Summer Teams 2015

This was the first summer for the new Young Men’s Social Work site. Many American groups came from all over the United States to come and serve alongside us here in Jarabacoa.
One of the outreach participants that came down on one of the summer teams, Seth, brought these really cool hand-made Jesus fish necklaces that were made with horse-shoe nails by one of his good friends and mentors from the States. These necklaces became a great tool to share with the guys from the streets the Gospel message and help give them a small picture of the type of nails that were possibly used to nail Jesus to the cross. Seth used these to share the miracle Jesus performed of feeding the 5000 with the bread and fish. This provoked in the guys many questions about Jesus that we were able to discuss. They left that time with a deeper meaning to that valuable gift that they received.

This summer I learned a lot about Divine appointments. One day at the beginning of summer I randomly ran into a guy by the name of Mauricio as I was walking by the Baseball field. Come to find out he is a barber who is native to Jarabacoa, but is now living in New York, and he was visiting for 3 months and wanted to serve his community in some way. We became really close friends; it was amazing the level of trust that was formed in just a short amount of time. He really helped in some of the development of the Barber program we are trying to put together, and had been teaching me how to cut hair. He also wanted to learn some English while he was here so we began an English class this summer which was a blessing for many of the young men, and was an awesome experience for the groups who came down to come and serve in our community. Also, with Mauricio we did a summer Barber clinic in Genesis (our special education school) where again we were able to bless our community; it was also where Mauricio had me practice the skills he was teaching me. Even though we were sad to see him go, it was really a privilege to be able to build such a great relationship with him, and a relationship that continues to bear good fruit.

For this fall, we are teaming up with the Microfinance site to begin savings accounts for the guys. The guys are super excited to be able to have their own savings accounts. This program is really going to help the guys learn what God says about being good stewards of our resources and how to manage the funds that they already have coming in as well as trying to start the value of saving. Also this fall, I hope to be able to spend more time with the local barber and try and get things going with the barber class. Please be praying for us, there has been a lot of personal work going on with individual guys as far as problems in the home, encouraging and counseling a young man who is in prison, and also continuing to do follow up work with the guys who I was able to encourage to go back to school after so many years.