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