2013 in Review

It’s been a very busy year here on the base at Students International in the Dominican Republic; we hosted a total of 656 students and adults!

We began our year with two back to back groups in January then had a little hiatus in February before having a full month of teams in March. This is typically a very full month because many colleges and high schools use their Spring Break week to go on a mission trip. During this month, we welcomed at team from Jupiter Christian School as well as our dear friend Victoria Humphrey and her son Zachary. We were blessed to have them stay in our home—we love when people come to visit (hint, hint =).

Relax & Know That I am God   In May, our whole staff went on a weekend Spiritual retreat to prepare for the upcoming eleven straight weeks of summer teams. The theme of the weekend was “Be Still & Know That I am God.” The verse from Psalm 46 refreshed us and reminded us to entrust the coming stress to the Lord—a timely word!

Although the days are long and the weeks seems even longer, we love the summer time. We get to reconnect with old friends and meet so many new people. We love serving these folks who give of their time, treasure, and talent and we are always encouraged by what we see the Lord doing in and through their lives.

Fall Semester Students  Not long after we said goodbye to our final summer team, ten students and their director from Bethel College out of Mishawaka, Indiana arrived to spend the following twelve weeks with us. Mary Ellen took Spanish classes with them and we periodically hosted them in the guest house when they were not staying in host family homes in the surrounding areas of Jarabacoa.

Vermont Blessing  In early November, Mary Ellen traveled to Vermont to meet our newest granddaughter Amalie, born to her oldest daughter, Melissa and her husband Shadi. We now have a total of nine grandchildren—what a blessing!

Family Visit  Not long after Mary Ellen returned, her father Allen, mother Betsey, sister Pam, and brother-in-law Jason came for a week and a half visit. What a rich time of reconnecting with family. We enjoyed introducing them to our life here and felt so blessed to have them here with us!

Giving Thanks  With turkey and fixings from Agape (our mail service) and ingredients from students parents, we celebrated Thanksgiving with the Bethel semester students at our home. We fed them comfort food and a little bit of the comforts of home. We were even able to stream a little football!

Christmas  The following week we held our annual Christmas party for all our staff and their immediate families. In all, we served close to 150 people a traditional Dominican Christmas dinner complete with pork, roasted by one of our ground-keepers. The evening wrapped up with games, worship and a Christmas gospel message.

Joys of Ministry  This is just a glimpse of the year and some of the highlights. In many ways, our lives are very routine. But we love to look for ways that the Lord can use us and pray that we have many more opportunities to serve Him! One of Dick’s greatest pleasures is that he gets to spend a Sunday evening of every outreach preparing the outreach participants to go into the communities the following day to do a prayer walk. He also spends meal times interacting with the students and adults on the teams; finding out what God is doing in their hearts, asking challenging questions and giving them an opportunity to process what they are experiencing. Mary Ellen loves spending time with the seven Dominican woman under her supervision. Conversation is actually happening now—which is thrilling but even more importantly, she is learning more about them and their spiritual needs. Please join us in praying for all those whose lives touch ours, that we will be a witness to God’s grace, love, and mercy.

This year, we will spend Christmas in the DR. Dick will be back in the Jupiter area in February for GIBC’s mission conference and hopes to see many of you then! We love you all and appreciate so much your investment in our lives and in turn, the lives of the people we work with—both Dominican and American.

Sweet Amalie - born to Melissa & Shadi Battah in October

Students going through a meal line this summer

Thanksgiving dinner with the semester students

Christmas dinner for the SI-DR staff

Mary Ellen's parents and sister & brother-in-law during their visit in November

Celebrating Christmas with friends here in the DR

Mother’s Day 2013

I miss my mom today. I am living on an island in the Caribbean and she is almost 1,000 miles away and I can’t just pop in to visit or have one of her delicious home cooked meals. I can’t wrap my arms around her and enjoy one of her wonderful hugs and tell her how much I love her. Gratefully, I can pick up a phone and hear her sweet voice and will do so as soon as I finish capturing these thoughts of her and her influence in my life.

I have always loved my mother dearly but as a young child and well into my teen years I never understood her (self-centered creature that I was). It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that my eyes were open to the sacrifices she made on behalf of her children, of the obstacles that she had to overcome, and of the many anxious moments that me and my siblings put her through. I am sorry to say that a lot of those gray hairs on her head were caused by me.

My mother exudes care and compassion. She probably wouldn’t agree with me because she is her own biggest critic. But it’s those qualities that brought her to the point of returning to college while I was attending college so she could pursue a career in nursing after her children were mostly grown and moving on in the world. I can’t count the times that we would run into people while out and about who had either had my mother as their nurse or someone in their family had had her as their nurse. They always spoke so highly of her loving care and the special time she took with her patients.

Those college years were years of healing in our relationship that had gotten very stormy during my teen years. We became college buddies; we commuted to college together and would often spend time together studying or eating lunch in the school cafeteria. I am so thankful that God gave me those years with my mom. It was during that time that I started to view her as a person and came to admire her dedication to whatever task she had at hand. I was always an average student in school – mostly because I just didn’t apply myself. But in college I became an A-B student and even made the Dean’s List a few times. I attribute that to her example and her encouragement.

My mom is a wonderful encourager. She knows how to speak into our lives words that build us up and is one of our biggest fans. She is so proud of our accomplishments in life, no matter how small, and she is not afraid to let the world know how she feels.

She is a woman of faith. She loves Jesus and loves others with that same love. Just ask the people in her small mountain church in North Carolina or those in her small group from her Florida church, or the women that she helps at the pregnancy center, or her friends, or her neighbors, or her grandchildren, or the myriad of people who have been touched by her faith through her years of involvement in Cursillo and CFO! She and my dad faithfully pray for their loved ones and are not afraid to share their faith or to take a stand for what they believe in.

I sometimes wonder why at the stage in my life where I could be free to spend lots of time with my parents, why God would call me to be so far away from them. But I am here on the mission field in large part because of what they have poured into me over the years. They have helped to shape and mold me, they have been such an example to me of a life chasing after God.

So, I miss my mom today – and lots of other days too – but I am so very grateful that she has and will continue to have great influence in my life.

I love you mom!

We Are Trying Something New

We tried to keep our blog updated regularly but have not done a very good job of late. Part of the problem with that was that one of us felt like she had to write a short story every time she updated the blog ... usually because enough time had lapsed that there was a lot to say.

We have switched to an e-newsletter format (through Mail Chimp) with the hope that we can update more often and keep those updates short enough that you don't have to take a coffee break to read them!

If you are not on our newsletter list and would like to receive an e-newsletter, please send us a message through here, facebook, or shoot us an email and we'll be happy to add you.

One of our January teams making their way through the dinner line in the dining hall.
So far this year we have hosted three teams and are getting ready to host two more Spring teams before we prepare for a VERY full summer. We are so thankful for our teams!

In February we had a break from teams so we got together with several other ministries in town to tour each others facilities.
Here we are touring Caribbean Mountain Academy, a ministry of Crosswinds. This is their team house.

It's Kip's first birthday tomorrow! He is a great dog with LOTS of personality. He keeps us (well, mostly Dick) running up and down the hill playing Frisbee whenever he can.