Shoe Shiner's Camp 2011

From June 20th until the 23rd, a church group from Wisconsin came and put on a Summer Camp for the Shoe shiners and the boys from our school, Colegio Timoteo. It was a great experience. This was the second time that this group has come down to help us out. All year during classes, the boys would always tell me about the awesome and fun time that they had at camp last year and how excited they were for camp this year. This year there were a lot of familiar faces for the boys from the group from last year and they made a lot of new friends as well. This year's camp theme was based in Matthew 6:19-21 and TREASURE. The week started off with a scavenger hunt through the mountainside and was a week full of Games, activities, sports, arts and crafts, Science projects, and even an outing to the pool and pizza. We discussed the importance of storing up our treasures in Heaven and not on Earth. Also, that wherever it is we have our treasures, that there will be our heart as well. This year was a huge success and there were a lot of opportunities to speak into the guys as well as form solid relationships with them and the team. I just want to say a special thanks to each one who came and poured their hearts out here to these guys. You all have been such a blessing. God Bless.

Kaskada Park

The last few months, our students have been working really hard in their studies and a church from Puerto Rico and Chicago had graciously donated money to take the students of the school to a water park in Santiago. It was very awesome to be able to reward the kids for all of their hard work and efforts throughout the year. Also, it was good to be able to not just be an authority figure in their life, but provided a great opportunity for us as professors to have fun with the guys and get to know them at that level as well. The day was full of crazy water fun, running up stairs and sliding down water slides, hanging out in the lazy river, and eating some great food. This was truly a great and fun experience that our students will never forget.

Leadership

Back in November, our church had a retreat and it was during this time that I felt God convicting me about something I should be doing for our boys at the school. The message was simple, "What skills and talents do I have to glorify God's Kingdom?" When I really began to think about that, I began to think of my experience in the Boyscouts. God gave me a conviction of the importance and the need for our guys to learn important team building and leadership skills. Every Friday morning, we have a special and intentional time of teaching our students leaderships skills through various games and tasks that are also backed up and integrated with Biblical teachings. As a teaching staff, we have noticed that for the boys to carry out the things that we are teaching them in their every day lives, is rather difficult and they are still learning how to work as a team and how to be good leaders. However, this is something that the boys look forward to every week, and we are seeing a lot of fruit coming through these activities through the character of the boys.

Meet the Students at Colegio Timoteo

Bienvenido a mi Casa

Llueve.... Ven Llueve Sobe Mi

Wow so these last couple of days have been very busy and very intense. It has been raining a lot here in Jarabacoa. On Friday it rained so much in such a short period of time that the entire church flooded. The entire school, bookstore and our new computer lab were about knee high in water. We spent all of Friday trying to drain out the water with buckets and brooms. Also during this time we realized that the main drains were plugged, and that in reality they are too small for the amount of rainfall we have been having. The entire street was literally under water, and it appeared as if there was a river that went by the church and even flooded into the church. The problem, however, is that we had a wedding that very next day. So the entire day we were trying to clean up the flood as well as get ready for the wedding. The next morning (Saturday) we continued cleaning up from the flood as well as try to fix the drain before the wedding. To say the least everyone was very much under a lot of pressure to make this wedding perfect for the couple from the church who were getting married (Nani and John). We actually managed to get everything cleaned up and prepared a couple hours before the wedding. Or so we thought… We got another torrential down pour and the church began to flood again. Thank God that we managed to clean out the drains a little bit because the water did eventually go down. It was definitely a God thing that we managed to get everything taken care of and ready for when the wedding began and it was definitely a success. During the wedding, all who were involved in the preparations were able to take their mind off of the exhausting two days that they had in preparations for this wedding and enjoy themselves. The wedding consisted of a very nice ceremony. It was really neat cause the bride actually sang to her fiancée as she was walking down the aisle. The ceremony was followed by a presentation of photos made by the groom to his wife, and a choreographed dance put on by my roommate Jerry with the bride and groom and some other students from the church. The time after the ceremony then involved some great Dominican food, some great conversations with some brothers and sisters in the church, and of course ended the night dancing some merengue and bachata. Definitely a great night after a couple of days of hard work.

I'm Here!!!

Hey Everyone so I am here in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic, and it has been a little over a week now. It has been amazing to see God working and how quickly I have been able to get integrated into the culture and church here. A lot of trust is being formed in a very short time.

Just this last week I participated in a Training course for the curriculum that I will be using to teach English in the school that I will be teaching at; Colegio Timoteo. The curriculum is called ACE, which stands for Accelerated Christian Education. Our training was actually set up how things would be run in the classroom and the people being trained became the students for the week in order to get an idea of how the students would feel during a typical school week. Wow!! Let me tell you, it is INTENSE!!!! This program is very well organized and incorporates development of character and discipline with a Christian education. The program is designed for the students to be able to work individually and in the areas that they need help in specifically. There were 23 of us that took this course and only a few of us graduated on time. I graduated only by the grace of God, but many of the other professors will graduate within the next couple weeks or so. One thing I really like about this program is that it uses the Bible as its backbone. All of the content and all of the subjects are taught through the Bible. I can see how this program will work very well for the particular focus of the school that I will be teaching at, and how it will best accommodate our students who come from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, education, and ages. In the class there was a lot of diversity, which made learning very interesting. We had people present from the Dominican Republic, Haiti and three of us from the United States. This made learning the material and communication very interesting and at times difficult. It required a lot of patience for the students and teachers. There were literally 4 languages present; Spanish, English, Creole, and French. What was really neat though was that by the grace of God we were all able to communicate in some way and we ended up developing some very quality relationships. It is so exciting to see other people who have the same calling from God, and the fact that we were able to come together and see that we are doing this together in different parts of the world is very encouraging and exciting. The heart is to make God’s love known wherever we are at and with the people we are with. God’s army is Big brothers and sisters, and we as the body of source, the church are an amazing force when we come together and are obedient to the direction that God is giving us.

I want to apologize to you all with regards to communication… I am finding it to be very difficult to communicate from here just because of the lack of internet access. But know that I will be trying to keep in as much contact as I can. I want to thank you all for your prayers… please continue to be praying for the relationships that are being formed and that God will guide me and continue set forth opportunities to share His love. Also, please be praying for the adjustment that I am currently going through into the culture. There is definitely a different mindset here of what is appropriate and what is not and these are areas I am still learning and trying to figure out. Just be praying that God can provide wisdom in those areas that I still don’t know or understand. Take care and I will talk to you soon. God Bless.