Monday, June 27, 2011

Dominican Trip

I prayed and believed and trusted in my God, my healer, my savior.....and he healed me.  He made me healthy again and he gave me just enough strength to return to the Dominican Republic to serve in His name.  Thank you Lord for allowing me to go back thank you for providing the funds, the strength and everything I needed to go back to minister to these sweet people who have blessed my heart.  We had another amazing team and we got to do a variety of things this year.  We fed a village and a nursing home.  We helped Nate with a youth night at the Juan Dolio church.  We did street evangelism in the capital, Santo Domingo, and gave out bibles and tracts.  I'm amazed once again at how hungry they are for the word.  Once they realize what we are giving out they all come running to get one.  We did VBS and played with the kids.  We gave out the pillow case dresses and tshirts that we made and it was so great to see the childrens faces light up as we gave them brand new dresses made just for them!  They loved them and were so thankful, many of them put their dresses on right then!  All of this was great, but was really touched my heart was working with Erica with her women's ministry, the Lily House.  Erica and some of the other women at Score decided a couple of years ago to reach out to the prostitutes.  They go out on Thursday nights and witness to them.  Their goal on those nights are to get a phone number and name so that they can begin a relationship with them.  The Lily House is a small but very cute apartment where the ladies can go to stay after they've accepted Christ.  There they are discipled and taught different ways to make a living a take care of their families.  We got to take two sewing machines to them and spend the morning teaching them how to sew.  This was a wonderful time.  They were so excited to be learning and they were so smart!  I wanted to stay there all day, and come back again every day!  We had such a great time teaching them, even a button hole was a big accomplishment!  Erica invited us to go out with them that night to witness to the ladies.  I was very excited and a little scared about this.  I felt like my testimony could be beneficial to one of these girls, but I had never shared my testimony so I was nervous.  I really wanted to participate in this so I prayed as we rode from one spot to another.  I knew I wanted to share when we met Julia.  Julia is a beautiful girl with the most precious smile.  She has a very hard heart toward the Lord though.  She seemed to be conflicted because she contradicted herself.  First she didn't believe in God, then she said she had studied the bible but it wasn't  for her because God hadn't done anything for her.  Then when we asked if she wanted us to pray for her she said yes, she wanted to get a passport so she could go to Miami.  I was able to share my testimony with her.  She said it was just my destiny to be healed of cancer, and I said, no, it was God's will.  Julia is forever etched into my heart, along with all the ladies at the Lily House.  I pray for her and them often.  The Lord was definitely hard at work while we were in the DR.  I pray he worked on the Dominican people as hard as he worked on me!  We go there hoping to be a blessing to and minister to them, but they end up doing the same for us!