Thank youall for your help this year!

To all of you who have given, prayed, visited, wrote, encouraged us, etc etc etc,

We want to thank youall for your help to Crossworld for our ministry this year which has encouraged us! We really appreciate the way you have stood behind us and supported us. While things appear so uncertain in our world today, still we have had a good year of ministry and we praise God for His blessings.

Here are the ways God used you to bless our ministry in 2008...

...due to your help, we were able to help the La Yaguita Bible Church start its Children's Development Center this fall. The center enrolls 64 children now, 32 in the morning and 32 in the afternoon. The kids are between the ages of three and nine. These kids receive tutoring, classroom instruction, supervised play time, a meal, and a Bible story time.

Your support enabled us to give the center a large start-up gift, plus buy various supplies.

We have talked about the school's impact on four-year old Orly. A child of a prostitute and an unknown father, living at his grandmother's, he was making a few pesos telling dirty jokes or singing filthy language songs in order to eat. Now when people ask him to sing, he says no, because "I go to the children's center at church now." At the ripe old age of four, this little boy is learning that God is Holy and is to be feared.

Orly not only attends school there, but he also shows up 2-3 times a day to eat! Pastor Ramon Jorge, director of the school graciously feeds him. Due to Pastor Ramon's compassion, this little boy is learning that God is love and is to be loved.

...due to your help, we were able to help a number of Haitian university students with various financial needs. We were able to give food to students who had run out of food trying to balance rent, water, electric, and tuition payments. We found out that when bills are due, the kids will forgo food in order to make their other payments. We helped a young man get his Dominican residency so that he could get a job here in Santiago. He has been working for an internet company for over a year now. Another young lady was able to rent an apartment. Others received help paying their tuition at school. In one case, a young lady was able to stay in school; she is now doing her medical internship. We also help on a monthly basis one Christian young lady who is studying business administration. Haiti desperately needs skilled and educated young people to effect change in their country.

With your gifts, we were able to make copies of various Bible studies to help the students grow in their faith in Christ. We are teaching a Bible study methods course in two Haitian churches. One young man so enjoyed the course that he will teach the same course to his friends in Haiti over the Christmas break. Due to your help, we are giving him 12 copies of the booklet to give to his students.

....due to your help, we were able to buy books and Bibles for new believers in Christ at Central, the Dominican church we attend on Sunday mornings. Yes, these are the same guys that have come to Christ due to the basketball ministry. One young man has encouraged his whole family to come to church--his brother just invited us to his wife's baby shower next month (and thanks to your help, we'll be able to buy a gift for his wife who is expecting in January!)

...due to your help, we are able to live and minister here in Santiago. We currently lead a small group study for believers from the Central Bible Church on Monday nights. This next year we have been asked to also lead a group study with the some of the new believers and their families who are hungry to learn more of Christ. Thanks to your prayers, our Spanish is improving. As a result we get more requests for teaching and discipling within the Dominican church. At this point in time, Dominicans are very receptive to the gospel. Some Sundays several people receive Christ. So the needs for discipleship and mentoring are great. To develop others as disciplers and church leaders, Judy works with the women's ministry team at Central and Bob currently is leading 12 men from the church in a theological study.

We are grateful for your gifts that help supply our needs here in Santiago. When we think of Orly and the Haitian university students, we cannot take it for granted that:
1) we have food; (Judy's hamburgers and home-made pizza are good!)
2) we have electricity (most of the time--we do get 2-4 blackouts per week for an hour or two, but we have an inverter-battery backup);
3) we have water (most of the time--2-4 times a week, the water gets cut off for a couple hours, so we store buckets of water as a backup);
4) we have paved roads (ok, the last road to La Yaguita is not paved and reminds us of the "roads" we traveled on in Haiti--not to mention that the paved roads here have open man holes, so we have to watch out!);
5) we have a car that continues to run well and enables us to travel to several Bible studies in both Haitian Creole and Spanish (Our car has been more reliable than the city electric or water--we haven't had to walk anywhere!)

Thank you so much for your help to us. May God bless you richly as you serve Him!

The Snowball Effect

I know some of you have had threats of snow already this year. I think it must be snowing here in the Dominican Republic as well, in spite of the continuing heat and humidity. At least there's this snowball that keeps getting bigger as it rolls along.

It's called the snowball effect. I stole the term from the study on finances that we are doing with the couple's from the Central church. In fact, this coming Saturday we'll be showing them how you can pay off your debts quicker by paying off the smaller debts, then rolling over what you were paying on them to add to your monthly payment on the larger debts. As each debt gets paid off, you have more to pay on the remaining debts. The concept is a bit hard to visualize without a graph, but finances isn't really the focus of this post.

The snowball that's blowing us over here is the basketball ministry. Bob loves playing basketball. Some time back, he started just getting a few guys from the church together to play for fun. Those guys invited others, and we began to see some new faces in church as the guys got to sharing their lives with each other. The snowball stalled for awhile and seemed to be melting, but now it's rolling downhill, picking up speed and growing like crazy.

The guys started playing again in the gym across the street from the church on Sunday afternoons. Then they really got organized into teams and decided to have a tournament. This tournament seems to have a lifespan equal to that of the NBA season, and is just as serious, believe me. Now there are more new faces on the court and in church. And three guys are getting together weekly with Bob and other leaders to talk about what it really means to be a Christian. One of the guys is so excited that he asked the leaders to come and talk to his family so they could hear about Christ. Bob had the joy one night this week of visiting in his home and sharing with several family members.

And the snowball keeps rolling. As a result of playing together, the guys in the church are developing stronger friendships and encouraging each other. Our small group had prayed that the guys would love the Lord as much as they love basketball. Last week Bob was asked to teach a Bible study to the men. They want to develop as leaders. Saturday evening, it was a thrill for me to see Bob sitting around a table with 11 men from the church, studying and discussing how to apply God's Word to specific situations in their lives.

You just never know what God will do with a small start and a lot of prayers.