| | | | On Thursday, we said good bye to this small group of World Changers.
Thanks Joshua Miller and YWAM Orlando EQ
for serving with us here in Santiago and the outskirting countryside!
pictured....back row: Jesse, Kezia (staff here at YWAM Santiago), Joshua, Mark, Debbie and Ned
front row: Hannah, Melissa, Taylor, Sammi and Joanna | | Living our Dreams Don't just dream dreams, live them. Don't get discouraged when your dreams take awhile. Dreams may come overnight or in one sitting with the Lord but they take time to "live" out. Today, we live out a different part of our dream with God. The one that touches my heart the most. Families serving in missions together. Today, the Stabler Family from YWAM Orlando bring a family group! 17 people, 4 families! Our family will make 5 families serving together! Our ages will range from 7 to 61! First time missionary trippers and veterans serving with their families! Showing others the love of God while allowing Him to strengthen their family! Thank you so much for being in our family lineage in Christ! There are too many of you to individually thank or share how you have been a part of this journey but you all have. Even if it was just one prayer. One prayer is never "just one prayer" it is so much more!
Thank you for your prayers, support, encouragement, and finances. We are excited to live out our dream! It is hard but it is worth it! Would appreciate your prayers too. This is NOT something that the enemy wants to see happen but it is happening and we want it to be successful and that is partially due to your prayers for us! Families will be sharing the love of Jesus with other families and individuals and with God bringing them into the Family of God...the greatest family there is!
When will you and your family come and join us?
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| | | | 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! | | | | | | | | |
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!
