Summer Highlights

It's not that we fell off the face of the earth, just so busy with ministry that blogging got pushed to the back burner. After five months of not posting, we're back. We dedicate this post to some of this summer's highlights. In April we replaced our annual staff retreat with a staff trip to Haiti to work in a tent camp which came into being as a result of the earthquake. We taught baking, did social work, worked with children and adolescents, built latrines, and did dental work. There was so much need and the work conditions were tough. But having the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus in that setting was very rewarding. This trip also had a unifying effect on our staff. This summer Students International in the D.R. hosted 300 short-term outreach participants. These short-term missionaries partnered with us in bringing the good news to the communities in and around Jarabacoa. They worked at our dentistry, education, construction, physical therapy, social work, medical, micro-finance, art, and sports ministries. Through meeting physical needs, they prepared hearts to be open to hear the gospel.Our daughter, Andrea, has completed her second year at Indiana Wesleyan University. She worked with Students International this summer in the area of media. She was in charge of filming and putting together a media presentation for each of the seven two-week outreaches we hosted this year. It was so good to have her with us in the D.R. In June, our daughter, Lindsi and her husband Stephen visited us. Lindsi and Stephen were married last December. In May, Lindsi graduated from Liberty University with a nursing degree. Stephen is youth pastor at a church plant in Amherst, Virginia. Maggie and I are grateful for every opportunity we have to see and be with our children. This has been a summer of change. Chastity will be leaving for college in the States in five days. Knowing that we would soon become empty-nesters, Maggie and I decided it's time to down-size. We offered our spacious house to the Yorks, a family of five who recently joined our staff, and rented a smaller house. The house we moved into needed a lot of work - roof, paint, fence, etc. Getting the house ready became a family project. We love our new house and find that down-sizing can actually be freeing.