Category: Missionary life

New show coming from Reauseaux Brasser – The Quester!

Children’s program with an exciting host!

Thanksgiving in the USA is coming quickly. Time moves at an accelerating pace.  This last few months have been somewhat overwhelming, with many new things on our plate.

As I am typing this, my lovely wife Jessica is teaching English to our 8 Dominican boys who are living with us at  The World Grace Mission Center. Samuel is helping, Josiah and Silas are probably lost in a world of legos, Heather is baking brownies, and our 2 Korean kids are doing their studies.

Oh, did I mention we have 14 kids here?

Our new boys learning English

So, as you can see our world has changed some. The Lord is stretching us in many different ways and in ways we didn’t expect at all coming to the Dominican Republic.  One thing I have learned living as a missionary is expect everything and in everything grow closer to the Lord.

We knew coming here we would be learning a new culture, we knew there were going to be things that may be hard to adjust to, but we didn’t know He was going to add a second culture for us to adapt to and learn. We are working with a Korean ministry with many other Koreans visiting. Whether they are on short term teams, part of YWAM, other missionaries or business people who live here, we are being surrounded by Koreans. God is teaching us how our culture causes us to think differently. I am learning that all of our cultures have good, bad and ugly in them but that we need to be adjusting our culture to that of one like Jesus.

Paul talks about being thankful in all things (I Thess 5:18.)  If we are thankful we can see better what the Lord might be doing in us. I am thankful for the time we have had in all the areas we have worked in this country. He has really opened up my mind to so much more that what I had experienced before. I am thankful for what little or how much I have had over the years realizing that so many are just trying to get enough food for the next meal.

Thanksgiving to me has a broader meaning to me than that of our country’s history. It is me giving thanks to GOD who loves us so much, thanks to friends and family who have supported us in so many ways, thanks to others for forgiving my shortcomings.

One last thank you – Thank you to all of our supports who have given financially or have prayed for us these last two years! May God pour out even more blessing on you.

Today we visited a small “feeding” center run by a local. I don’t know all of the details, but I hear the land is hers. There is a small block building used for church services and attached to that is a wood wall kitchen. They have a couple of tables and stacks of plastic chairs. Pretty minimal and rustic in many ways.

Yet, Veronica feeds some of the children in the batey.

She only does it about 3 times a week and by the looks of it some of these kids don’t eat that much in between time. You can tell from the attitude of some of the older kids that this place is like a “home”, somewhere safe, where they know they are loved.

This was our second time visiting, but this time it was even harder. My heart was breaking at the sites of the wounds, the malnutrition and the hurt that they were experiencing. There was one boy there whose skull was somewhat deformed and it didn’t appear to be debilitating, but he also had an open wound on his foot that the flies were attracted to. This infection, if not treated, can lead to something much worse.

When you see children in situations like this, what can you do?

Please pray for Veronica and the feeding center. Another couple have taken on the role of having a new kitchen built and are working on raising the funds. Pray also for the money needed for the food. Praise God someone has stepped up to do something and through this many children will hear the gospel and see the gospel worked out in practical ways!

Obviously it is quite the challenge to move to any foreign country. There are so many things that will be different making a transition difficult. We moved down to this country with mostly books and clothing (and a few kids.) Most of the houses in Sosua were foreign owned and were furnished or partly furnished like the last house we lived in there.

Moving across the country itself is a whole other adventure. First we tried to find a house on quick trips either by driving or by me taking a bus. That didn’t help too much except it helped me learn a few areas and meet the real estate agent that we eventually used. We finally just moved down a lived for a month in a vacant house used by missionaries that gave a place to sleep and eat during our house search.

We eventually settled on a 4th floor apartment with the 5th floor rooftop with extra bedroom. We thought this would be perfect (except all of the stairs) for our family and plans to use the extra room. We spent the next week waiting for “mañana” as the man in charge of the apartment was getting the papers ready. When we finally met with him, we had to walk away because of the contract. He wanted us to claim responsibility of the the taxes even though we “didn’t have to pay them.” We could not do this for 2 reasons, if we paid the taxes it was too much and if we didn’t we would be liars and damage our testimony.

After having that happen, we were put into a last minute cram, yet thankful God kept us from having been in a contract with a corrupt person. We also have our friend Miriam (March) who was a huge help in all of this as an interpreter and overall friend.

We then called the real estate agent I mentioned who quickly showed us another couple of houses, one of which we made an offer on. We then met the lawyer (many rentals are handled by lawyers here) who happened to be a Christian who goes to church with our missionary friends Kent and Janet Norell. Esperanza is here name and she has been a help and a blessing to us.

Signing the papers on the house led to the next adventures in houses in the D.R. First I try to get power, only to hit a roadblock because the power company says there are already two contracts with that address. Both Esperanza and Miriam made multiple calls to the power company to help get things straightened out. After a couple of weeks and us living in another temporary location, we finally moved in with no power on. Power in this country is different than in the states, were if the power is off, it is from a storm or maybe a traffic accident involving a drunk and telephone pole. Here, even in areas considered to be “24 hour” power, it can be off a few hours a week at best. Some areas are only on so many hours a week, usually in areas were no one actually has a meter or pays for the electricity.  Being without power wasn’t a huge shock, but it has it’s challenges. We were thankful to have a neighbor who offered to let us use an extension cord to plug in our fridge, while we waited.

Back to dealing with the power…. I ended up finally going down and trying to get the power on. The next hurdle was the address. The papers for the house have the address the community gave it when being built, but since then it has a street address that is nothing like it. I had to make a couple trips back and forth to get the papers changed and then stamped in a correct manner. Now, I finally had that and was able to get the account set up. They told me someone was coming out that same day to turn on the power and put in the meter. Not surprising it didn’t happen. The next day while still waiting, the neighbor said we just need to keep going down the office or it won’t happen, so taking her advise and went down again and returned home after they said someone was on their way at that moment. After waiting over an hour, they showed up!!! The technicians explained they were late after having the ladder rack re-welded to their van.  Needless to say, we had power on in about an hour after that!

Now we are in our own (rented) house and found some of the necessary furniture, minus some things I wanted to build. Praising God for guiding us through, for the friends and new friends who helped us and for the learning experiences we have had.

Now to get busy with our call…