The Timothy Project

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 always difficult that last day when half the group leaves. The momentum just sort of fades; yet we managed to have a good day of worship. We were in Los Santos this morning for worship and then after seeing the 6 off that go through Dallas, we were in The Hole and Villa de Yaque.

Fatigue was certainly evident today, especially in me! But there will be time to rest later. Our food figures were all off today without some of the guys. We ordered too much for lunch and dinner! We were really missing Kevin!

Tomorrow morning early (3[30am) Cherry and I head to the airport for her to catch her 6am flight and then we leave again at 5:45am to get the rest of the team off.  Jerry, sorry I can’t really tell you who left and who stayed- Whit is still here though if that helps.  Please continue to pray them safely to their homes. It has been a great experience and we have been blessed with safety, good weather, and spiritual fruit and I don’t want to see anything happen to spoil all of that! 

Finish strong we did! I am astonished at how our afternoon unfolded. All the logistical details fell into place and everything went smoother than we could hope for.  What was so cool was watching various buses pull up with youth from the different communities where the team had worked.  It was awesome to see the relationships that had been made, the desire to be a part of Godly things, and the joy of being together in the name of the Lord.  We had some fun time and then the competitions began. 

I have been feeding your folks very well all week and they STILL lost the tug of war!  But as Greg pointed out, half the country was on the other side of the rope! But it was a blast and everyone was enjoying themselves.

 

Our brief worship time at the end went extremely well.  Many prayed the prayer of repentance, inviting Jesus into their lives. We pray for those to continue to grow in their faith and obedience! 

 

And then we came back to a spaghetti feast that Cherry prepared for us, all by herself! It was awesome and did we ever enjoy it! 

 

The good-byes are never easy and tonight was no exception. It has been an incredible 12 days, utterly amazing.  I am so thankful to Cool Spring, Dwight, all the leaders who come and work with the students. It has been such a fruitful experience. I appreciate each one who came and each one who has prayed us through the experience! Keep on praying!

 

Tomorrow at
5:45am we get the first group off to the airport, the ones left behind will go to Los Santos for church (9-11am). The second group will hear to the airport at 12 and the ones still left behind will go to the Hole and Villa de Yaque for worship. They will head out Monday morning at 5:45am. I know you are anxious to have your loved ones home! Thanks for sharing them with us for a while!

 I finally had a moment to upload some pictures from the last few days. Enjoy!

Hard to believe that the trip is almost over… the whole project has far exceeded my expectations. They have worked so hard for so long and really opened up so much new work it is just astonishing.  I am grateful to the team and all the parents and people who have supported them in coming… they have truly made an incredible impact for the Kingdom of God.

Yesterday they finished up in their second DiscipleNow locations and today they are finishing up their second VBS. This afternoon we have the “BIG EVENT.”  All the youth we have worked with will meet together for a sports event- relay races, 3 on 3 basketball competition, tug of war, etc.  It will be a fun time to celebrate the relationships we have made over these past 12 days.  And then we finish it up with a worship time, drawing in the net so to speak. Please pray for the Holy Spirit to inspire faith that leads to obedience in the young people who will be a part of today’s activity and for all of us who stay behind to follow-up with them, nudging them along the path of obedience.

Thanks for letting your students come, for supporting them, and giving them the encouragement they have needed. Your blogs are a big part of their day! 

Sorry to have not posted much since yesterday. My phone went down for some reason and I didn’t have internet access. 

You won’t believe it but today we went to the airport to check on why Brad was getting phone calls abotu 4 bags of luggage left at the airport. The group said they weren’t missing anything but we went to see what it was all about. Sure enough there were four suitcases with Brad’s name on them! But when Cherry started checking the contents, it was obvious they didn’t belong to the group. I went back inside to tell them, and they said to keep them. They couldn’t find any record of a lost bag and they had our tag and name on them.  We had one phone number on the luggage which we called to leave a message and if any one can locate a Dan Lee on Ware Road in Richmond, tell him we have his luggage! There is one bag with no name or ID so I don’t know what we will do about that one.  You just never know what will happen on a mission trip. Far more common to lose luggage than to gain 4 extras, huh?

Everything else is going well. The skies are threatening again but hopefully we can pull off our last night of worship!

We had a sweet moment today at lunch… Jeff and Joyce Hawkins celebrate 33 years of marriage today and he was thoughtful in sending a card along with Cherry. We presented it to her at lunch time along with a special little present… Some of  the men were worried that they would be in trouble now because they have a hard time remembering to do thoughtful things for their wives!

Wow, we have been so fortunate with the weather. We have had threatening skies several times but the only time it has actually rained has been when we were inside at lunch time.  The rain has been great, cooling things off.

Ministry continues to go exceedingly well. The Cool Spring church family should be very proud of the work that Dwight  and the adult leaders have done in preparing the students to do such an excellent work. It is very demanding- the heat, the poverty, the long days, the not so great beds, etc. make for stressful conditions but they are holding up well. Keep up the prayers!

Paul shared with me tonight at dinner that at their Disciplenow site (Navarette) one young lady has been quick to answer the questions. Most of them responded to the team saying that salvation was earned by good works. They helped them find Ephesians 2:8  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God… Paul said that this girl who answered so many questions just lit up like a Christmas tree and it was as if she had never heard it before.  It is so cool to hear about people being led to open the Word of God and discover the truth that sets us free! Please continue to keep us in your prayers and specifically that these people who are having the Word of God opened to them will respond in faith and obedience.

 

I posted a few new pictures. The little house is typical of the housing in an area like Guayacanal. They use scraps of wood to make a little house and eventually will put in concrete floors. You can see Joyce, Jim and Dave’s team head out in two directions this morning as they made the initial prayer walk.

The other pictures are of Brad and Wendy’s team at Las Charcas. It is amazing how many kids came- it is a very small community! They eventually had 50+ kids!

That is what one of the residents in Guayacanal told Brad this afternoon.  As I have shared earlier, this is a new community. There are places to drink, places to bet, but no place of worship. We hope to change that! Brad and Wendy’s team is working there every afternoon and evening the rest of this week. Tonight is their first worship experience out there.  I am just amazed at the power of prayer- we have been praying for this community for a long time, visited a time or two, and it seems that God has heard our prayers and has people ready to respond to the message of the Kingdom. 

All the groups at dinner time shared that the afternoon activities were well received.  It is just amazing and shows the power of prayer and the importance of focusing on prayer before we do anything else!  Please continue to pray for each of the locations: Las Charcas, Guayacanal, Ponton de Navarette, and Gurabito.  What a thrill it will be to see a thrid generation of churches planted in these communities, none of which have an evangelical presence!

 

I am often amazed at how things come together and God makes good things happen. Today was the day I was prepared for lots of details to go awry.  We were doing something new, in new locations. I got to see two of the four sites in action- by 9:30am they were all up and running. Brad and Wendy’s team had at least 20 kids if not more in VBS; well settled and participating and there were about 6-8 women with babies looking on!  They are working in an area called Las Charcas where we have been doing a bible study and hope to plant a church. It looks like this was a big step forward!

Joyce, Dave and Jim’s group are in Guayacanal, a new community doing prayer walking. I am hopeful for what God will do through those prayers!

Emily and Greg’s group (Paul too) have had 40 kids in VBS with six adults in an area called Ponton de Navarette! And in Gurabito (Dwight’s team) all I heard was it was going great so it must be great!

Wendy is doing very well. She is moving back to the Institute with the group tonight. (She has stayed with me the last few nights.) I think she is going back to work with her team this afternoon!

I put a few pictures up last night and will try to put a few more up today if I can get enough time!