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

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!