How beautiful are the feet....

....of those who bring good news. Romans 10:15

That is the verse that came to my dad's mind when I told my parents about what happened the other day in a town outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

I am currently taking part in a 10-day mission trip in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with 17 other staff and students with Campus Crusade for Christ Argentina. We are mainly working with kids and teenagers in surrounding towns by putting on sports camps and then sharing the Gospel with them. We've also been able to do some follow-up with teenagers who are already Christians, but want to learn how to grow in their faith and share it with others.

Last Friday, our team loaded up in a huge truck headed towards a town 30 minutes away called Ona Ville. 700,000 people currently live there permanently, but the town was originally set up as temporary housing for 300,000 displaced Haitians living in Port-au-Prince after the earthquake took everything they had. These children and young people we've met there have seen and experienced awful things recently, but it's amazing to see other organizations like Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, and Compassion that have come into Ona Ville and helped these people not only physically but spiritually as well.

We were on our way into the town, when our truck stopped in the middle of the road. We all got out to help push and, in the process, I stepped BOTH feet into ankle-deep mud. I was at a loss for what to do. I look over to the side of the road and saw two women standing there, watching what had just happened. I went over to them and in my broken Haitian Creole, asked them if they had any water that I could wash my feet with. They immediately disappeared and came back minutes later with a bucket of water. I expected them to set down the bucket as I washed my own feet, but I could've never imagined what I was about to experience.

Without hesistation, the women removed both my shoes and starting pouring the water on my feet and scrubbing them down with their hands. And when I say scrubbed, I mean it. The got in between my toes, my nails, everything. I kept telling them that they didn't need to do that, but they wouldn't stop. They even took my mud-caked shoes and completely rinsed them down and cleaned them by hand. I was amazed at this incredible act of service and they acted like it was completely normal. My question was, "WOULD I EVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT FOR SOMEONE I'VE NEVER MET AND WHO DOESN'T EVEN SPEAK MY LANGUAGE?"

Needless to say, I was greatly humbled by their selfless, loving action and I sat down and began to tell them why we were in Haiti. I shared the Gospel with them and they both said they were Christians and go to a nearby church. One said she does evangelism with her church, but had never seen anything like the Four Spiritual Laws booklet we use (so I gave her one in Creole) and she said that her church has a Bible, but she didn't have one of her own. She was so excited when I handed her a New Testamente in Creole and I told her she could share the Four Spiritual Laws with her church so they can use it to share the Gospel in her town.

God has taught me so much from the beautiful, loving, serving, intelligent, kind people of Haiti and I feel so privileged to be able to rub shoulders with them for this short amount of time.

 Scrubbing down my feet and shoes--that of a complete stranger. Amazing.

Messy and clumsy me. Some things never change.

Taking steps of faith and watching God move

(L to R): David (STINT teammate), Ruth, Star, Rancer, and Elias (students in Vida Estudiantil) hanging out on campus before going out to start spiritual conversations and share the Gospel with students.

Elias, a Medicine student who recently got involved with Vida Estudiantil, and I were hanging out on campus with a group of students when I asked him, "Have you ever shared the Gospel with students on campus before?" When he told me he had not, I invited him to come with me to do a spiritual survey. So we walked until we found a girl named Clara Luz sitting alone, passing the time between classes. After getting to know Clara Luz using the survey, she told us about her belief in God and Jesus and we posed the question, "If you died tonight and went before God and He asked you why you deserved to enter His heaven, what would you say?" To our utter surprise, this sweet, soft spoken girl who had just claimed to be a Christian, told us frankly that she would undoubtedly go to hell because she was not a good person and had not perfectly obeyed God's will for her life, so He could never possibly allow her into His heaven. Elias and I asked her if she would like to hear how the Bible says that she can establish a personal relationship with God and be sure she will spend eternity in Heaven without depending on her good works. She quickly answered that she would love to hear and so I shared the Four Spiritual Laws booklet with her. Afterwards, she said that she had prayed to invite Christ into her life many times, but never really understood what it meant until now. She said she was ready to give God full control of her life and place Him on the throne of her heart. After praying her own prayer of repentance, surrender, and gratitude for Christ's sacrifice and God's forgiveness, Elias looked at her and said, "Remember how at the beginning of our conversation you said you felt alone and insecure? Now, you'll never be alone because you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you and you will always find security in your relationship with God." After we got her contact information and walked away, Elias said, "Wow, I just love seeing the Holy Spirit move like that." Praise the Lord for students beginning a personal relationship with Him and for believers who are seeing God use them to make an eternal impact on their college campus!

