Dominican Republic -

I didn‘t want to go. I had no heart to leave my world and live a week in some village without water or electricity.

What I didn’t know was that this would be a trip I would find myself totally isolated from my family, my kids, the people I knew and loved and culture I was unkowingly satured in.

What I found was ice-cold-bucket showers, early in the morning, before the rest of my team was awake what make me recognize how many resources I waisted, back in the land of “plenty”.

Stories would be read and written on this trip that would touch the depths of my soul and make me weep in a way I hadn’t since childhood. Children, the same color skin as my own daughter, laughed so freely, welcomed us so willingly, and engaged with friendliness and joy…despite carrying baskets of clothes to the muddied streams, needing cleaning, before anyone was awake.

What I also found was, God’s heart revealed clearer, more fully in Dominican Republic. His sovereign hand reached outside my comfort zone to lands I had only imagined. It was here I learned thick walls and square building are bad representations of the gospel, and any borders separating us and another are worthless, in every sense.

I saw a shift in what I imagined as short-term missions. No more “infiltrating” a culture as white-American saviors….but the truth that there is power when we go to another land, and sit next to an elderly lady like a friend, on the stairs of her shack or walk along the path with those who have already lived off the land, and have been part of this culture for generations.

It is here I learned the fruitfulness of sitting along a dirt road, with a laptop, while letting my own greedy culture seep out of me, pour onto a screen, and rid me of the toxins of my own thinking….embracing a culture of still and quiet, contentment and oneness with a land God himself has created.

It was a trip I left my favorite dress in, because God isn’t a judger of persons. And I have abundantly more than I will ever need.

I offered all I had, in way of dripping the last reserves of my own self-preservation onto a land that has been saturated with blood and rejection, slavery and distaintment. Yet, it still begs to rise up and go on. These are people that need the strength of their fellow man, and the opportunities of developed nations to place them on their feet.

Join me as I continue processed all of what God did in D.R. And who knows, maybe God has a call on your life…

And all He wants is simple faith and obedience. Will you rise up and follow Him wherever He is leading….even if you have to sacrifice comfort?

Here is a video of our last trip: