Thursday, December 23, 2010

Merry Christmas to all

Merry Christmas to our family and friends!!
What a year it has been! We have enjoyed a lot of ministry times on the island of Hispanola. The Dominican Republic and Haiti share this island and we have been able to minister in both countries extensively this year. We have seen salvations and healings and have been able to do physical labor and work on orphanages and water systems. What a great year of ministry.
We are busy right now with YWAM Orlando which we love and are so happy to be a part of the family here. This past quarter Ned has learned a lot in the accounting department and also the youth department. Debbie and the kids have been able to work on the new west campus of YWAM Orlando. They have destroyed a lot of moldy walls and cleared the way for new walls and ceilings to be put up. It has been a busy but very productive fall quarter!
We all were able to help with and attend YWAM's South East Conference and 50th Anniversary Celebration that were held on the new campus. We slept in tents and used portable toilets, sinks and showers during this week. What an adventure!

We will continue working on staff with YWAM Orlando here in Orlando for the Winter Quarter. We are looking forward to learning a lot more that we will be able to take with us as we continue to prepare to go full-time to the Dominican Republic.

We pray that this finds you all well! Please pray about financially or prayerfully supporting us this coming year.
Many Blessings!
The Walker Family

Thursday, September 2, 2010

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

Monday, August 23, 2010

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

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

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

Monday, June 28, 2010

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!

Monday, May 24, 2010

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?

Monday, April 19, 2010

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

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Updated schedule

Hello All~
 
Just thought we would send a quick update for the next few days. 
 
We have served this past week here in Santiago with the DTS team from Orlando.  We've been doing children's ministry and some Outreach church services.  It has been great fun and very productive ministry time.  It has also helped us learn how to "view" and "handle" from a host position a team's internal workings.  So it has been very good.  The children have reallly enjoyed getting to serve in the children's ministry opportunities.  We have not had much time to post pictures but will next week.
 
Our schedule for the next 8 days or so will be quite busy and we are not sure when we will have any time to use internet.
 
We leave tomorrow morning on Wed to travel to the northwest border at Dajabon where we will walk into Haiti and visit an orphanage there.  We will then be coming back into the DR for a Wed night youth service at Loma de Cabrera.  Then on Thursday we will be touring the World Vision ministry that works with a goat project along the Haiti/DR border.  Friday, we will be coming back here to Santiago for a few hours before heading to Nagua in the northeast.  There we will be visiting Everydayministries.com.  They do ministry in quite a few towns in the area and have a large service planned for Friday night and Saturday.  Also two church services on Sunday where Ned will be preaching possibly in at least one of them.  This will be stretching for him.  Then Monday we will head to Santo Domingo to visit the YWAM Carribean leader Kent Norell.  On Tuesday or possibly Wednesday, we will travel to San Pedro de Marcoris where Dan Gower and his family serve.  They are from our church in Vero and who Samantha and Debbie ministered with in 2006 when we were here.  We are really looking forward to seeing them.  Then traveling back here to Santiago.
 
Sooo.... it will be quite  the busy next few days.  We really appreciate your prayers.  Especially for strength for the family as it is tiring doing all of this travel.  We are being able to minister in so many different ways and have been learning so much about this country that we look forward to ministering in in the future.  We are loving it here and getting to know the people.  God is really using us and we are definitely being stretched.
 
Thanks so much for your prayers and support!
Blessings~
Ned and Debbie Walker and family

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Quick Update

Greetings from the warm DR!
 
We heard on the news through the internet that there was a big snowstorm.  We had forgotten that it was winter as it is already so warm here!  Pray you all are staying warm!
 
We returned from the north coast around Sosua on Thursday and met the Orlando DTS team that is doing their Outreach here in the DR.  It was great to see familar faces from home!
 
We are headed out today for Elias Pina on the DR/Haiti border and possibly will get to go into Haiti sometime the first of the week.  We shall see what God has in store for us!
 
Many blessings to you all!  Thanks so much for your prayers!
They are needed!
The Walker Family

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Fw: Walker Family Update

We arrived in the Dominican Republic.
 
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We officially arrived in Santiago, DR on January 12, 2010.  We left Vero Beach, FL on the 11th but due to flying late at night we arrived here safely around 3:00 am!  What a long night. 
 
 Our hosts, Glenn and Rhoda Martin (pictured with the kids), met us at the airport to take us to our home base for the next 8 weeks.  We will be traveling around the DR visiting and helping at different ministries that are already serving the Dominican people.
This weekend we will go to Sosua and visit a ministry who helps get kids off the streets and into a home and school.  We will be sharing at their home church on Sunday morning and assisting in taking care of the boys in the group home.  We will also get to help at the school there.
We will be visiting many different areas in the coming weeks, including  Santo Domingo, Elias Pina and Dajabon.  We will also be serving in Haiti at an orphanage that has taken in many new children from the Earthquake in Port au Prince.
 