Take me out to the ballgame

"So, what do people do in the DR for fun?", you may ask. So far, from my two short weeks of living in Santo Domingo, my answer to that question would be summed up in three words:
Socialize. Dance. Baseball.

Socializing--plenty of that will be done this year as we meet students, build relationships with them, and share the Gospel with them. Being social is basically our job.

Dancing--not something that's done so much within Christian circles, so our experience in this area will unfortunately be quite limited. But your average Dominican incorporates an abundance of dancing into his or her weekly schedule.

Baseball--our lack of experience in this area was promptly addressed on Saturday night when we attended one of the final series games in the Dominican professional baseball league.

Differences noted between Dominican baseball and Argentine soccer games:
1) People from opposite teams weren't trying to kill each other (NOT the case in Argentina) and even sat peacefully side-by-side. A rare sight even in Clemson's Death Valley when the Gamecocks come to town.
2) The home team had their own personal pep band, complete with trumpets, saxophones, and drums that played every time their team did anything exciting. And I mean anything.
3) No exploding devices were used to "cheer on" your team and freak out everyone around you. There were several points during the soccer game in Buenos Aires that I thought this experience would be my last.
4) The home team mascot was consistently entertaining the crowd with a mixture of merengue, Michael Jackson, and salsa dance moves. I'm pretty sure they don't have mascots in soccer, so not too shocking of a difference.

Similarities noted between Dominican baseball and Argentine soccer games:
1) Ear-piercing, unintelligible cheers in Spanish were yelled over the loudspeaker.
2) Yep, that pretty much covers it.

Overall, my DR baseball experience was much safer than my Argentina soccer experience back in 2008. Although both were equally enjoyable.

And my STINT team had a great time, too. :)

Developing a heart for Santo Domingo

I have arrived!

After two months of being home in Greenville, visiting family and friends, and raising financial support again, I'm back on the mission field in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic! I love my team already and have felt so welcomed by them. I'm living with two other single girls in one apartment, there are two other single guys on our team that live together in another apartment, and a family of four that are also on our team that live in another apartment. Fortunately, we all live in the same apartment complex that's a 5-minute walk from campus!

We went on campus yesterday and did a tour/prayer-walk and it didn't take me long to realize that this is going to be quite a change from Buenos Aires! Whereas the 300,000 students in the University of Buenos Aires were split up onto 13 different campuses, the university we will work on here has all the different colleges on one campus with around 120,000 students attending classes there!

I have loved hearing about all God has done over the past four months since my STINT team arrived and all they're praying for this coming semester. They've been able to do a lot of initiative evangelism alongside current student leaders last year, but this semester, they're really wanting to start discipleship groups that eventually are led by the student leaders themselves. The purpose of us being here is to develop a self-sustainable campus movement, so in order to make that happen, we must keep one word at the forefront: DELEGATE! :)

Please pray God would give us wisdom with whom we should delegate leadership of discipleship to as we train the current student leaders HOW and WHO they should disciple on campus.

Thanks for partnering with me in prayer and/or financially to see the Gospel proclaimed on the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. Most students here have heard about religious beliefs that their parents or grandparents have tried to force on them, but very few have ever heard of what it means to have a personal relationship with their Creator. That's why we're here!

