Here are some reflections of the last five months from the DR Field Director.

January to May have been very busy months for SI/DR. We’ve hosted nine different outreaches, which have been a blessing to both us at Students International and to the surrounding communities here in the Dominican Republic. Our first team was from Greenville College in southern Illinois. From this team we had several people commit to serve here in the DR this summer as interns and two students signed up to be a part of our fall semester program.

In February we hosted a women’s outreach team. While here, God laid on the heart of one of the ladies to raise the money to purchase four new treadle (non-electric) sewing machines for our social work sites. Two will be placed in our social work site in El Callejon and two in our women’s center in Los Higos. This visionary, a former home-economics teacher, will be coming this month to train the leaders of these sites how to use the machines. What a blessing this will be! Another one of the ladies that came as a participant on the women’s team has now signed up to bring a group of women from Indiana to the DR next February.

In March a team from Taylor University brought hundreds of pairs of shoes with them to be distributed to the people in the communities of our ministry sites. Before you could receive a pair of shoes, Team Victory washed each child’s feet and prayed for them. You can imagine the excitement of all those who were blessed with a brand new pair of shoes!

Also in March, along with our regular teams, we hosted a vision tour lead by the President of SI, Dave Hansen. The response from this group was a great encouragement to us. In this group was a couple from Hume Lake in California that leads the Joshua Wilderness Institute. After visiting here they signed up to bring a group of around 70 for a two-week outreach in January. We also hosted several people from a Church in Sturgis, Michigan who decided to bring a team in June.

These are some of the ways that the fruits of our labor have blessed us. I wish you could hear or that I could share all the testimonies of people who have come and left a part of their heart here in Jarabacoa. Again, we praise God for His faithfulness!