Uniform Distribution at Redemption Village

We provide uniforms for our students at Redemption Village and
Bombita. Uniforms are very much a part of the cultural expectations
regarding attending school in the Dominican Republic. I have not seen
a school yet that does not require a school uniform, including all of
the public schools. Unfortunately some students are not able to
attend school because of the inability to purchase a uniform.
Well, purchasing the uniforms this year was quite an ordeal. One
thing I need to learn is just because it happened one way means it
will happen that way again. Last year I called a local department
store, the same store that handles the uniform for Colegio Nueva Vida.
I gave them the order of over 400 uniforms, while this was only 75
uniforms more than last year the quote was twice the price. Yikes! So
I did made phone calls with the help of CNV's school secretary and
found a good price from a store that we had purchased items from
before. Well, I the salesman that we were working with evidently has
some side business, because when he called to tell me the shirts were
ready I loaded up in the truck with Melissa and Dustin after dropping
the kids off at school one day, and we headed to Puerto Plata. I went
into the business and asked for the salesman, she said he wasn't
there, but she would call him, if there was something she could help
me with. I told her that I was there to pick up the uniforms for New
Missions. She had no idea what I was talking about. So after a few
minutes the salesman showed up. He got in the car with us and told us
that he had the work done at another store across town. So we drive
across town to this small shop, I'm thinking it couldn't have been
more than 20 square feet. And there are all of our shirts stacked up
on a table. They made and embroidered the shirt. We counted them and
packed the up as they finished ironing and trimming the last few
shirts. And our salesman headed back to the original store to clear
up his mess there.
I really do enjoy uniform distribution each year. We get a chance to
spend just a few minutes with each student and try to make sure that
each of them leaves being called by their name and a "God Bless You."

Posted via email from John's posterous

A.W. Tozer

"You'll never find in heaven a group of holy beings finding fault with the way God conducts His foreign policy."  A.W. Tozer

Posted via email from John's posterous

Gravity

I was sitting in Spanish Church last night, and trying my hardest, with all my good Spanish, to follow everything, but my mind started to wander to a concept I've been trying to put into words for awhile. God's Love is like Gravity. I was thinking that if I asked someone to define gravity, the common answer would be that it is the force that pushes us down and keeps us on the Earth. What is interesting is that this common answer is wrong. The actual definition as confirmed by Wikipedia and asking my wife is: a phenomenon where two objects are mutually exert a force of attraction towards each other. So, you might think that this definition of mutual attraction is where I am headed with comparing God's love to gravity, but actually what I find interesting is that even if you got the scientific definition of gravity wrong, you didn't go flying off the planet hurtling into space.

In other words, even if you've never heard of gravity, if you have no idea how to explain why we remain on the surface of the Earth, gravity continues to exist and continues to have an affect on your life. This is how I think gravity is like God's love, even if you can't define God's love, even if you have the definition wrong, even if you have never heard of God's love, His love continues to have an affect on your life.

Another thing that I thought was interesting is that there is a possibility that there is a rocket scientist out there somewhere reading this post, and when they are asked to define gravity they can spit out the following answer:

Noun

1.

theory of gravity - (physics) the theory that any two particles of matter attract one another with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them

There is probably someone out there that could write a 108 page paper defining gravity, what I find interesting in that aspect is that gravity has no greater impact on their lives than the person that can't even begin to explain it. God's love exists in an equal portion for all people regardless of the level of understanding or acknowledgment. But, without understanding gravity you can't launch a rocket into space, you can't orbit the earth, you can't take full advantage of everything gravity has to offer.

The more we understand God's love and the impact His love for us has on our lives, the more of His benefits we have to enjoy.

Koinonia

I recently read a book Escape from Ephesus by Lance Webb. A short-term missionary team member had brought it along with an assortment of other book for us to read. I didn't read it immediately because I thought it was one of the Christian romantic-type novels. Follow the link to a picture of the cover and you'll probably agree. However, it was a very encouraging and challenging piece of historical fiction based on the life of Onesimus, the slave mentioned in Paul's letter to Philemon. One of the interesting aspects of the book was Webb's description of First Century Christian koinonia, which can be translated as community or fellowship, but has a much more intimate meaning than I feel these two English words have today.