Until the whole world hears!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyGD3zH9Xvc

Prayer-walking the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo

Salta Project Video Summary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7udJUBxH_g&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy this video showing a little of what happened on the Salta Project this year! :)

"And you will be my witnesses...to the ends of the earth"

Have you ever been in a situation where God astounded you with His power and showed you what a lack of faith you really have in Him? Well, that was basically the theme of the 2 weeks I spent with 15 other Argentine students, professionals, and Crusade staff in the small town of Payogasta in the province of Salta. Over the two weeks, our team split up into two groups, one that went to a nearby town called Cachi each day to work on construction projects, share the Gospel in people's homes, and put on evangelistic events for teenagers and young adults in the area, and the other group either stayed in Payogasta or traveled around to very small, nearby villages to give out donations, show the JESUS film, and share the Gospel with families in their homes. The things God did in each location in 2 short weeks astounded me and the rest of my team. What a great God we serve!

I helped lead the team that stayed in Payogasta and traveled around the surrounding villages, and it was an experience I will never forget. In one of the villages, Piul, I had the opportunity to hike up a mountain for 45 minutes to find a family who told us they had never heard of Jesus Christ before! What a privilege to share the name of Jesus and His story of salvation with someone for the first time!

In Payogasta, the town where we stayed, we were able to do more follow-up and discipleship since we were there for a longer period of time. One of the first days there I met Graciela, a believer who gave her life to Christ with Campus Crusade students when they visited Payogasta as a part of this annual mission trip in 2010. When we met, she told me she was so excited that we had come back. She told me that she would take me to the most needy families in the town so we could get together a list of what exactly they need and later take them the donations they requested. I asked her if she had ever shared her faith before and she said she hadn't and would like to watch me do so and learn how! I told her I thought we could maybe work something out... ;)

The next day, Graciela and I visited Susana, a woman with no husband and three children, who lived in a tiny room in an old barn with her three sisters and all of their children. Other women and their families rented other rooms in this barn as well. My heart dropped as I saw a dog start lapping up the soup that Susana then served to her children. Their clothes and shoes were falling apart and the only food I saw was a half-filled bag of rice. She warmly welcomed us into her home, quickly trying to find stools that we could sit on as she sat down on the bed. We conversed for a while about her family and her life in Payogasta and then asked her about the physical needs that her family had. After making a list of donation requests, I told her that the most important reason our group of students and professionals came to Payogasta was to share with the people how our personal relationship with God has changed our lives. Graciela silently watched as I transitioned to the Gospel and began sharing the Knowing God Personally booklet (http://www.campuscrusade.com/downloads/kgp.pdf) with Susana. By the end, Graciela was chiming in and talking about how her personal relationship with God through Christ has a daily impact on her life. When I asked Susana if she had ever accepted God's gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ and given Him complete control of her life, she said, "Of course not. No one has ever told me how." As I listened to her pray out loud and give her life to Christ, I thanked God for such an awesome opportunity to not only lead someone to Christ, but also show a current believer how she can share her faith with others! Afterwards, Graciela told me, "Wow. I've never thought about how much people here in my town need to hear the Gospel. And now I know how to share it!"

Throughout the rest of that week, the girls on my team and I organized a women's Bible study each night for the three believers we had met, along with the women who had come to know Christ with us that week. Susana came twice and loved it! Pray that the women continue to meet and grow together in their relationship with the Lord!

Here, I'm going to list out the prayer requests I passed along in my last post and detail how each and every one was answered!

