Please pray the 7 Haitian teenagers from Esperanza who were rounded up by
the police and sent back across the border to Haiti. Pray they will be able to get back. 5 were
boys in grade 8 ranging in age from 16 to 19. (That's Hayley's age! Imagine our youth group being sent to another country with no money, no language, no accomodation, under threat of violence and trying to get back home?) Felipe's brother Jose was one. Felipe (pictured above holding his newly provided work visa) borrowed money and went to try to find them. The youth apparently were
delivering pork to a hotel in Playa Dorada. Dominican Independence Day (from Haiti) is Feb
27 so round ups are happening. None had papers--More on the all important papers later. Pray for the families who must be devastated. I'd like to go visit and pray with the families on Monday. Pray God's angels as protection for these young boys!
Mike and Maria (our translator from Villa Ascension) for Alpha. She thought Alpha was wonderfully successful because of the presence of the Holy Spirit, the animated discussion, the laughter and the spontaneous applause!
Alpha with Pastor Joel of Esperanza and his church leadership as well as possibly Pastor Johnny of Ascension and their leadership starts this Sunday. Pray, Pray, Pray!!
Mike and 20 young men during the 'discussion'--See Alpha play by play until the exciting conclusion at the end of this blog!
Women's Alpha discussion- I experienced pure joy and kinship talking with these women. My heart goes out to them--- The dominant problem- I believe in God but I'm not a Christian because I'm not baptized. The church won't baptize me because I'm not married. I can't marry the man I'm with (although we have been together for years and have several children together) because I can't afford to get married (which is prohibitively expensive.)
'How did you become a Christian?' Response "Some men were trying to kill me and my unborn baby. I prayed to Jesus that if he saved me and my child, I would give my life and everything to him. I was passed over and my baby was born and I gave my life to Jesus."
How do we respond to that except with tears of solidarity and gratitude for being together here in this place. Jesus is here and the Wilkins family is here to learn from our brothers and sisters.
Hayley and I started a Girl's club this week using Because I am a Girl material. There are 4 girls who are young (15 - 18 years) who are making really disastrous decisions that we pray we can guide!!
Fifi and her husband have a newly acquired garden and banana tree. A team from Guelph University was there this week also creating vegetable gardens where the old Los Algodones used to be. Pray for God's provision for more soil for more families who want to grow vegetables!
My neighbour Emily (and her Mom Belkis) who's son passed away. We've doubled Belkis time helping us around the home to pay for the casket and cross ($300ish - prohibitive for them). They come back from the funeral tomorrow.
This elderly couple(grandparents of my ESL student) had a fire (see burn marks on wall) and lost everything except, God be praised, his passport. He held the charred shirt that he grabbed that held the papers in the pocket. he's holding his charred bible. When our GAT team comes down, he will be the recipient of a creole bible that they're bringing.
What absolute joy that my Hayley Joy is experiencing as she gets to be with the younguns of the village! This is why we brought our kids here!!
Blog 2/21/13 All about Alpha---whew!
I started the week trying to get a hold of
our translator, Elmond, I wanted to spend Monday morning so we could work on
the first Alpha talk to be sure of culturally appropriate illustrations and
content. I left voice mails on his cell, texted him, and
emailed him – no response. Finally sat down and replaced all the illustrations
that I thought wouldn't fly in the village.
I received an email around noon letting me know that he was still in
Haiti & we'd have to use our back-up translator, Billy. I spent the early afternoon on the phone
trying to reach our women's translator, Maria.
The course would start at 3pm and I had this strange recolection of
Maria telling me that we would pick her up at the Montellano bomba (Shell Gas
Station – bomba is Spanish for pump) at 3!
we needed her there at 1:30. Pam & I took a last-minute run up to
the village to touch base with Billy who assured us that He'd be there with
“bells on.”
We made it back into Sosua in time to share 99 peso burgers with
Phil & Donna Williams of Servant's Heart Ministries & get the kids of
to youth group.
That night Pam had 4 bad dreams – she woke
me up to pray. We went through the house
praying, asking for God's protection over us & the kids, the house, our
translators & the people who would come.
Maria was at the bomba at 1:30! (Christian
time, not Dominican time, she said) When
we got to the village, no Billy. I sent
friends looking for him, went down to the church in the trees where he sleeps
& still no Billy, finally as we closed in on 3pm, I asked Maria if she
would translate, and we would have to live in faith that Billy would make it
for the discussion time. Maria was
amazing – she laughed at my jokes in English & then translated them into
Creole! Billy showed up halfway through
the talk. After the meeting I asked him
what happened to showing up with bells on; he said, “Somebody stole my bells!”
The discussion time was challenging –
leading Alpha discussions is difficult enough, leading them through an
interpreter is even harder! After a
total failure at the “Name Game” the first question was, When was Jesus human
and when was he Spirit?” The asker felt that he appeared human when he did
human things & spirit when he did miraculous things. I gave the pat Alpha response of “what does
anyone else think & then listened to a very heated argument in Creole – I
found out that they were arguing, not about the question, but about whether I
was allowed to put the question back to the group! The conclusion was that I pretty much
wasn't. We spent the rest on the
discussion in question and answer mode with me as the answer man. They loved it when I responded with, “That's a good question!” and if they liked my
answer I got applause! It doesn't work
very well in Toronto when the speaker leads the discussion either, so hopefully
next week Elmond can lead it & they will allow us to be a little more
interactive.
Pray for a smooth path for Alpha for pastors and leaders on Sunday afternoons--very exciting!!