It made me think of our life here in the Dominican Republic and the ways that Melissa, Kate, Michael, and I experience Christian koinonia in our daily life. God has chosen to provide for our needs through the support of our home church and other friends and family. We are dependent on this koinonia for our monthly needs. We are so grateful for the support we receive, and know that it comes from people being obedient to God which allows us to follow through with the work he has for us to do.

Secondly, we experience koinonia with our short-term mission teams. I don't feel I can fully express how wonderful it is to continuously meet Christians from around the country (and world), there is an instant connection from the moment we pick people up from the airport for the first time. Melissa had an interesting observation with our last team, that we have no idea who the short-term team members are in their own social and work environments, they could be the janitor or the CEO for all we know, but when they are here working alongside us, we are all in koinonia, working together to share God's love.

Through this book, I've been challenged to further develop this koinonia in my life.

Where is your Church

A few weeks ago, Dustin, a missionary that is serving along side of us for a six-month term, organized a beach service. Dustin loves to surf, and began going to a local surf beach where he started to meet the local surfers, several of whom work as surf instructors at the beach. He began to build friendships with them, and several of the Christians in that group mentioned a desire to spend time together, and spend time in the word, so Dustin met with a few of them and provided a very simple time of fellowship and bible study right there at the beach. There were days that the surf was good, and they couldn’t meet at the originally set time, because the guys needed to be out while the tourists were there, so they would simply wait until the surf died down, the tourists left, and a small group could get together. So, he planned the beach service as a time to get a larger group together, invite people that hadn’t been joining the small group, and just get to know more of the local surf community. Even though I’m not a surfer, I was invited. It was a really great time. One of the great things I got from the event is that church doesn’t have to happen in a building, God says very clearly, “If two or more people are gathered in my name, I am there.” This means, that the smallest common denominator, the minimum number of people necessary for a church service is two. I read a very interesting book Organic Church by Neil Cole, and it details a church planting movement built on the premise of going to places where people already congregate, and bring church services to those places, not with amplifiers, speakers, an microphones, just a small gathering of people sharing what is happening in their lives, and encouraging one another on this journey of life. A small group of men from our English-speaking church meet for breakfast on Saturday morning. Now, there are a lot of good restaurants in Sosúa, after all, half of the community caters to tourists, but we chose a comfortable little hole-in-the-wall that is one of those places full of regulars. We show up for breakfast to encourage one another, but also for opportunities to build relationships with the other people in the restaurants. So, my question is where is your Church? Sunday mornings are a great training ground, but I’d like to encourage you to find an informal church, maybe at work during a break time, a local coffee shop, a parking lot, a park, wherever you find a few minutes with a small group, even if it is just a group of two. I’ve had some great church moments just talking with a friend over a cup of coffee. You, know it sort of reminds me of this guy I read about once, he used to meet with people in homes, at local watering holes, down at the boat docks, on the side of a hill, on top of a mountain, in parks, and in gardens. He went where people were living their lives, and was able to introduce them to a loving God that the new very well. After all, he was His son.

Saturday Morning

My plan for Saturday was to try to clear out the house so I could work on the message I am sharing Sunday morning, well fortunately I got some work done on it yesterday, because that sure didn't happen. Friday night, we had three extra kids staying the night. Kate had a friend over, and Michael had two. Melissa needed to be at a Women's Breakfast by 8:30, and I needed to have Michael and one of his friends at soccer by 9:00, so we were all up and out of the house at 8:30. We dropped Melissa off at her breakfast, got Michael and his friends to soccer (the other friend wanted to stay and watch), and then Kate, Rhea, and I headed to breakfast where we met up with another of Kate's friends and her dad, and Dustin. Breakfast was not the best experience, it was the first time to try a place close to the soccer field. After breakfast we picked Michael and Kate back up headed home where we were joined by two more girls, and two more boys. The boys jumped in the pool for a while while the girls played in the house, and the picture at the kitchen counter is them getting lunch, a salami and cheese sandwhiches with avocadoes and chips. The picture at the bottom is all of them somehow enjoying playing a computer game. As I'm typing this up three more girls have come over, so we are up to six girls and five boys.

