Spring Update in the DR!

We have been busy the past few months.

Jim and Isaac went to a Feed My Starving Children meeting in Santo Domingo last month. We will be working with them in the near future, like we do in Haiti, to get the Manna food boxes to distribute to those in need. In the coming future, we need to figure out a place to store the boxes of food in between times of distributing so please be praying for that. Until we have a ministry place here in the future where we have room to store, we will need to find temporary storage until then.

While in Santo Domingo, we met with our lawyer to discuss the next steps in getting our residency visa here in the Dominican Republic. While there, we went to the Colonial Zone (first city in the new world) and enjoyed a day there as a family looking at all the beautiful old buildings.

We have spent some time getting to know our pastor at the church we go to here in Santiago and seeing how our family can serve & love our church community more.

One of the neat things about living in the DR is we get to have the Agape Flights pilots come and stay with us from time to time. We were able to get to know some of them while living in Haiti and it’s nice getting to house them for the night and get to know them more. All of us missionaries are so grateful for all they do to help bring mail down to us.

Jim has been busy behind the scenes working with the local leadership here in the DR with the church we are working alongside with to help the Haitian & Dominican local churches & communities here. We are preparing already for the next few teams we have scheduled this coming year.

In the 8 months since we’ve been here, we’ve built community, made connections, went out into the communities of various Haitian and Dominican churches and seen the needs and struggles. We’ve seen and felt the tension between the Dominicans and Haitians here. We have seen the caged trucks with Haitians strapped in the back. We have seen a lot of things that make us more sure that we are where we are suppose to be. We don’t know a lot, we are not Haitian or Dominican, but we have lived in both places and we have hearts for both people. We feel God is doing a work in this current season to prepare our hearts and family for all that He will be doing with us in the near future here.

Please take a minute and read our NEW MISSION TRIP FLYER! We will be sending these in email to the churches we currently partner with. If you’d like one to share with your church and bring a group down, please let us know and we can email it to you. April.starkey@rmibridge.org

As you’ll see from the image, we need four specific types of teams right now in the DR. THIS IS A BIG NEED! Simply put, to do what is needed done down here, we need churches and groups to come down!

Reach out to partnerships.dominican@rmibridge.org for more information. Reserve your date this coming fall or winter to bring down your group to the Dominican Republic to love & serve the people there. Getting your date on the calendar now helps your whole team to prepare, fundraise and ask for prayer as they prepare for this time away of serving.

1. Learning the language. We are working daily & working hard on our lessons, homework and speaking as much as we can while out and about. Please keep praying for us as we learn Spanish.
2. Continued prayer for Zeke. God knows. We also are hoping to get him into a different school next year, so we’d appreciate prayer concerning that.
3. For churches, youth groups, medical teams and groups to reach out and schedule their trip to come down and serve here with us on a missions trip.
4. For us to be aware of the Holy Spirits working in our day to day lives and being ready to serve & love in those moments. To stay connected, focused on Jesus and mind set on what He is wanting us to do here.