Back to the Dominican!

February 25, 2011

God is swinging doors open for the youth here in the Dominican Republic. Ben Vigil (AIM's local director) and myself arrived in Sosua yesterday afternoon. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I felt like I was back home. It's an awesome feeling I can't describe. It's like God is shouting, "Yes my servant, this is where I want you."

We will be here for 1 week, and the purpose of our trip is to visit the different sites where our mission group (AIM) will be hosting camps this summer and help the Dominican coaches prepare for the camps. Today we visited the site of Los Castillos. This location has only one Coach (Gary) for about 103 kids. Can you imagine having to do that?? What a huge challenge, and Coach Gary is doing an incredible job. We also had discussions on how to distribute some of the equipment that is still left from last year's summer trip. (Praise God we still have some cleats and gloves to distribute!!! That in itself is a huge blessing.) Since the purpose of AIM is to minister through the game of baseball, we came up with a plan to require the kids to attend a certain number of bible study sessions in order to "earn" the cleats or glove they want. Our prayer is they will want to continue the bible study sessions even after they receive their equipment.

We also visited one of the villages today. Even though I remember last year's trip like it was yesterday, it is still so humbling to visit the people in the villages. And this time it was very cool to see some familiar faces! Their welcoming smiles and kind words warmed my heart. Even more humbling was our visit to Pastor Rivas' school. Thanks to lots of hard work and generous donations, a picture of the new school under construction is posted above. The DR has some strange rules about school. If you don't have a birth certificate, you can't attend public school. Since many of the children are born in the villages, they don't have birth certificates. Pastor Rivas runs a school here in Sosua for the village children. In fact, they are in need of crayons, chalk, pencil sharpeners, and construction paper. That boggled my mind as I thought of the abundance of those items just at our house alone.

We are also visiting with Rudy, who is heading up AIM's work in Cuba. We thought we had challenges in the DR --- Cuba definitely poses challenges. Rudy currently has 4 teams set up, but right now they play baseball with no shoes on and no shirts on, they just wear their school uniform shorts. It is very expensive to bring equipment into Cuba. First, as an American it's tough to even get permission to go into Cuba. If you do get permission, you can only bring 60 pounds of stuff per person and that weight includes your own personal items. After that each extra pound costs $12.00USD. Please pray for this new venture in Cuba. There is such a great need for the gospel to reach these people, and we know God will continue to open doors there.

So far it's once again been a very overwhelming trip. I am so happy I had the opportunity to make this preparatory trip with Ben and I pray that I keep my heart open as God is leading me along in this journey. God makes great things happen.


God Bless,
Carlos

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Prov. 22:6)