Confiar

Here is a short clip of the dance that the youth prepared for us.

Building Photos

Centro Cristiano de Adoracion y Restauracion: The owner of the property decided he wanted to develop the buildings and renovated them all in order to rent them out as stores. However, he set aside a part of the new construction for the church to build a new meeting place. In the pictures, you can see that they built a second floor, painted much and added stairs. They are getting ready to add the second floor that will house the church meeting place (below, center and right). The developer is paying for his part, and the church is raising money to pour the plato, and build the second floor.

Casa de Dios Puerta de Cielo has advanced much. Since pouring the plato, the have also poured the floor, painted the walls, and run the majority of the electricity. They have a small stage up front for the musicians, and the church is growing in its new location. Through the hard efforts of the church body, they have raised a substantial amount of funds to bring them to this point. They continue working hard, and are taking one step at a time. Their next step is to construct the bathrooms. Above right, the youth prepared a dance to welcome us back to our Dominican church family.

Dengue, Construction, and Heat

We flew through Friday night and arrived Saturday at 10:30 am. The temperature is at least 10 to 15 degrees cooler than our home in Rancho Cucamonga, but because of the humidity, nonstop sweat pours from our skin. But, it is great to be back with our close friends and church family.

Before we made this journey, we were alerted of a large Dengue fever outbreak (transmitable by blood only... i.e. mosquitoes), the largest in 10 years. After a few minutes of conversation with Pastor Natividad, we learned how severe the outbreak is, as fairly large numbers of church members and friends are in the hospital, bedridden, or just feeling under the weather. In addition to the Dengue outbreak there are a number of other sicknesses going around, so we will be extra cautious with mosquitoes and germ transmission. As Nati said, getting sick "está de moda ahora" or "is in style right now."

It has been a year and a half since we last visited, and the advancements on the church construction projects have been incredible. Once we get an opportunity to take some pictures, we will upload them as soon as possible so you can see how far the construction has advanced.

Keep us and the people here in the Dominican Republic in prayer as we battle the mosquito onslaught.

Peace and love.

Hace mucho tiempo...

So, it's been a while since we've posted to this blog so we thought a quick update would be in order.
Last two years in a nutshell:
We've been back to Santiago only once, in December of 2008, to visit friends and our spiritual family and see how the the new church facility was progressing. We planned a trip in December of 2009, but due to some emergency surgeries that had to take place, the trip was postponed to this coming Friday, July 23.
Meanwhile, Katie has been working as a Spanish teacher at Upland Christian Academy, in Rancho Cucamonga, and Chris has been doing irrigation work for Central School District. Jointly through Katie's school and APU, we, along with 12 high-school students, began to cultivate a relationship with the church community of Siete Olivos in Mexicali, Mexico, in April of 2010 where we shared the experience of a 7.2 earthquake! The two of us went back for a visit in May and are planning to reconnect with the Mexicali community in August with some of the youth that we originally embarked with.
We are excited to reconnect with our spiritual family in the Dominican Republic this week, and to get some Mile Deep International work done as well. We'll do our best to update this during or shortly after our 9 day whirlwind trip.
For those of you who don't know, Mile Deep International now has an official website where you can find out more about what MDI has planned.
Visit www.miledeepinternational.org.