17 Baptisms in One Day!

We’re two months into our four month mission trip in Santiago. Sunday the 17th was the highlight that prompted this update. We are working with and supporting an inner city mission that reaches out to alcohol and drug addicts. After the last couple of months of studies, a site was arranged for those ready for baptism. The church meets in an office building without a baptistery. The site at which we arrived today seemed not to be a normal community pool, and with good reason. It was a confiscated estate of an imprisoned drug lord! How fitting, that 14 men, formerly addicted to drugs, came to Christ in the pool of perhaps one of those that profited through supplying them the drugs! A 3 person team from Kentucky was on hand for the event, after spending a week of training the local preachers in how to reach out to those with addictions. This “Celebrate Recovery” program has reached many across the US and is now reaching those in the Dominican Republic. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Mark 2:17 There were also 3 other baptisms today at our neighborhood church building, counting one of the members of a 35 person mission team from Louisville. This second team also included the Louisville head football coach and NFL Quarterback Chris Redmond. Never have we witnessed so many coming to Christ in the same day! Please pray for workers. The fields are ripe!

This week we both are working with a Medical Team from Hanover College in Indiana. We'll be working in Hoya Bartola, otherwise known as "the Hole", providing a clinic with free treatment for the residents. Our job will be translation and assisting the students and doctors. We expect to see a lot of fungus problems, sores and scabs, rashes, infections, etc. It's a former trash dump with "squatters" originally taking refuge there, now with 600 families. There are only open sewers and a river runs through it, sometimes flooding and backing up the sewage in the homes. The Church began about 6 years ago, the only church there, with just the preacher and his wife with a visitor or two, a couple of missionaries and a dog. (See earlier post.) Now there are about 60 there on Sunday services. The community is run by a Drug Lord, who called the preacher into his "office" for a meeting about four years ago. Felix explained he wasn't there to turn anyone in to the police, but to minister to the kids. The Drug Lord saw the good he was doing and agreed to "protect" him. Now about 80-100 kids are fed there every day. It's the only meal most of them get each day. The plates are color coded to give the right amount of food. Newcomers don't get much because they've been used to so little, their stomachs can't handle it.

We've been to "the Hole" many times, with all of our kids in 2006 and many times since arriving last December, but never for a medical clinic. Be praying for our work there.

We are praying for direction, both for us and our brothers and sisters back home. Please continue to do the same!

In Him,

Karina & Jorge

Visited Christopher Columbus's House

Karina & Jorge decided to take a little excursion and see the beach. Brian and Jen, two of the other American Missionaries took off with us for the north shore and a town called Luperón. It is 90km from our home in Santiago. We stayed at a resort on the ocean. We relaxed, ate international food, and met quite a few Canadians and Brits. Ken did a SCUBA dive through the on premises SCUBA shop and school. Karina soaked up the rays and relaxed on the beach. We sat at night and talked, played crazy eights and relaxed some more. It was so quiet, much different than our city home.

The highlight was probably visiting Christopher Columbus's first house in the New World. We got a guided tour of the town of Isabela, founded in 1494, on Columbus's second voyage to our hemisphere. (Cost 100 Pesos for the 4 of us, about $3.)The site is absolutely stunningly beautiful! It's near the mouth of a river on the north shore, between Luperón and Monte Cristi. (Monte Cristi is the birthplace of Tony Peña.)

Pretty neat to step into the house that Christopher Columbus lived in over 500 years ago. We had visited many times the Lost Colony in North Carolina, settled 90 years later. In addition to the house, there was a church and graveyard. Unearthed is the grave of a Spaniard who died over 500 years ago. Hurricane Noel downed quite a few trees on the property, but it was in remarkably good shape, considering.

Now, we're back in Santiago, looking forward to a new week preparing for another mission team. Karina's mom and aunt are on a cruise this week, but will be flying down to visit us for a week, beginning next Sunday. We had a nice visit from Nancy Winfrey and hope that the work in Guatemala will grow and thrive.

Vaminos Dominoes!

