To Dominican Republic

Got back yesterday afternoon from the Dominican Republic.

• Framed and poured a raised concrete floor for a house.
• Built a 5-room house on top of that.
• Framed/rebarred and poured a concrete roof over that (so they can eventually add a 2nd floor activity room).
• Graded and surfaced a new driveway.
• Moved and repaired/replaced their water main.
• Repaired and replaced a troublesome sewer line. Repaired a faulty septic tank drain field.
• Youth ministry twice a day.Village evangelism every night.
• Easter service in a huge Dominican church.
• Group devotions every morning and night (Up at 0600 and to bed at 2300-ish).
• A daily walk through the last days of Christ.

"I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet"-Author Unknown. Cadet Dajiro (Don) Kanase walked out of the hospital after major knee surgery and went straight to the departure formation on crutches and in a full-leg brace. By the end of the week Don was lying on the roof of our new house all day on his side, wiring rebar together!

Don was raised in a Buddhist home. He accepted Christ and shared how he led his father to Christ after several days of sharing Christ and holding his hand at his death bed, when all his father could do was squeeze his hand and move his leg in response to the Sinners' Prayer! His father died the next morning, and Don left to report to R-Day as a new Plebe at West Point. Don met a man with one leg in Santo Domingo, begging on mismatched and decrepid crutches.

Don immediately went to him and exchanged his new high-tech crutches for the man's. "He needed them more than me." Don was one of three cadet baptisms on this trip!" But I trust in your unfailing love...-Psalm 13.

Cadet Jaimie Helle shared how her world is falling apart. Having known Christ all of her life and being known for being a "good girl," she recently lost her long-time boyfriend for no apparent reason, she finds herself sinking in sin, she is facing an operation that might leave her uncommissionable, and she returns to West Point to get an MRI - she might have cancer. But she anchors her testimony in Psalm 13:

"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide you face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
my enemy will say, "I have overcome (her),
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
My hearet rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, For he has been good to me."

Of course, I haven't scatched the surface of all that the Lord has done for us and to us; there were 29 more testimonies to "burning hearts." Thank you so much for your prayer cover. In the words of my old friends from when I served on the Air Staff in the Pentagon, the trip was "at least Minimum Magnificent!"

Could I possibly not go again next year and every year, whatever the cost?!?

"Were our hearts not burning within us while he talked to us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"-Luke 24:32

Mike T
OCF Ministry Coordinator-USMA 2004