The Timothy Project

Today we celebrate Father’s here in the DR. I awoke to the sound of rain and despite not wanting to be negative, I couldn’t keep myself from being resigned to low attendance.  And yes, in Los Santos this morning our attendance was a bit low, but we had LOTS of men and Eli’s husband came which is an answer to prayer.  From there I headed out to Villa de Yaque and my heart was thrilled to see the little house full, they had begun without me! It was a wonderful service and we could definately feel the Spirit among us. Several husbands came in honor of Father’s Day and it was a blessing.

All over the world, the family is under attack. It is no exception here in the DR. Please continue to pray for men to be God-fearers, placing their faith in Jesus and to assume their responsibility as spiritual leader of the home. Every day I am confronted with the consequences of broken homes, infidelity and lack of parental responsibility. Society suffers and even more important, the children suffer. I am thankful for men like Victor and Hector and Ortiz and many others who have given their lives to the Lord and honor Him by being faithful husbands and fathers. Pray for more men to live up to the high calling God has placed on their lives to be the spiritual leaders of their families!

The other night as I was walking the dog, I met up with the army- full fatigues and rifle. It was a strange experience although somewhat comforting given the way crime has been rising. We have had several young people killed for cell phones, sometimes in the middle of the day!  Read about how the government is fighting back…

Dominican Republic Deploys Crimefighters
Jul 29, 1:31 AM (ET)

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

(AP) A Dominican soldier watches while a national police officer registers a citizen during the… Full Image

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - The joint military and police patrols deployed on the streets of the Dominican Republic to fight crime are having the desired effect and will remain there indefinitely, the nation’s police chief said Friday.

Thousands of soldiers - who are normally not involved in anti-crime work - and police officers set up checkpoints and enforce new alcohol regulations for a third night Friday in Santo Domingo and 16 other cities across the Caribbean nation, said National Police Chief Gen. Bernardo Santana Paez.

Roughly 6,000 soldiers and police were deployed Wednesday in response to a public outcry over rising crime, said Cpl. Carlos Tejada Rodriguez, an army spokesman.

President Leonel Fernandez announced the joint patrols Monday and also outlined plans to temporarily halt the importation of firearms and to ban alcohol sales after midnight Sunday through Thursday and after 2 a.m. on weekends.

“There is much satisfaction with the measures … they are having the desired effect,” Santana Paez told The Associated Press.

Police have not calculated how many arrests have been made nationwide during the patrols, Santana Paez said. More than 1,000 vehicles have been searched for illegal firearms and proper registration at checkpoints in the capital, he said.

The police chief previously dismissed accounts of a crime wave, citing numbers showing a decline in homicides. But police reports show that the number of violent crimes has increased by an average of two per day to five per day over the last year.

It is hard to believe that ten days have come and gone! Angelo and I were talking through all he has done while he has been here and it was impressive! Of his two travel days, he liked the Dajabon/Haiti trip the best.  Beaches are fun and beautiful but he has done that before. 

Yesterday we were back in Villa de Yaque visiting, we went to Navarrette and visited with one of our key participants and set up a regular time to be there for Bible study (Wednesday’s at 7pm). From there we went to the hospital to give Angelo a chance to see the conditions here and to visit Mecho and Pilar who had been there during their brother’s open heart surgery (all went well).  From there it was back to Guayacanal for Bible study which Angelo led and did very well. We got to see the Basketball backboard installed and were pleased to see how well they did it and how they had cleaned the area around to make a little court! And then finally, from there we went to Las Charcas to visit and set up a regular time of Bible study. It was a full day to say the least but it gave Angelo a chance to visit in all of our new ministry sites as well as participate in our on-going ministries.  Victor was with us for the evening activities and we were thrilled to hear his report of more than 60 people at Bible study last night in the Hole!

Today is an another travel day- this time Angelo goes alone! His flight leaves for Miami at 3:30pm; he will be on the same flight as a volunteer team from West Palm Beach who have been here working with a missionary colleague of mine. From there he goes to Boston and I think he gets in at midnight.  Please keep him in your prayers as he travels!

It has been a great experience for me and for Angelo;  all of us have been blessed by his presence and ministry.  God has great plans for this young man. Let’s continue to pray for him as he finishes high school this year.

What a perfect day for the beach- sunny but not oppressively hot. I am not a big fan of sand and salt, but what a wonderful day! 14 of us enjoyed the day in Sosua.  Pilar hadn’t swum in years but she spent almost all day in the water playing like a little girl!  Mecho had a great time as did Sol and her family. We had four little boys and three big boys (Angelo, Tyrel and Kelvin). 

I was so pleased to be able to take them all to the beach today.  Those of you who know me know I work pretty hard and long but I am a big believer in playing well too.  It refreshes the mind and spirit to get away even for a few hours and play and share and laugh. What I enjoyed so much was hearing from all of the kids and adults about special times they remember with various groups that have come. It was all spontaneous- I didn’t ask them about it, it just came forth.  I realized once again what a mark our volunteers leave on the hearts of our people here in the DR.  Mecho commented on how much she enjoyed cooking for the groups and being a part of what they do while they are here.  I sometimes tend to focus on “work” and “results” which are important, but what I have learned along the way is that relationships are even more important than the “task”.  Sometimes our perspective gets blurred during the journey and we need to take a break so we can laugh and play so we can be reminded that loving each other in Christ’s name is vitally important- Christ said that by our love for each other the world would know we are His disciples.  Take time to share love with your family and your family of faith!

Sunday was a great day. I had a good worship time in Los Santos and then picked the boys up at the park. They had a great experience in San Francisco.  We encountered more than 40 youth in The Hole waiting for us and by the time we had our meeting with them there were about 50! We had a great time encouraging them to keep on after the experience with Cool Spring and talked about sponsering a tournament.  We are pushing forward with buying them uniforms- there are 6 teams (36 boys and young men!)

In the afternoon we went to Guayacanal and Angelo was able to present the youth there the basketball goal that the Quest team had brought in February. I had intentions to give when they were here but then Dwight had mentioned building a basketball court so I hung onto it to see what was going to happen. It seems just perfect that it went to Guayacanal and Angelo was here to present it! We gave some basketballs from Lexington BC too so it was a multi-group effort!

Today we were off to Dajabon to the Haitian market. Pilar and Mecho went with us and for the first time we went across the border into the second largest city of Haiti. The taxi ride was something to remember!  I was amazed at how dusty and brown the area seemed. The roads were just as my missionary colleagues from Haiti had described- pretty slow going and our guide said we were on the “highway.”  I was relieved to get back across the border with my Dominican friends and then we did some shopping.  The market is really something else- very aggressive vendors, lots of BO, but really good prices.

Tomorrow Tyrell and Angelo are going back to Villa de yaque to visit with the church folks and the youth. Tomorrow late afternoon we are heading out to Navarrette to see our new folks out there. 

Oh, one of the cool things I love about this country is the shopping that you can do from your car window! Today we stopped by the side of the road to buy some goat. We bought half a goat (5lbs) and watched him filet it. Pilar is going to cook it for Angelo to give it a try on Thursday.

We appreciate your prayers and encouraging blogs. I am enjoying having the boys here and having their participation in the ministry. Having young men who can share how Christ has transformed them and urge other young people to seek the Lord in obedient faith is an encouragement to me and exciting! They have really encouraged and inspired our folks! Keep on praying! 

Here are some thoughts from Angelo about his time so far:  “it has been great so far, different than when I came with Quest but uniquely important.  I don’t have a schedule to follow and the freedom is nice yet it is harder to see what God is doing in the day without the group and our debriefing time. It has been nice to follow up with what we did in February, to see the fruit of the seeds we planted. I am trying to make everyday a purposeful day and do God’s work but at the same time have fun, not to say that God’s work isn’t fun but you know what I  mean.”

The boys are back! We are soon to head out to the Hole where Angelo is going to share with the young people. This basketball court has led to a whole group of guys from Gurabito, Ensanche Bolivar, Los Santos (the upper part) and Los Ciruelitos getting together to play. They are wanting to form a tournament or some sort of league play with uniforms and everything. We are going to talk through some of that today and see what we can do.  Mill Creek Baptist Church has designated their VBS offering for our basketball ministry so it just may work out that we can buy the uniforms with that offering!  After the Hole, we are going back to Guayacanal to have a service there with Pastor Ramon preaching and Angelo sharing as well.

Yesterday Victor and I visited in Gurabito and had a good turn out- over 12 men and young people came to talk about following up the activity with Cool Spring. Over 12 people committed to studying the Gospel of John (more would have if I had had more booklets with me!). We return Friday night to see how they are doing with the first lesson.

We finally had our cookout last night (we got rained out Friday and I missed my cooks because they had gone to SF!). It was a good celebration time and we were able to organize our services and outreaches. We are going to do the Outreaches Tuesdays and Thursdays and our own Bible study and prayer time Wednesdays, and of course our worship services on Sundays.  More about that later…

The boys are off to San Francisco. They will be interacting with the youth there and participating in tonight’s service.  This has been a great experience for Angelo, he is talking about becoming a missionary in the future! And it has been an awesome experience for Tyrell too to be Angelo’s shadow. Keep them both in your prayers! They come back tomorrow morning and we will be sharing in The Hole, Guayacanal and maybe even Navarette.

Last night’s BBQ got rained out but we are on for tonight. Pray the rain will hold off until after everyone is home safe and dry!  We are getting together to celebrate and also to try to establish a regular schedule of services in our three churches and a plan of regular visitation/Bible study in our 4 new sites.  The ladies are at the seminary this afternoon; their classes this 6 weeks are really challenging. Pray for them as they get stretched theologically and academically.

Victor and I are about to head over to Gurabito to visit with the young people and see when we can meet with them on a regular basis. It seems they are regulars now in The Hole at the BB court. What an unseen blessing! Join me in praying that we can find a way to organize some sort of basketball ministry around the court. 

You may have noticed that the pictures are shut down. I have upgraded (there was so much traffic I exceeded my plan’s limits but hopefully the upgrade I made will kick in soon and you can view the pictures again.)

We had a great visit with the folks in Guayacanal.  We are going back Sunday at 4pm for a worship service. Pray for Angelo and Tyrell as they prepare and also for Pastor Ramon as he preaches.  The group was asking for Carlos and the others from CS.  We hope to be able to present them with a basketball goal that the Quest team brought for us.  It will be really cool to have Angelo here to do the honors!

We had a fun time with our birthday dinner for Ingrid. Pilar and Mecho and Kelvin were here along with all of Ingrid-s family. It is nice to celebrate those special occasions. Cherry, I told you the empty Prego containers would be a hit! Mecho and Ingrid each took three and were thrilled!

Today the guys are going down to Villa de Yaque to visit with the folks there and get the youth together for a time of reflection and looking forward in terms of their spiritual identitities.  It is exciting to see young people take God’s Word seriously! 

Tonight our Dominican leaders will be here for a porkchop cookout. Angelo has agreed to be the cook so we will see how he does.  Pray for this time as we celebrate their faithful service and look forward to ongoing follow-up in our new sites.  We want to plan a Sunday at the river for all three churches and maybe we will even invite the new areas to join us and Pastor Carlos to baptize those who are ready to make that step!  It will be a challenge to maintain our focus in our three churches as well as give attention to these new sites. It is tempting to go after the new and neglect the “old” but The Hole, Los Santos and Villa de Yaque (and La Joya) are far too special to let drift away so pray for wisdom and perseverance as we move forward.

We aren’t sure yet but it may be that Angelo and Tyrell head to San Francisco de Macoris to spend Saturday with Pastor Gabriel and after our full day of services Sunday, we hope to head to Dajabon and the Haiti border to let Angelo experience the open air market.  I am trying to get the mission van to take a group to the beach one day before Angelo leaves- Sosua beach is on his wish list! We will see what happens! 

Thanks for remembering us in your prayers! If you want to contact me directly, you can write me at marsha.davidson@macregion.org or davidson@drmission.com. 

It is so good to continue to hear from the CSBC folks and know that your time here was a blessing. It is tough to decide who receives the biggest blessing- us here who get to have you work with us or you who come and get to share in the work! I guess there is blessing enough for everyone.

We had a good trip to the new airport in Santo Domingo, got our mail and today will be giving it to the missionaries here in Santiago at the distribution center.  Poor Angelo has to get up early (9:30am)!  Pilar has invited us for lunch and then at 3pm we are heading out to Guayacanal with Victor to visit with the people who participated in our ministries. Victor has a list of 7 or 8 young people who wanted to be baptized.

Last night we were in The Hole- even with no power (very dark!) we had 18 people for Bible study! Victor told us that there had been more than 100 young people on the court that afternoon; they had invited folks from Gurabito, Los Santos and Ens. Bolivar to come and play. Victor has invited them all to come on Sunday at 2 for our worship service and then they want to talk about setting up a BB tournement.  Angelo and Tyrell are going to be ready to play some ball after the worship time. Pray for us as we continue to reach out to these young people, that we can use their interest in basketball to form a relationship with the church which will lead them to the Word and a relationship with Christ.

Tyrell and I were happy to see Angelo as he arrived last night.  It is good to have him here with us again!  We are going to talk through his schedule while he is here this morning (after he wakes up!). We have a lot of follow-up to do with the ministry sites from last week’s project.  And of course we want to give him a chance to see the folks he worked with in February.

This afternoon we have to go to the new airport in Santo Domingo to pick up mail for the missionaries in Santiago. Usually we receive it right here in Santiago but there is a problem with customs right now which has meant that every week one of us has to drive down to the capital to pick it up.  It is a pretty ride so that won’t be a problem and this airport is on the north side so we don’t have to go into the city which lessens our travel time.

Some things in the works… Friday night we are going to have a BBQ (yes, the porkchops again!) for our DOminican team that helped with this past project. It is important to celebrate work well done and we also need to get together to talk through the follow-up. We have gone from three ministries to seven, plus our friends from La Joya that have the blessing of having their own pastor. We still work with them and try to help out as they need us.

Pastor Ramon’s wife, Ingrid, has a birthday today and may be going in to the clinic for a procedure tomorrow and would stay two nights at least. Keep them in your prayers!

Cool Spring folks… your flags are being prepared to send to you soon…