Busy, Busy, Busy

It’s hard to believe in 4 weeks we will once again be in the Dominican Republic (DR) – where our lives were forever changed last June. So much has been going on, we apologize for not updating the blog regularly. We will be updating it on a regular basis now. In our personal life, Carlos and his dad have been spending countless hours renovating the building we purchased at the end of the year. A picture is below. You could hardly see the outside of this building when we purchased it. Damaged from Hurricane Ike, it had sat empty for 2 years and looked like a sad little neglected building. Well Carlos and his dad have done an awesome job – inside and out – and our first tenant moved in May 1st. We are so excited! Even more excited that the tenant is a ministry group. I am continually amazed at how God works. In the Blink of an Eye Ministries is their group name. They work with individuals (especially teens) and their families dealing with substance abuse.

We have also been extremely busy raising funds for this year’s trip. One of the very popular items we have been making and selling is baseball cross frames. You can see pictures here at: www.facebook.com/positivemessages. We have joined forces with the Vigil family on our fundraising and that’s made it quite fun and exciting! We even hosted an event at Clucker’s complete with a Silent Auction. And we’re raffling off an iPad2 and a trip for 2 to Costa Rica!! Lots of new, exciting stuff for this year’s fundraising!

We are also feeling led deeper into the mission field. Carlos may have an opportunity to travel with AIM to Cuba in August to help kick-off an AIM Baseball Camp there. And we are collecting clothes and other items for some of the people in the DR that we developed relationships with last year. In fact, the gentleman from Cuba, Rudy, has been dealing with citizenship issues between Cuba and the DR. Several years ago he traveled illegally to the DR to find work to help support his family. Over the past year he has worked very hard to get approval to return to Cuba to see his wife and children. He now has approval to travel freely between the 2 countries so he will still be able to help with the AIM Ministry in the DR as well as set up the same program in Cuba. The last time he had to travel from Cuba to the DR he had to sell nearly all of his clothes to leave money with his family to live on while he would be gone. So Carlos has made it his personal mission to collect shoes and clothes to bring to Rudy when we return in June. Rudy is an awesome man of God and Carlos really enjoyed getting to know him better back in February. The stories he tells of life in Cuba are just amazing and beyond anything we can comprehend.

AIM has exciting things planned for this year’s trip. Carlos and I will head up a new site, La Cieniga. As of right now, we have close to 100 people confirmed for the first week, June 14th – 21st. AIM will have a full medical team this year as well as a nutritional program for 2,000 kids. If you are looking for a family vacation spot and would like to take a family vacation with a purpose – check out http://www.aimissions.net/. We still have a few spots available – and I promise you – it will be a life-changing experience! There just aren’t words to describe a mission trip – especially unique baseball mission trips like this – I think it should be on every family’s To-Do List. In addition to baseball, we have basketball and volleyball at some of the sites…and even if you’re not a sports family, there are plenty of other places to serve.

Locally, AIM has been invited to help Mission Cy-Fair put on an AIM baseball camp and VBS for underprivileged kids here in our community later in the summer. We will share more details when we have them, but this falls right in line with implementing mission work here in our own community as well as continuing abroad.

Well, that’s enough rambling for now. In closing, I would like to add some prayer requests. Please keep our family and the entire AIM group in your prayers as we prepare for this awesome undertaking. Please pray that we will follow in God’s will, He will pave the way and provide the funds for everything that needs to be done, and that our missionaries will raise the needed funds to go on the trip. In our own family, please pray that God will send the right tenants to our building in La Porte. We have 5 more offices available for lease. We need prayers for Carlos, Jr. He is 16 and experiencing typical teenager behavior. He has recently decided he doesn’t want to join us on the mission trip this year. We are very saddened and disappointed as he wasn’t able to go last year and we were really looking forward to him joining us this year. But we are keeping faith that God is in control and He has a better plan. We are also praying that maybe there’s another child God wants to travel with us this year. Please pray for God’s will as we work thru all of that. And thank you for following our family in this journey!

May God Bless,
Stacy Gauna