-Safe travel to Salta Capital for 3-day retreat with all of the students and professionals before the project begins safe travel for the many different teams going to their respective towns from Salta Capital on July 16th. Everyone arrived safely to Salta and, afterwards, to their respective locations! Such an answer to prayer since the mountain roads are pretty dangerous!
-That God will bless our U.S. team's Spanish language ability as it is even harder for us to understand people from this region than it is to understand someone from the city. There were a few times in which the older ladies in the villages could not understand my accent in Spanish, but in general I was able to understand everything that they said and they could understand me! This is a definite miracle!
-No technical problems with each JESUS film showing in the different town plazas that we'll visit. In La Paya, Buena Vista, Payogasta, and Piul, the JESUS film equipment worked beautifully! However, in Brealito, one of our student leaders broke the equipment on accident and we were unable to show the film. However, God was gracious and everyone who came to see the film stuck around and we got to share the Gospel personally one-on-one with each person!
-That men, women, children, and youth will attend our evangelistic outreaches and have an interest in hearing the Gospel. We had outreaches for teenage girls, teenage boys, women, and children in the different villages throughout the 2 weeks and each outreach had a great turnout! We were able to clearly share the Gospel at each event as well!
-That the donations will go to the families that truly need them most. In Payogasta, we were able to talk to Christians in the town who helped us find the most needy families and find out exactly what they need. While we did this, we shared the Gospel with them and several accepted Christ!
-Safe travel for the teams who will traveling to different towns every day. Our team traveled in the back of a pick-up truck through mountainous terrain and we never had any troubles!
-Rest and wisdom for Andres and I, the team leaders in Cachi, Salta, as we lead two teams of 10 people. Andres and I worked very well together and experienced no conflict as we led the team each day. (Such a miracle!) God was very gracious to give us a wonderful team of students and professionals that took initiative and worked hard each and every day, making our job much easier! Though there were a few nights in which we got little sleep, both Andres and I were able to sleep as much as the rest of the team most nights.
-That our student leader, Leo, will have the freedom to share the Gospel during the two hours of air time he has daily on a radio program that reaches 10,000 people in the province of Salta. Though the radio did not allow Leo to share the Gospel, he did interview our team leader, Andres, and asked him to share his testimony! He talked about how having a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ has changed his life and no one at the radio studio said anything about it afterwards!
-That our time in the different towns will be uplifting and encouraging to the pastors and small church congregations there. Pastor Marcelo in Cachi, asked us to focus our efforts on teenagers and young adults. After two weeks of ministry there, Moises, one of the young men who is extremely influential among the young people in Cachi (he started a folklore dance school that has 70 teenage students) accepted Christ along with 15 of his friends! What an impact they can make on the youth of Cachi! Pastor Marcelo was so excited!
-Wisdom for us as we disciple new believers in the various church plants. Graciela (from the story above) and her sister Gabriela were two believers that attend Marcelo's church that we were able to disciple through the women's Bible study we started. Also, Daniela and Audelina, two women who accepted Christ with me, attended the Bible study as well and also met with me a couple of other times for discipleship!
-Good relationships with the priests that many times "run" the town and has to approve of any mission work that comes in to help. Thankfully, we didn't have any run-ins with the priest in Cachi and the other towns where we visited are too small to have their own priest. Most of these towns share one priest within their region and he usually passes through each town once a month or sometimes only once a year. However, in Molinos, a town where another one of our teams was, the priest told the town over the radio to not talk to our team because we were preaching lies. After that happened, the team prayed fervently for the upcoming evangelistic events and at every event they had a great turnout! The people said that they didn't care what the priest said--they wanted to come hear what the team had to say anyway! Praise the Lord!
-Safety and efficiency in construction efforts as we build houses and churches in various towns. We had three architects on our team that helped build a house and a well for a Christian family in Cachi! They were so thankful for the help and the architects were so excited to use their gifts for God's glory!
-That the Holy Spirit would open the mens' eyes to how their abusive and alcoholic behavior is destroying their families. In general, we do not converse much with the men in the villages, but I had an opportunity to clearly explain what a man of God is like to the father of Daniela, one of the women who accepted Christ with me. He happened to be sitting in the room as I encouraged Daniela to start going to church in Cachi and find Christian men who can be a godly example to her sons. She had told me separately how her dad never expressed his love for her and was drunk most of her childhood. As I sat there and talked to her about the kind of man her sons need, her dad listened attentively the whole time. Please pray that what he heard will impact his heart and that he will accept Christ and become the male role model that his grandsons need!
-That the Holy Spirit would stir up a passion in the youth's hearts to find their true eternal purpose in life instead of simply living the common lifestyle of drugs, sex, and alcohol. The potential impact that Moises (read story above) and his friends can have on the young people in Cachi is tremendous! Pray that the impact that was made on their lives will be transferred to their friends and families as well! Also, one of the students on our team is studying to be a doctor and she taught a sex education class to a group of teenage girls in Cachi and talked about why abstinence before marriage is the best option physically, emotionally, and spiritually. She also talked about our value as women in Christ and how we often settle for the lies of this world that tell us that we must meet certain standards in order to be "beautiful." Praise the Lord for this wonderful opportunity to speak truth into these girls' lives!