Earthquake 2010
 
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We arrived the morning of the earthquake.  The girls were all grocery shopping at La Sirena, a two-story grocery, here in Santiago, when the juice behind Hannah started to fall.  Rhoda told us it was an Earthquake and we needed to get outside, esp. since we were on the bottom floor of the building.  The guys were at the mechanics and saw the van, street lights, etc.. swaying.  
 The devastation in Haiti has shifted the focus of a lot of the local churches and minstries from their "normal" ministry to sending supplies into Haiti.  We have been privileged to serve many ministries that have sent funds and we have shopped for, packaged, labeled and loaded literally thousands of pounds of food from Santiago to Port au Prince, Haiti.  It has been incredible to be a part of and see so many different ministries pull together as the "body" of Christ and serve others in need.
 
SUYO Camp
 
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We were privileged this weekend to get to help with YWAM Santiago's SUYO camp.  SUYO in Spanish means HIS.  We had an additional 18 children and youth move into the YWAM house with us for a long weekend.  This program is designed to raise up youth that feel called to missions.  The weekend camp taught on knowing God to make Him known which is YWAM's motto.  There were teachings on having a personal relationship with Jesus and many aspects of a daily Christian walk.  Along with these teachings, the children learned dances and dramas.  The camp closed with an Outreach to a local downtown park where about 125 or more gathered to hear the children give their testimonies, dance and perform dramas.  Then the children took tracts to the people and offered to pray for them.  Each month this group will get together to do a community service project or another outreach.  What a great way for children to see that God will use them to change their own neighborhoods!  Samantha, Hannah and Jesse were a part of the camp as campers and helpers.  It was an amazing weekend!  Jesse loved getting to pray for a lady through an interpreter!
 
>
Thanks for your prayers.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
 
God is using us to serve so many others here in the DR and in neighboring Haiti.  We covet your prayers.  We just wanted to say thank you.  We are so privileged to get to serve an amazing God!  You are also serving Him by praying and supporting us.  Thank you!
 
Many Blessings~
the Walker Family 
 
Here is a picture of the SUYO group from this weekend

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Request for Help for Haiti

Special Request for Help for Haiti
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Hello All~

Tomorrow, January 15, 2010, we have an opportunity to help purchase and load supplies to be sent directly from here in Santiago, DR to Port Au Prince (PAP), Haiti. We are currently being hosted by Glenn and Rhoda Martin who have been here in Santiago for 11 years and have many great ministry contacts. Ned was able to sit in on a planning meeting on Wednesday afternoon to see how YWAM DR and the other ministries here could best help. AGAPE Flights has been cleared to fly relief supplies into Haiti starting tomorrow. In the morning, Ned will accompany Glenn to the hardware store to purchase supplies to send.

How can you help?
Donating is the best way you can help at this time. Each flight that AGAPE makes costs between $350 and $400 in fuel. Most supplies here such as tarps, ropes, face masks, sawblades, medical supplies, etc... cost a bit more but not too much more than in the US. The more money raised the more supplies that can be purchased and sent. We know that this money is going directly to Haiti Relief.

How can you donate directly to this effort?
You may send checks to the address below. US checks are easily cashed here in the DR. This is probably the easiest way to donate directly to our effort here.
Make checks out to YWAM and attach a note saying Haiti Relief. Please email us with the amount you are sending so that we can put this money into effect immediately.

Weekly Courier Address (into Santiago, DR)
Glenn & Rhoda Martin
Agape Flights SGO 12342, 100 Airport Ave
Venice, FL 34285

Thank you in advance for your help. We do not usually send out a blanket request for money to you our newsletter readers but this is not a "usual" situation.

Please forward this to anyone or churches etc... who may be willing to help but do not know how to assure that their financial gift is really going to Haitians in need.

Blessings to all~
The Walker Family

Update from the Walkers

Thanks for your prayers!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hello All~
Thank you for your prayers! We are all safe and secure! We each have our own story to share about our first earthquake experience. Quite the welcome to the Dominican Republic to say the least.
We have many ministry opportunities here and are looking forward to adjusting, learning the language and working alongside many others who are working to share God's love with those around them.
This is just a quick update to let you all know that we are well. Will get some pictures and stories up soon! Please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be interested.
Many Blessings~
The Walker Familly
Debbie's Brother Thom and Family
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For those of you who know Thom (Debbie's brother) who is serving in Port de Paix, Haiti: He and his family are fine. They felt more stronger tremors than us but are doing fine.


Contact Information
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email: Walker5forGod@yahoo.com
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To join our ministry with a financial gift, please go to: YWAMOrlando.com\give
scroll down to our name and follow the simple steps.

Walker Family

Walker Family
Samantha, Ned, Jesse, Debbie & Hannah

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!