| | | | American Holidays Overseas Insight to an overseas missionary family's life. Happy Fourth of July! Independence Day! Fireworks! Cooking out! Family! Celebrating our freedom and the fact that we are American and proud of it.
This is a really strange thing to do in a different land. How do you celebrate your Americanism when you are not in America? There are lots of different ways this can be done. We went to the "American" store, wore matching Old Navy flag tshirts, ate fried chicken, mashed potatoes & lima beans, and watched the Avengers!
This is officially our 12th (ish) holiday that we have celebrated since moving here 10 months ago. We have all celebrated turning a year older in the Dominican Republic. Jesse turned 13, Sammi turned 19, Hannah just turned 17 and Ned and I celebrated our birthdays too :) Holidays are something that are just a bit strange. Traditions and foods are different. You often can't find that "traditional" thing that you ALWAYS serve for that holiday. Some things can be found but not afforded. You don't have the family and friends to celebrate with. Playing American football at Thanksgiving was next to impossible.
HOWEVER, you hold true to KNOWING that God has you here in this foreign land for a reason. You make new traditions or adapt old and you make the best of it. You enjoy life and are thankful for what God is doing in and through your life.
Just a little insight to one part of our lives here. Thanks for your prayers in this area! Our next holiday will be Ned and I's 22nd Anniversary on Saturday, July 12th. We will be hosting a group from YWAM Orlando so not sure how we will celebrate but that won't make the past 22 years any less precious! | | | |  | Lucia, Yanelly, Gerardo, Gina, Gabriel and Issa..the Colombia Outreach Team
YWAM Santiago's Discipleship Training School team made up of all Dominicans that left this week for ministry in Colombia.
Mobilizing Dominican youth to reach the nations is one of the goals of YWAM Santiago. We are privileged to have gotten to be a part of this amazing team. We enjoyed our week of outreach with them to the city of Santiago. We did day camps at 5 different church locations. These locations were at the far east and far west parts of the city and in the center, strategically spreading the gospel around the city of Santiago.
Please be in prayer for this team as they minister in Colombia and then return to help run the SUYO (King's Kids) camp and NIKO. | | | |  | Prayer! This is our family along with the full time YWAM Santiago family praying for the Colombia team.
Prayer is effective and needed. We need your prayers.
This week will be 3 days of preparations for two upcoming teams and two upcoming camps. On Thursday, a team from YWAM Orlando joins us, followed by a family team led by our good friends, Dave and Rebecca Stabler. That leads us into the local SUYO camp with local Dominican youth participating as campers and staff, followed by NIKO camp in August. During these times, we will be ministering with the teams from the states and the youth from the Dom Rep around the city. It is an exciting time with lots of changed lives. Thanks for your prayers! | | | | | | | |
| | | | Seeing is Believing or Believing is Seeing My sister has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, will you come and pray for her? After Spanish class, Ned and I went to visit a friend of ours who is making some furniture for us. We first met Leo when working on a Chapel Project build in 2013. As we sat and drank coffee and water with him and his wife and our friend, his wife said quietly to him that he should ask us to pray for his sister. With a strain in his voice he told us the doctors had just diagnosed Luchi with terminal cancer and asked if we would be willing to go to her house and pray for her. Yes, of course! We prayed there in the living room for Luchi and I felt like God was saying that he wanted to heal her completely. Now this is NOT something I feel every time that I pray for someone. Actually, I have NEVER felt this so strongly as this time. So two days later we went to Luchi's house. I had continually prayed for this meeting. What do you say to a woman who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer? I know without a doubt that God does heal people....I mean my husband is one of them but what did He want me to say to Luchi. I felt like the first thing I was supposed to ask was if she believed in Jesus as her personal savior? So I did. Yes, she is a strong believer and we chatted for a bit about this and how our lives are to glorify God regardless of the circumstances. In the bad and the good, we are to glorify God. Now let me add that we had quite the crowd there on Luchi's front porch and in the street. Family and friends and neighbors had gathered and I felt the urge to remind them that they were to hold up Luchi's arms during this battle. Especially her two brothers that were there. So Ned and I prayed for Luchi and then family members and neighbors asked to be prayed for. I lost count in there somewhere. A neighbor, Rosa, even gave her life to the Lord for the first time ever! That was so cool. God was using Luchi's battle to draw people to Him already...but God wasn't done!
Luchi went to the doctor 3 days later....there was NO sign of cancer! Luchi was healed!