Even though it wasn't the day I had planned it has been a good day, and somewhat typical around here!

What did you do today?

So, I don't have a typical 9 to 5 job. When people come visit us, they like to know what a typical day is like. I've said several times, there is no typical day. Today was a good example. I got up this morning and worked from home. Melissa is working with a short-term team this week. So she had activities with them this morning. The kids, Kate and Michael (our foster child), didn't want to go, so I planned on staying home with them. When Melissa was leaving Michael decided he did want to go, so he and Melissa headed off to the tent-school. I worked on some of the mission payroll and personnel issues, worked on a grant for some funding for our school in Bombita for a Canadian organization, answered e-mails to the Orlando office, and personal e-mails too, and completed some worked related to child sponsorship. I know it's exciting. Melissa and Michael came home for lunch. During a lunch conversation had an idea for a blog post (not this one--hopefully I'll get to it this week). Then we headed off to school. Michael and Kate both attend the afternoon session, so school for us starts at 1:50. Melissa had a meeting scheduled for the afternoon, so we all headed out. Now, dropping the kids off for school requires a small detour through the neighborhood of Policlinica where we pick up about 10 kids and take them to school. So we head to school singing along to the CD in the car. The CD is in English, and the kids love two of the songs on the CD so we listen to them everyday as they sing along with their own version. You may not have known it, but one line of the song "Every Move I Make" is "taca taca taca". Okay, you probably sing it "I take I take in you," but not in our truck!! We drop the kids off at school, pick up our mail from Agape flight, that we normally pick up in town, but a neighbor dropped it off at the school for us. Them Melissa and I head to the Health Center, where Melissa has a meeting, and I need to get material for an afternoon training. I meet Kathy LoSasso (fellow missionary) at the Health Center, and we head to Bombita for an afternoon training with the volunteer community health promoters. We have scheduled to meet with them for training on the monthly weighing of community children that are five years and younger. We have a great time with the promoters practicing with the scales and growth charts. We head back to the Health Center to pick up Melissa, I have a few minutes to talk to the Doctor to see how the afternoon clinic went and then we go to pick up the kids. For some reason the number of kids we are taking home this afternoon doubled from the morning. We head back home amid a chorus of "taca taca taca". Melissa, Kate, Michael, and I head to dinner before church, we eat in a small local restaurant in Charamicos, just down the street from our home. Melissa and the kids head to the house to get ready for church, and I take a motoconcho back to the school so I can hand out keys to the men that drive the trucks we send out to pick people up for church, and I am driving the truck to Bombita tonight. I get in the truck, it is low on gas, so I swing through the gas station to get gas, and it is going to be a 20 minute wait, because the gas truck is filling up the tanks and evidently they can't run the tanks and fill them at the same time. I am running a little early, so I decide to grab a Dr. Pepper (the store stocks them occasionally) and wait. I get my gas, and go pick up the people from Bombita. We head to church, enjoy a night of the kids singing. I am able to talk to a few of the church members about some problems they are having and encourage them. Then we make the return trip to Bombita. I swing back by the school, to drop the other drivers off where they can catch a public car (taxi) home. I get home, and get a call from one of the members from the short-term team that they are having a medical emergency. I ask the hotel to call a local doctor, and head to the hotel to help out. Thankfully it was a minor issue and resolved without the 30 minute drive and a night spent in the ER. Get home, chat with Melissa, and decide to type up what happened during the day. And now I'm going to bed excited about what tomorrow holds!