have had the experience of actually moving that much missionary support. In addition, because it was night, the heat was not so intense as we worked.
Friday was the busiest day of the trip. We started out by setting up the chairs and stage for children's service. Almost three hundred kids showed up -- a significant increase over usual number. After the teens sang in English and Spanish and presented a drama about the armor of God, about forty children responded to the invitation. The highlight of the morning was the distribution of the Christmas packages we had packed the day before: a toy, candy, gum, pencils, a tract, and a Christmas card along with a box of cereal from the containers we had unloaded during the night. As soon as we cleaned up after the children's outreach, we began setting up for the pastors' conference which attracted about two hundred and fifty pastors and Christian workers. After the teens presented their drama and sang, Peggy taught on the ten principles in leadership and Delron taught on fourth dimension reality. The students served cool pops and water during service and a meal afterward. Again, the highlight was the distribution of the food boxes we had assembled the night before: a canned turkey, pinto beans, apple sauce, noodles, cookies, cereal, cheese, and a Christian book. As a reward for the hard days' labor, we treated the group with a trip to the local McDonalds and then went to the National Monument, the focal point of the local nightlife, to distribute gospel tracts.
As the trip came to a close, we were able to look back at lives which had been touched through our prayers, our ministry, the food distribution, and the literature; but I sincerely believe that an equal -- if not greater -- impact was made in the lives of the team. Because the Dominican Republic has been dominated by the Spanish, overrun by the Haitians, influenced by the French, and administered by the Americans -- the people feel that they reflect characteristics of all the racial blends rather than display any one distinctive set of traits. This extremely diverse ethnic make-up is demonstrated in their traditional handcrafted faceless dolls. Rather than stylizing the dolls with any one set of features which singles them out, the faces are left blank and open for universal acceptance and individual interpretation. Our recent mission trip gave the Christ Chapel Youth Group the wonderful opportunity to add features to these faceless images. No longer will the nation be a collage of non-descript humans -- facts and figures academically reported in an encyclopedia. The doll now displays the exuberant smile erupting across the miniature face of a young boy who has just received a box of cereal and a toy at the end of the children's crusade. It also boasts the radiant glow of a pastor and his wife who were given a big box of groceries as they were leaving the pastors' training conference. The face is flushed with the excitement of a lady who received a miraculous healing during the altar service in the local church. The face is also washed with the joy of a soul reborn displayed on the continence of a lady who prayed the sinner's prayer after the open-air crusade in the city park.
Awesome and life-changing are two most frequently voiced adjectives the kids used to describe their experience, but some added a little more definition when they summed up the trip:
When we worked -- we WORKED! When we prayed -- we Prayed! And then we kept on working and praying!!
It was beyond anything I had imagined.
It was worth every dollar and penny invested.
We did a lot of damage to Satan's kingdom.
I saw God work in ways that I knew were possible -- since all things are possible -- but I had never seen them in action.
I was shocked to see how open the people are to getting tracts.
Many people were drinking and dancing; but when we handed them tracts, they would stop and read them. They would read the front of the tract and look up at you with wide eyes and a smile and say "gracias" with sincerity
The trip was a physically and emotionally challenging time. I was "outside my box," but I liked being forced to be bold.
It was the best time I have spent with the Lord.
I learned a lot and heard God speak to me.
He really did answer our prayers
It made me WAY more thankful for what I have.
It felt really good to be a blessing to the people.
I wouldn't trade this experience for anything because of the look on kids' and pastors' faces was worth it.
This trip humbled me so much and helped me put a focus on what I want to do with my life.
It increased my boldness and gave me more of a servant's heart
Would they do it again? Absolutely:
This mission trip is not going to be my last one.
I'd love to do it again VERY soon.
I hope God takes me more places because I am ready!
I feel like I would and could go anywhere!
I could easily come back to the Dominican Republic or any other mission.
I also would encourage others to go on mission trips too!