Update Sept. 2010

WOW! What an adventure it has been! We are currently doing our third school here at YWAM Orlando. It is a Basic Leadership School (BLS) where we are learning to be servant leaders like Jesus. It is quite intense and there is a lot of work to do. We are enjoying this class a lot and loving being in Orlando. YWAM Orlando has very much become home to our family.

Our BLS studies have kept us quite busy these past few weeks and I have not slowed down in order to do a much needed newsletter. I do apologize for not keeping everyone up to date. We will be here in Orlando for lecture phase until June 4th. After that we will do our Outreach working with the youth department here and leading a team back to the DR. Dates and information are still being finalized.

Long-term, we are working towards setting up a family-oriented facility where families and individuals can come and serve others and in doing so, realize that God has called us all to share His Salvation Story with others. A place where each and everyone that is a part has an opportunity to realize that God has created each of us with a purpose and a destiny in His Hands. We are looking at the Dominican Republic due to location, safety and other factors.

Starting this week, we will be doing a weekly post about some of our adventures while we were in the DR. This will be easier for Debbie to post with limited internet access and will make for shorter reads. Hope and pray that you enjoy them.

Thanks for following our family and for your support. A prayer request right now would be for financial support as it is down a bit from what we need and also we have had truck issues.

Please let us know how we can be praying for you!
Email or call at 772-360-9393!
Blessings~
the Walker Family

Update from the Walkers

Hello All,

We are officially home from quite an adventurous summer on the island of Hispaniola! Hispaniola is the island that holds the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

We spent from June 24th to July 21st in Barahona, DR! We worked with two different groups while there. The first was an Epic Quest group which included 23 youth ages 9 to 18 from all over the US and from Spain.
While there we worked on a couple of different job sites.
We helped level the ground for an orphanage to get the floor ready to be poured and we also laid concrete block to finish the exterior walls.
Our other project was finishing up the walls of a second story of a youth led church. This church is in an area called La Hoya, just outside of Barahona. This upper story will be used as a youth center until rainy season and during rainy season it will be used to house local residents from the flooding. Getting to actually learn to lay block and finish up a wall was an amazing experience that we hope to get to do more of in the future.
Our group also participated in many church services while there with the participants doing dramas, dances and sharing their testimonies. We saw a lot of salvations and also some physical healings.
From July 22nd to August 11th, we were in Port au Prince, Haiti.
We stayed on the grounds of New Life Orphanage in our own small "tent city". Since the earthquake on January 12th, many Haitians have lived in tent cities. These are what they sound like: groups of tents forming a small neighborhood or "city". At one tent city we did a feeding program and fed 450 people. These were only the children and pregnant women though. God only knows how many live in these tent cities now.
While in Haiti, Sammi was talking with some others about coming back to Haiti at a different time to serve. One of the girls expressed that she would like to come back but to live somewhere not in a tent. Sammi's reply was: Not me. I understand more what the people here are dealing with by living in a tent. We are dealing with the same things that the people here are but we get to go home in a few weeks.
Pretty powerful!
In Haiti, we did a lot of children's programs including an all day soccer tournament, feeding programs, church services, prayer walks, hospital visits and street worship services. We saw lots of people accept Jesus as their personal Savior for the first time and many others re-commit their lives to the Lord. The physical healings that we saw were also incredible.
Haiti is ripe for the harvest! That is for sure.
We will be sharing more stories soon! It was a very fruitful summer but also a very hard summer! One of the hardest times of our lives but so very good!
God is faithful. He will see you through whatever you are going through. He will provide what is needed.
Please be in prayer for our family. Ned has hurt his knee in Haiti and is now trying to see a doctor while here in the states. Please pray for financial provision for this. Also provision for our ministry. We are in need of some more monthly supporters.
Thank you for your prayers!
Blessings!
the Walker Family

Update from the Walker Family

Hello All, Just wanted to send a quick update for the family. We are all doing pretty well.  We have been in the Dominican Republic since June 24th.  We have enjoyed this time here with two different groups from all over the United States and one young man from Spain.  We have been doing a lot of construction work on a youth led church and also on the orphanage here in Barahona, DR.  Hannah was able to lay a wall of brick with the help of a friend and the professional Dominican bricklayer.  She really loved it.  I also got to learn to lay brick for the first time too. We have done a lot of street ministry also and church services.  Sammi was enjoying dancing and doing dramas until she hurt her ankle.  Please pray for quick healing for her. Jesse was able to lead a little boy to a life following Jesus.  It was very precious to experience. So we are all doing well.  We leave tomorrow for Port au Prince, Haiti where we will be for the next three weeks.  Thank you so much for your prayers and support. Blessings~ Ned, Debbie, Sammi, Hannah and Jesse Walker5forGod.com any financial support can be sent to YWAM Orlando, PO Box 620487, Orlando, FL 32862