Saturday

Saturday morning we went to a local church to do some painting.  We worked hard to paint three Sunday school classrooms and an area in the sanctuary.  Some students also worked on painting a stage.  Everyone was sweating and working hard together.  Special thanks to Alexis and Josh for working hard to paint a "less than glamorous" bathroom area.  The pastors were very thankful for the help and look forward to using the space to divide up their Sunday school classes and best meet the needs of their students.

After a wonderful spaghetti lunch, we boarded the bus and headed to Santiago for some shopping.  We were in a market with many vendors and the students had a great experience using their Spanish and bargaining skills. 

In the evening we went to a church in the city of La Vega.  While some students set up the church, others walked through the neighborhood with the pastors inviting all of the neighbors to come to the service.  From the time we entered the church we felt the God's presence and knew great things would happen.  We were all blessed by testimonies from Courtney and Rachel and Andrea was incredibly used by God to close out the service.  Many people came forward for prayer and the students continued praying for audience members as the spirit led them.  Some touching moments were when a little boy asked for us to pray that his mother would come to church with him.  Another mother asked for prayer for her son.  We also prayed for people to accept Christ and for God to begin a new work in them. 

As the service neared the end, more powerful moments occurred.  At one point the pastor asked the church members to come to each of us on the team and pray for us.  This made us feel so honored to be a part of the work God was doing there.  The young people of this church also had a worship team and we joined together at the end for a worship session together.  We sang "Si Senor" (Yes Lord!) and it was beautiful to see our sisters and brothers in Christ all worshiping together in our own languages. 

One of the young people there was named Haslam.  Pastor Eran had a chance to get to hear a little bit about his life.  Haslam had left Haiti about 2 years ago in order to pursue a better education.  He had lost 3 siblings in the earthquake.  He is currently 22 years old and in 10th grade.  He hopes to complete his high school education and then continue his studies at the Assemblies of God Bible College in Santo Domingo.  Meeting the youth and worshiping with them together was such a blessing to all of us.
At our Family Time when Pastor Eran mentioned that we only had 2 more days, many students responded with, "What?"  Time has truly flown and we look forward to what the next two days hold.
Please pray for our team, that our energy level remains high and that the we all begin to think about how to really cement the changes that God has made in our hearts this week.
Gracias!