Dominicans Serve It Up: March 2015

We have had a busy couple days! For a day and a half, we partnered with the youth group of Brainerd Baptist Church and worked alongside the missionaries of Hope for the Inner City in Chattanooga, TN. We were assisgned to different projects throughout the day and our biggest project was helping to get a playground started for the campus! The girls worked hard, I was very proud of them!

This afternoon, we joined an assembly at Prospect Elementary School in Cleveland, TN. The kids at this school have raised money in the past to help purchase equipment for the team; as a "thank you" we spent an afternoon with them! The girls taught the kids about Dominican culture and demonstrated their skills by playing a 5 point volleyball game. Each student picked a side and cheered on each point. The girls told me afterwards that they felt like they were playing in a professional game because the kids were cheering so loud!

Check out the pics from yesterday and today!

At "Hope for the Inner City"
Learning about their ministry and our work projects for the day.
Micah has done a great job translating for us!

Our group with the Brainerd youth.

Micah working hard.

They found the best method!

Emely getting some work done.

Progress!

Other work projects: the girls loved learning how to vacuum :)

Naomy making volunteer phone calls

At Prospect!

The "professional" game.

The spectators :)

Intorducing the girls and sharing a little about VCREVOLUTION

Debrief/relaxation time at the Blackburn house :)

We ended tonight with a fun night of dinner and games with the White family!

Look forward to hearing from one of the girls on the next blog post! Thanks for the prayers :)

We're FLYING!!

We are off to a great start!
It's only the end of day two and we have had lots of adventures! After our red eye flight, we took Saturday afternoon to rest and had dinner with a group from Candies Creek Baptist Church! The girls got a new "Hey Y'all" shirt and i'm proud to see them in Tennessee Orange! As the girls are accustomed to the Dominican sun year around, they are a little cold! Ashley told me she felt like she was standing in front of a freezer :) haha

Today, we attended church at "the Creek" (my home church). The girls were introduced and prayed over as a team; Ileana and Genesis shared a beautiful testimony of how VC Revolution has impacted their lives and how God has changed thier story through this time on the team. Naomy also used her amazing vocal talent to lead us in the song "How Great is Our God". Yeah...we were crying by the end of all this!

Our pastor commented that there was sweet spirit present this morning and I would have to agree. Our church is focusing this season on discipleship. The challenge at the end of the sermon was to come to the front and write the name down of someone God has put on your heart to disciple and many girls responded and went forward to write a name. I was very proud of them! It's hard to explain how God is already moving, I know that he has a great plan for these girls now and as well as when they get back to the DR. God is continuing to show me that even though I have "planned/scheduled" things for this trip, his purpose will prevail, and so far, it is more than I could have known to ask for. God is so good!

PRAYER NEEDS for now:

The girls are now with their host families, pray for their time with the families to be impactful and that they can grow and learn from each other.

Tomorrow we will be painting and doing other service projects with a local youth group, pray that even through the language barrier, they can connect with those their age.

We are praying that God does BIG things in their lives this week!

Thanks y'all