We're getting settled and familiar with our surroundings. Alan, our good buddy, is painting some of the house for us. This is "Azul Turqueza" going in the main living area.

We thought we had a line on a true Mexican Restaurant, but when we arrived to the location, there was a new high rise going up! One of the guys sitting on the street told us that was where it USED to be. We settled for a little bar and grill. John and Brian took our doggie boxes with them and fed some folks on their street when they got home that night. They reported that the food was much appreciated. We're still looking for REAL Mexican Cuisine!

We've started a Dominican Domino Ministry. We found out that most of the American teams that come down here, return, never learning how to play Dominican Dominoes. We've hosted quite a few games with the locals, so now we're getting ready for the next team. (See picture of our in-house tourney.) Check out more information on Dominican Dominoes @ http://www.colonialzone-dr.com/pastimes-dominoes.html.

We worked with a team from Valencia, California last week. (The suitcase nuke that went off during season 6 of 24 hasn't caused any more problems.) Real Life Church brought a group of 10 down. We went and worshiped with them Sunday Night in "The Hole", where they had been doing construction all week long. We walked down a narrow sidewalk, stepping over open sewers to arrive at a bare wall concrete church building, with 4 light bulbs running off of a generator. We were greeted with hugs and open arms. We took with us leftover food from the kitchen to help feed those in the neighborhood. Six years ago it was just the preacher, a couple of missionaries, a dog and maybe one or two folks. Last Sunday night there was a lively worship service with about 60 in attendance. The church has a feeding program and provides meals for children in the neighborhood, probably the only good meal they get each day. The sermon, in Spanish, was on the parable of the banquet. It was really neat to hear the story of the banquet while sitting in a church in a garbage dump. (Quite a few houses were washed away by Hurricane Olga, but thankfully no lives were lost there.) Hearing about the excuses people had for not attending the banquet, (the Spanish word sounds the same) seemed even more silly, sitting with people who would jump at the chance to attend such a banquet. In America, more things pull us away from attending the banquet. We are busy with work, studies, yard-work, vacations, etc., all of which can keep us from being at the "great banquet." But excuses know no international borders. Dominicans have to make the same decision: Give up this life, for everlasting life, or Go after everything you want in this life, and forfeit your soul.

After having been really sick with a bacterial intestinal illness, I'm even more appreciative of clean water and food in the US. It's easy to see how folks die from dehydration. Had the Go Ministries Dr. not come to the house and given me an IV, getting 3 bags of fluid in me, I would have had a hard time recovering. As it was, I even needed IV Antibiotics. The Dr. taught me how to give myself and IV and I gave myself the last three. You never know when this training may come in handy!) It's great to be vertical again, however the horizontal time was well spent. Fleeting thoughts of dying in the mission field, followed by fervent prayer... It was a great experience!

Karen has picked up some "tropical" plants. With our good neighbor Dave's help, they have planted them out front. We'll get a picture posted up when it's complete. It's neat to buy tropical plants and know that you can leave them outside "for the winter". (BTW, it gets up to the mid 80's in the day, and down to the upper 60's at night...sorry y'all but can't say that we miss the gray skies and cold...guess it's a trade off for good water and water pressure.)

Spanish class is going well for each of us. We're doing private lessons with separate teachers, an hour a day, with lots of homework. Communicating at the local Colmado is getting easier as each week passes.

We're following the local baseball team for the Dominican Winter League, Las Aguilas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81guilas_Cibae%C3%B1as) MLB has a site devoted to the Caribbean Winter league: http://www.mlb.com/mlb/events/winterleagues/?league=car.

Luke and Melinda are pictured here outside of Tony Pena's house. Tony Jr. is currently a Kansas City Royal SS. There's an infield with backstop installed at the residence, which helped prepare Tony for the Majors.

Taxi rides are lots of fun. Two passengers in the front and 4-5 in the back of usually a Toyota Corolla. Here we are after visiting the monument downtown in Santiago.

