The Timothy Project

It has been really cool to be at Lexington Baptist, participating in their Global Impact Conference. Yesterday we had a luncheon with the Senior Adults and I “just by chance” sat next to a lady who had recently moved from Mississippi and had heard The Pickerns speak and receives their prayer update. Well, The Pickerns are wonderful missionaries from the DR! It is amazing how small the world becomes when we are part of God’s kingdom.  I also have had a chance to make contact with friends from long ago. It is so neat to see how the connectedness of God’s family binds us together despite geographic distance.

Tonight I will be the special guests at the tailgating party at the local high school football game which should be a lot of fun. Tomorrow night we have a special rally for youth with a specila guest speaker which John tells me is great, and I also will share just a little.  It it really fun to see the volunteers in their world, and to meet their families. 

I head back to Santiago on Monday, arriving 4:30am Tuesday morning and from all I have heard, I believe as soon as I wake up I will be able to start moving! None of my phone numbers will change by the way nor my address in Sarasota so all my contact info stays the same.

I have seen or talked to some of you! I had a great trip home and have hardly had a chance to rest since getting back but that is okay. It has all been fun.

I had the chance to go to Checkpoint- a youth leader training event sponsered by the BCNE (Baptist Convention of New England) and see old DR friends and make some new ones. I am thankful to Alyson for the invitation!

I am looking forward to being at Lexington Baptist for their Global Impact Conference soon- any one in the Columbia area are welcome to come! I think an earlier blog has the contact info for the church. 

Be aware that I will be attempting to chance my web address soon- to timothyproject.blog.com.  I don’t want to lose my praying audience!

You can reach me at 603-463-7619.

Whew- what a week! I have been trying to wrap up ministry details along with the repair work at the house before leaving EARLY Monday morning, and it has been quite a week. Lots of unexpected surprises at the house- bad electrical wiring led to my 4 new dusk to dawn lights being fried before they even came on! We are trying to see if they can be fixed. The hot water heater also got fried (high voltage in one of the lines) so that is being repaired as well. 

But, for the most part, things are nearly finished and hopefully will be all done when I return so I can move and get this over with!!

Monday morning I fly to JFK and will drive up to New Hampshire. I can be reached at my parents house at 603-463-7619. On Wednesday September 28th I fly to Columbia, SC for the Global Impact Conference of Lexington Baptist Church, Lexington, SC. Those of you who live near there are more than welcome to come and visit! I don’t know my schedule for the week with them- I will be there from Wednesday to the next Monday. You can contact John Swindler for more details about the schedule (803-359-5878, ext. 227).  I will arrive back in Santiago at 4:30am on October 4th, hopefully to begin moving!!

Yesterday afternoon, amid the finalizing of several outdoor repairs at my new house, we had a strange weather occurence. Needless to say, the house repairs were set back a day! We hope to finish up the last bit of outside work (finishing the fence, painting a new section of wall, and the security lights) including laying new sod! The painter informs me he should finish with the whole house tomorrow so that is a big step forward!

From the DR1:

7. Tornado hits parts of Santiago
In a scene reminiscent of pictures from Kansas or New Orleans, large parts of Santiago were hit by a sudden tornado yesterday afternoon. Pictures of smashed vehicles (see Diario Libre), uprooted trees and trash-strewn streets were common. Power lines were blown down, signs toppled and traffic came to a standstill for nearly an hour. According to the La Informacion, the kiosks and displays for the Regional Book Fair set to open on Saturday were blown about and some were badly damaged. Francisco Arias, the local Civil Defense director reported that parts of Los Salados, Los Pepines, El Ensueno, La Herradura, La Loteria and the area around Estrella Sadhala Avenue and the Monument were reporting the worst damage. Falling trees and flying branches damaged or partly destroyed several cars. The Mega Vision television tower was knocked over by the winds. No human victims were reported, but a lot of cleaning up now remains to be done.

Just when I get discouraged, good things start happening!

