I thank my God every time I remember you dear family and friends.  What an awesome privilege to be here in to share the love of Jesus with the people in the DR.   I thank you for your love and prayers as you partner with us in this mission.  We see and feel evidence every day as we have been blessed in so many ways.  With the exception of some sun burn, we are mostly healthy. J  For sure we are growing in many ways. 

As Emily mentioned yesterday, I (Nancy) was blessed to be baptized in the ocean.  I was baptized as an infant, and asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior at church camp.  I’m old, so you know that Jesus has been my personal Savior for a long time.  I praise God for the sacrifice of His Son, His blood on the cross, and resurrection so that I could be washed whiter than snow and be called his child.  In my heart, I have committed my life to Him many times, but have been convicted to be baptized now, as my own decision.  Baptism is an outward symbol of my faith in, and love for, the Lord.  I was nervous, and prayed about this for a long time, but when the time came to step into the ocean, I felt His peace as the Lord had lead me to this perfect place and time.  All praise to Him.  It was AWESOME!

Today was another wonderful time of worshipping alongside our Dominican brothers and sisters at New Life Church.  It was very interesting, as the worship leader led us in Spanish songs, and then the English version.  I (Kristi) love trying to sing along with the Dominicans in Spanish, though it has been, oh, about 8 years since I have taken a Spanish course.  Nancy and I tried, well, sort of tried to learn some Spanish before we came, but it clearly didn’t prepare us for trying to sing “Days of Elijah” in Spanish!  Fun…fast…worshipful!   Members of our team also had the opportunity to worship in a smaller setting with the churches in Montaña and Boma.

I’m looking forward to another week serving the Lord here in the DR. 
Blessing to all,

Nancy M. 

(transcription done by Kristi)

Kristi and Katie’s Lunch Adventure

Today was a day when members of our group were invited into church members’ homes.  Katie and I were invited into the beautiful home of a family who spoke no English, but communicated their gratefulness to us by providing wonderful food and great company.  Katie and I speak very little Spanish, so the spoken communication between us was also very little.  The mother of the home, I don’t even know her name (sadness), brought us from the church, in the car of one of her daughters.  The daughter, and her young son, dropped us off at a very clean and well-kept home.  When we arrived, we met her husband and a friend of theirs who used to be their neighbor, but who now lives in New York.  We figure that they invited him because he speaks English quite well.  We talked about baseball, and things that are different in the States from the DR, while the mom cooked us dinner.  As we sat on the dining room chairs, placed in front of the TV, we met daughters and a son, and a cousin and friends, as they wandered through the house.  When it came time to eat, Katie, the friend from New York, and I were the only ones placed at the table to eat.  It took some coaxing to draw the mom to eat dinner with us.  She had placed serving dishes on the table for us, but had already made herself a bowl of the food, seemingly like she was not going to be joining us.  She wanted to completely serve us and give of all she had.  Later, as we relaxed on their back porch rocking in rocking chairs, enjoying the thatched roof shading the sun from us, we watched as the family went on with their business around us…Daughters and cousins, laughing and listening to music, walking in and out.  It felt as if we were a part of the family.

After a while, Katie and I were wondering what time it was. Seeing as the DR doesn’t tend to run on time, we haven’t been wearing a watch.  We didn’t want to leave too early and offend the family, or leave too late and take up too much of their family’s time, so I sneaked a look at the mom’s watch and realized that it was about 2pm.  Katie and I decided that we should probably go, but we weren’t sure 1) how to tell the family as we didn’t know how to say “we need to go” politely in Spanish and 2) how we were going to get back to town, as the family’s home was out of town, and our ride did not live at this home.  Katie remembered the words for “walking” and then I tried to form a sentence to tell the family.  Eventually, between our stumbling words, and our pointing to our feet, we got across to the family that we needed to go, and we wanted to walk, even though we were not completely sure of the way, and were pretty sure it was a couple miles.  The mom and the dad were adamant that we would not walk on our own, and so the mom decided to accompany us.  We tried real hard to convince her that we would be OK, but this woman got her walking shoes on, and off we went.  We were walking for a while, and all was good until we came to a large hill.  Now picture in your mind…a paved country road with many potholes…tight turns….fast motorcycles….two very white Americans in long skirts, and an older, gray haired Dominican woman hiking in the middle of the road up a steep hill.  I realized when we got to the top of the hill, that 1) this was going to be a long walk and 2) we really shouldn’t allow this woman to walk us all the way to town.  Katie tried to tell her this, but again she set her foot down, literally, and told us that we were not going to go alone.  (Mom, I know you are very excited about your daughters not walking through town alone, but we were really concerned that it would be too much for her.)   After we had walked awhile longer, the red Suzuki (that was for you, Tom, though I didn’t get the details on the hubcaps.) rounded the corner. 

Yea!  We were very excited to see the daughter and her young son again!  They drove us directly to the church, but it is about a mile from the camp, but we weren’t going to tell the family, seeing as they had already done so much for us, and we were OK with walking the rest of the way.  As we tried to exit the car, the women in the car were concerned that the church gate was locked and they didn’t want to let us out when we told them that we were just going to walk the rest of the way.  They conveyed that they would bring us the rest of the way to camp.  Unfortunately, I only knew how to say “right” from the VBS song, “Father Abraham,” and did not know the Spanish word for “left.”  We tried to ask the son, but he did not want to talk with us.  Katie thought she remembered how to spell the word, but didn’t know how to say it, so we butchered the pronunciation, but got the point across.  It was a good thing, because we realized along the way that every turn we needed to make was indeed a “left.”  J  In a few short minutes, our possibility of a very long, hot hike turned into a few quick left-hand turns into our camp…home sweet home.

Indeed, we were blessed by good food, an interesting experience in trying to communicate verbally, and a chance to spend time with fellow believers in the DR.  As I related this story during our group time this evening, we were laughing quite hard because many of our group experienced similar challenges in communicating.  Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity to break bread, and spend time, with brothers and sisters, despite the language barriers.  Please be in prayer for them, as well as us, as we partner together for another week of service.

~Kristi Warndahl  (and Katie, too)