We're looking forward to hosting Bill and Nancy Winfrey next week! They're coming down to spend a few days with us and see how G.O. Ministries is organized and how they host teams. Bill will be looking at the sports camp opportunity. It is used as a major outreach to teens here.

For now, from down here,

Ken (for Karina & Jorge)

(Photo taken during our Language School in October, on a weekend excursion to Morocco. That's the Rock of Gibraltar in the background. We'll post some photos and comments about that trip to Europe, that helped to prepare us to speak Spanish, in a later posting.)

Hijos llegaron

Luke and Melinda arrived about the 27th, after over-nighting in the airport in San Juan. Luke left that afternoon with several from the church here to deliver food to folks in the mountains, hard hit by Hurrican Olga. Since then, we've been shopping together, hanging out with some of the locals and trying out Domincan street cuisine. Melinda went to Spanish class with us. I think the accent is a bit different from her last several professors, especially the one she had from Spain! The kids are heading to the mountains for a youth camping trip. There'll be about 25 all together. They are going to need blankets. We've only been sleeping under a sheet, or uncovered. Over night lows have been in the low to mid 70's. They are planning a secret Santa gift exchange while there, and after describing the game "chubby bunny" game to the youth leader, he bought lots of marshmallows for the evening. Karen and I have a secret Santa exchange here at church. We bought our gifts at La Sirena last night. The church here meets on Sunday night on the first and last Sundays of the month. They'll be back by then. Our address, listed in the bottom post is: Ken & Karen George Calle Primera, No. 61-B Hoya del Caimito Santiago, Dominican Republic Until next time...

Our New Home

We've had a warm welcome, both from the weather and the people here. We overlapped for 2 days with an American family that helped us get settled. (See http://daveschwulstfamily.blogspot.com/) Everyone on our street has been friendly. We are on "1st St." in our little community of Hoya del Caimito, Santiago. There are shops every 50 yards to buy bottled water, bananas, bread, milk, etc. Imagine an 8x10 room with floor to ceiling cans, bags, bottles, etc. That's the size of most stores on the street. We are also walking distance from several small hardware stores. (ferreterias, no, not where ferrets eat.)

We are continuing our Spanish classes for 2 hours a day. It's about a 25 minute walk to class. (It's not uphill and there is NO snow.) Being in the mid-80s, it can get a little warm. Victoria is a great "profesora de espanol". We pass a ball field and Tony Pena's house everyday. Ball players are working out at both places. It's a league with teams at the field. They look to be about American Legion ages. They take baseball seriously around here!

Karen has already gone to a ladies' Bible study and has connected with several of the ladies other times.

Before doing furniture shopping we decided it was more important to have "Aris" the electrician install a power inverter. Electricity is on about 23 hours a day. The longest outage in our neighborhood since August is 5 hours, but we've only seen about a 1.5 hour outage. There is only one water line, cool water, so we added an electric shower head. (nick-named "widow-maker") They were going to ground it to the PVC pipe, so I had them run a real ground to the outside with a 6 ft. copper rod in the ground. (There were no grounds in any of the outlets. I had them ground the ones that will have the appliances.) We then installed a 10 cubic ft. fridge, just enough for newlyweds! I brought screen with me from Cary and installed it on one of our bedroom windows. (The other one remains closed.) As bad as mosquitos are down here, hardly anyone has screens!

We've also gotten a water cooler for those 5 gallon jugs. We put it in the foyer and are planning to have Matt. 10:42 painted on the wall above the cooler, in Spanish of course: "And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."

We've ordered a land line and DSL. They promised an installation of 1 - 10 days. (They asked in the application, "What color is the house?" Addresses seem to be optional down here.) I guess having Time-Warner give a 4 hour window of installation seems pretty good to me now.

Our address here:

Ken & Karen George

Calle Primera No. 61-B

Hoya del Caimito

Santiago, Domincan Republic

(We're told mail service is not reliable, so if you'd like to send us something, there is a Mail Drop in Miami for the ministry. It is then flown in weekly and delivered to us through the G.O. Ministries Headquarters, two blocks from our house. Let us know via email and we'll get instructions to you.)