First, in Los Santos last night we had a great time praying together and sharing about God’s word. We looked at Job’s experience and drew some practical applications for our own situations. I was pleased with how they prayed together and shared about how to put God’s word in practice.

Second, tonight in the Hole was a great encouragement for me.  For the past two weeks, our attendance with the youth in the Hole has been down, partly due to rain, partly due to some of them going to school at night, and who knows why else.  But tonight we had a BIG group, we had electricity, and a great time.

Our ministry plan is as follows- over the next two weeks while I am gone, they are going to get organized into groups of six. We will have competitions and begin building leadership through these small groups, as well as have a basketball tournement. We have at least one team of ladies and they asked tonight for Sankhary to join them to help! It was a great idea- she is studying to be a church planter so I jumped at the chance to invite her to join us and she was excited too.  Pray for her as she takes this step and begins to serve as a role model and missionary among the youth of the Hole. 

Each group is going to find a Bible character to name themselves and learn about that person. I was impressed with the people of the Bible they knew but unfortunately, they didn’t know too much about their lives so I hope this will begin them studying the Bible more indepth and help them to develop Christian character. I started us with a study of Noah and his long obedience. Genesis 6:9 and 22 were our challenge- to be an upright person in the midst of evil, and to live just as God commands us to live.

Please pray for Victor, Sankhary and the young people of the Hole these next two weeks as they get organized and select Bible characters to emulate.

Things are getting very difficult here. As you are experiencing higher gas prices in the US, so are we here in the DR. A rise in gas also brings a rise in price in almost everything else- transportation is going up, food is going up, and of couse, salaries are not going up! 

In an effort to conserve gas here in the country, the goverment has put some new laws into effect. Public cars will only be allowed to drive every other day (which means a significant rise in unemployment!), gas will only be sold until 8pm at night, until 12noon on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays. This is better than the original plan to prohibit cars from driving on either Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the last digit of your license plate. However, it will result in many marginal people dealing with less income at a time when all prices are going up. 

This weekend, many of our poorer barrios suffered through 18-20 hours of no electricity. It is a discouraging time. Pray for calm, for patience and especially pray for our young Christians as they are put to the test!

Thursday was awesome- we went out to Villa de Yaque and discovered that 8 had gathered for the study of Baptist faith and doctrine the night before, without us. We were thrilled.

I need to fill in some details- we had been told (by the government) last weekend that this week depending on the last number of our license plates, we couldn’t drive Wednesday or Thursday.  I have an even number as the last digit so I was not going to be able to drive Thursday. SO, we made plans accordingly but then they decided to not implement the policy just now. SO, we changed plans again but I forgot to call and tell the folks out at Villa de Yaque what had happened and that we would be there on Thursday. But they figured it out, met any way, and we saw them on Thursday. They seemed really proud of having met on their own, and were all smiles! I felt good.

Firday was a house remodeling day- I bought the paint for the inside, we finally got the protective bars on the windows and doors, it is almost painted outside and looking good!

Saturday I left early for the capital for a going away lunch for a missionary couple that have served here 33 years! Hard to imagine them leaving (they are retiring).  We will miss them- they have been an insipiration to all of us who have come after them. 

We rushed home for seminary graduation- 7 of our students graduated! It was a wonderful service and a great celebration of achievement. I came home tired, but thankful for all the day’s activities. (I also got to see the tail end of the Yankees/Red Sox game and the victory was sweet!)

Tonight or tomorrow I will share how things go in the missions this afternoon.

This week has been dificult. First, one of our friends in the Hole died. He had been a motorcycle taxi driver and got shot 5 times last week as they tried to steal his motorcycle. He seemed to be recovering well and then all of a sudden suffered a heart attack and died Sunday afternoon. We were not able to have our service but we went and stayed with the family as they arrived back from the hospital. Please remember this man’s (Jorge, George) family in your prayers. 

