update

Hello All!   We are currently in the Dominican Republic.  We arrived here on the 24th of June with a team of 37 YWAM Staff and students.  We have done some church services with dramas, dances and testimonies.  Our group has been very well received and we have been asked to do more church services. Today, we worked on a church and laid block for the top half of the wall for a refugee area on the second floor.  We also worked clearing rock and building up the foundation for the orphanage.  It was a LONG hard day of work but very satisfying!   Thank you for your prayers!  We are all doing well.  I can´t believe Hannah will be 13 in 3 days! WOW!!   Many Blessings the Walkers   Please go to YWAMOrlando.com and look for the Epic Quest blogs for updates!

Current Plans

Where were you when the January 12, 2010 earthquake hit?
Our family was in the Dominican Republic. Ned and Jesse were at the mechanic’s helping our new host get the YWAM Santiago van fixed. Debbie, Sammi and Hannah were in La Sirena, the Dominican grocery, shopping for food for the week. We all felt the earthquake quite strongly!
What a welcome to the island of Hispaniola for the Walker Family! The Dominican Republic and Haiti share the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, just off the coast of Florida. The earthquake hit strongly in Port au Prince, Haiti. Within 24 hours of the earthquake, Ned was meeting with 60 plus leaders of local mission’s organizations and churches to see how we could all best mobilize to get aide into Haiti. Within 48 hours, our family was able to help purchase, package and send supplies directly into Port au Prince, Haiti. What a life changing experience for our family. We know that God had prepared a task for us to do and we just had to be willing to do it.
God has prepared a task for all of us. Our family’s task is to serve in missions wherever and however God leads. We are currently on staff with YWAM (Youth with A Mission) Orlando. We are working towards setting up a facility long term in the Dominican Republic, where families and individuals can come and serve God through serving others.
Ned and I are finishing up the Basic Leadership School. This school has really taught us to be intentional about leading others. It has been a really hard school but we are learning a TON!!
This summer, we will put these newly learned skills into action as we take our family to the island of Hispaniola once again. We will start out leading an Epic Quest trip of 23 participants aged 9 to 18 to Barahona, Dom. Rep. We will be helping build an orphanage alongside a local church there. We will also be doing local evangelism outreaches in the Haitian and Dominican villages. We will be working in Barahona from June 24th to July 19th. On July 20th, our family along with the YWAM Orlando interns and Outreach students will be going into Port au Prince, Haiti to help build homes.
Won’t you please join us by praying with us for protection and health for our team and to see God move in the lives of Dominicans and Haitians as our family ministers to them in very practical ways?

Walker Family Update

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