Thank you so much for your faithful prayers! Enjoy the pictures below!

 We found a Clemson shirt with the donations! This precious little boy in Piul is now a proud Clemson Tiger!

 With Daniela, one of the women who accepted Christ with me and began attending the women's Bible study we started!

 With Susana and her family! You can see the small room in the back right corner where she lives with her 3 sisters and all of their children

 With Mabel, another woman who rents a room in the same place where Susana lives

 With Romina, one of the teenage girls I was able to share the Gospel with and get to know during my time in Payogasta

 The teenage girls (and a sister and mom!) who came to our talk on our beauty and value as women created by God!

 With Mateo, one of Graciela's sweet children :)

 Unloading the many donations that we collected before the project and gave out to families in Payogasta, Piul, Buena Vista, La Paya, and Brealito

 Some of the children who attended our evangelistic event for kids in La Paya

 Our team that traveled to different towns surrounding Payogasta each day! In this picture, we're on our way to Brealito, a 1 1/2 hour drive in the back of a pick-up!

 One of the sweet little girls that came to our evangelistic event for kids in Brealito

 Ayelen, one of the missionaries in Cachi, who I actually met in 2009 when we attended the same church while I was studying abroad in Cordoba! Small world!

 The women's Bible study that we started during our second week in Payogasta!

 Sharing the Gospel with a group of women in Piul

 Handing out donations to needy families in Piul

Showing the JESUS film to 15 women and their children in Piul.

Prayer Requests for Salta!

-Safe travel to Salta Capital for 3-day retreat with all of the students and professionals before the project begins
-Safe travel for the many different teams going to their respective towns from Salta Capital on July 16th
-That God will bless our U.S. team's Spanish language ability as it is even harder for us to understand people from this region than it is to understand someone from the city
-No technical problems with each JESUS film showing in the different town plazas that we'll visit
-That men, women, children, and youth will attend our evangelistic outreaches and have an interest in hearing the Gospel
-That the donations will go to the families that truly need them most
-Safe travel for the teams who will traveling to different towns every day
-Rest and wisdom for Andres and I, the team leaders in Cachi, Salta, as we lead two teams of 10 people
-That our student leader, Leo, will have the freedom to share the Gospel during the two hours of air time he has daily on a radio program that reaches 10,000 people in the province of Salta
-That our time in the different towns will be uplifting and encouraging to the pastors and small church congregations there
-Wisdom for us as we disciple new believers in the various church plants
-Good relationships with the priests that many times "run" the town and has to approve of any mission work that comes in to help
-Safety and efficiency in construction efforts as we build houses and churches in various towns
-That the Holy Spirit would open the mens' eyes to how their abusive and alcoholic behavior is destroying their families
-That the Holy Spirit would stir up a passion in the youth's hearts to find their true eternal purpose in life instead of simply living the common lifestyle of drugs, sex, and alcohol


THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR FAITHFUL PRAYERS