Tuesday went well in Los Santos. We had a lively discussion about God’s presence in the face of suffering and talked about obeying God for the long term. The bible lesson came from Noah and the flood.  We had about 24 present- I was so pleased to see so many.  We have several who need to be baptized. Please pray with us that we can help them take this important step of obedience.

Last night in The Hole we had almost 20 youth but it rained hard just as we were to get started and the power never came back. It went out at noon!  So once again we had a dark room to meet in. We did share some and try to move things along with our plan to create teams of 5 youth for developing leadership and having competitions as a motivator. Please pray with us for the kids this week as they look for friends to join them on their team of 5 and pray for better conditions next week so we can have a regular meeting!

This afternoon we go to Villa de Yaque and will see how the Baptist Faith and Message study has gone. It has been a real motivator for several of our regulars. Pray with me that this intentional look at what the scriptures say about Christian doctrine will clarify a lot of the spiritual confusion that exists. Also, pray for the emergence of spiritual leadership, and especially that Hector would finally surrender his heart to the God he loves and fears!

It has been quite an experience! Remoldeling the house has been fun, I love seeing what I envisioned in my mind come to be reality!  Working with Pablo, who has been helping us, has been great as well.  We will begin painting the exterior today, we are in the process of building a huge security wall which replaces a chain link fence, and we should get the kitchen done and the security bars in place by this afternoon. Then we will wash down the inside and it will be ready for painting too!

Hopefully by Monday the new sod will go down, the security wall should be done by Saturday and just a few relatively minor things will be left to do. I want to have the house completely ready to move in by September 18th. I won’t move then because I leave the 19th on vacation, but I want to be able to move in as soon as I get back on the 5th of October. 

We are hoping to have a series of church visioning retreats in the house so I want to get this done so we can have that time with our leaders!  The house project has taken a good part of my time this week but hopefully we can get most of it done this week and I can get my full focus back on the ministries next week!

Yesterday was a great day- lots of sweating and walking, but it makes for a great missionary day. We started off in search of a bed for Hector’s sister-in-law. We got one fairly cheap and loaded it on the “jeep” and off we went to Tamboril, a small town outside of Santiago. It was amazing to see how high the water had gotten in the town and also how quickly they had cleaned up! The woman was thrilled with her bed. Hector’s wife pointed out a picture of Jesus on the wall and told me that was her sister’s idol and saint. It reminded me of how much spiritual confusion there is here and how sincere people are in a misguided faith. Please continue to pray for the spiritual confusion to lift.

Jose was brimming with excitement from his weekend experience at a leaders’ retreat. He is refreshed and full of energy to continue in his mission! I was thankful for his sharing and seeing him so excited and refreshed made me feel better. We had a good group at Villa de Yaque- over 14 adults with several of our regulars away.  I must confess we have been amiss in not always spending as much time in prayer with them as we should but yesterday I felt led to have us pray and to ask them to pray- more than 5 or 6 prayed out loud which is a huge accomplishment. They are dealing with a big disappointment in that their transformer is not functioning which has left them without electricity. I don’t know how they are handling the heat with no fans!  It is a tough situation to say the least, but I came away so pleased to see how they are growing and responding!

As I arrived in the Hole, it was raining and I was pretty sure we would have a hard time with the service- it is a diffucult place to move around in when it is rainy and wet due to the mud. But also word arrived just after my arrival that one of the men in the community had died- someone I knew. He had been shot 5 times three days earlier in an attempt to steal his motorcycle.  We went to visit with them family and were there as they arrived from the hospital. It is so sad to be with people who have lost a loved one! It reminded me of how fragile life is, and how much people need hope and a faith in something that will last.

Please be in prayer for these ministry areas in the situations they are dealing with. I didn’t visit Los Santos yesterday but they are continuing a healthy path- they have begun 1st aid classes on Saturdays at 9 and had over 25 this weekend!

Thanks for your faithful prayers and for responding to me in email and though the comments. I value not only your prayers, but your ideas and suggestions about how to deal with different issues! May God bless you!