Thank you Lord. What a blessing to be a part. Now you may not believe in healing but believing is sometimes seeing. And I have no doubt that I believe that God is still in the healing business. What a blessing to get to serve alongside an incredible God!
We are called to be obedient! Leo and Nina were obedient in asking for prayer for Luchi. Ned and I were obedient and went and prayed. Luchi was obedient in believing in faith! God is good. | | | | |  | We are busy with planning for SUYO Camp! This is a program that other countries call King's Kids. It is a camp that helps to train kids in being missionaries. Not to leave their homes today and move around the world but to be a missionary to their own families and communities.
WE ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD!
This is the theme for the week of camp and out of this camp we will do weekend retreats all year with these campers and do city outreaches.
We are all called to be light in this dark world no matter our age.
We are also super excited to host a couple of short term teams this summer. One being at the same time as SUYO camp so they will be missionaries helping to train future missionaries!
| | | |  | http://LifeforYouthCamp.com
What a great place for children of Central Florida to spend their summer! Ned and I have been so blessed to be a part of Life for Youth Camp since the summer of 1990! 25 summers ago, I went to work at camp for the summer for the first time! Man do I ever feel old now :)
Each summer Life for Youth Camp picks a missionary to support through their coins for camp program. This is a weekly contest for the boys and girls to raise funds to help support an overseas missionary. This year our family was picked!
THANK YOU LIFE FOR YOUTH CAMP FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!
Also thank you to the staff and counselors at camp for serving their local community! We are blessed to know the Stevens Family! | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | Our house warming SURPRISE party with Glenn and Rhoda Martin and the Orlando team and friends. | | | | | | What a blessing to work with a great organization, Chapel Project. Building the locals up. | | | | | | | We are officially moved in and living in our own home here in Santiago, Dominican Republic. (see above picture) Not everyone throws a housewarming party for you at your own house when you're not prepared! haha! What a blessing this time of prayer was. We are still in need of furniture and some kitchen items. We would appreciate your prayers and/or financial help with these needs. Please ask for an update needs/wish list if interested. | | Catch-Up-Date January to March 2014
Catching you Up and an Update All in One! 2014 has been crazy busy for the Walkers!
We welcomed the Martin's back to their home and we moved into our own next door. This included a 40 hour lost dog drama that started when we came home from celebrating the New Year. What a way to start the year.
We hosted a YWAM Orlando DTS group of 25 in January. 8 of the 25 went and worked on NIKOland each week and camped up there while the other 17 did ministry here in the city. We worked alongside of them in a lot of the poor areas of town, did some street outreaches, and joined a ministry with a local young man playing sports with shoe shine boys who mainly live in the street. It was a super busy month.
February brought the departure of the DTS and the welcoming of the Ellis Family as they completed their outreach phase of their school. It was a lot of fun working with this family of 7 who work with children in Knoxville, TN. They came to help us prepare as we look at hosting more family groups in the future and they plan on hosting them stateside.
Chapel Project was a huge success with 2 projects during the end of February and March. We helped build the roof on a church in Los Tocones an outskirt of Santiago. Also was the finishing of the roof on the upstairs classroom, nursery, and office of the church in El Ejido where the fire was. And we were able to put a roof on the partial church building in village of Tamboril that the DTS had helped lay the foundation for and build a roof on a better home for a local pastor whose home was severely eaten by termites.
| | | | | | The Ellis family from Knoxville, TN who has worked with YWAM Orlando came and did a family outreach to help prepare us and themselves to host future family outreaches! Here we are eating lunch during a day of ministry up at NIKOlando.
Please be praying NIKO camp is in 2 weeks and will be a life changing week for many area youth. | | | | | SUYO, Kings Kids a program that combines learning about God, discipling local youth and reaching out to those in their own cities and around the world. | | | | | This is David. He is 4 years old and a good boy.....do you want him?
This was the question posed to me by the people across the street from a church we were working at. He had wandered up the day after a massive fire that destroyed 55 plus homes and had been "unclaimed" for a couple of days. Talk about a broken heart! Wow...God created David just as He created all of us and wants us to be in relationship with Him.
David is being cared for by his grandmother and it was a blessing in January to get to see him again and see him doing well in her care. | | | | | | | | |
What are the Walkers doing right now?
We are moving!!
The last week of August, our family will be moving long-term to Santiago, Dominican Republic. We will be working with YWAM Santiago and the Martin Family! We are super excited about this transition. But also praying for wisdom as we figure out visa's, residency, what to do with our things, etc...
As always, we are praying that the Lord will use us wherever we are!
Lord, help us not to miss the things you have prepared for us to do!
