We are so blessed!

Great Pictures from the past two weeks

This is the first FCA Baseball team in the Dominican Republic.  Their coaches believe in Jesus Christ and spend a lot of their time talking about Jesus.  The coaches all attend the same church and also attend an FCA Bible study with me.  The players are invited to Bible Studies during the week and some have attended.  Our hope is that they all attend sometime in the near future.  God is good!

Luis Hernandez and Willie Martinez.  They are huge influences in my life.  They love Jesus and want everyone else to have the opportunity to know our Savior.

Feeding hot dogs to the people of San Jose while celebrating a beautiful day that God has provided us.

After the lunch and festivities (face painting and a lot of games), Willie preaches to the a good portion of the community and Chris Maiocco (coach of Jounson Ferry group) finishes with an invitation to spend the rest of your life with Jesus.

Wyman and Nanna spending some fun time together before Wyman takes part in the Independence Day show at his school.  He did fantastically.

Great view of a kids game in El Penon, a batey outside of San Pedro.  We brought the Juan Dolio team out there to play a game.  We mixed the teams and had some fun.  Maybe in a year or two we will have 4 or 5 teams that can be in a league together. 

We got some good seats at the Christian concert and revival at the baseball field in Boco Chica (Ozoria) last Friday.  By 9pm, we were surrounded with people.  I heard over 1,000 people attended that night and stayed until 2am worshipping Jesus.

Getting ready to worship our Lord in San Jose on Sunday.  Right now, we are in a classroom.  SERVE Ministries is sending us a huge tent for the future.  Very exciting.  Does not matter where we worship, who preaches or what music is played.  God is worthy of our praise all the time.  I praise Him as the creator of the universe.  All buildings look beautiful when He is worshipped.  All music sounds wonderful when it is for Him.  And all pastors feed us well when they preach from His Word.  Amen!

On Independence day, Luis took our family to the capital to sight see.  We spent the first hour at the "3 Eyes" mineral caverns.  Amazing!  Our kids are so cute and are now starting to talk a lot if spanish.  It is really funny.

Picture of the day.  Stearing out of a cavern.  What you do not see....are the bats above our heads. 

Hard at work getting equipment together for various teams in greater Boca Chica.  Americans could send ten tons of equipment and their would still be kids without cleats and gloves.  Please think about coming for a visit and bringing gloves and cleats with you. 

Gracias Dios por este dia

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Thank you God for this day!

After getting the kids on the bus at 7:45am, i spent time in the Word preparing for a day of Bible studies and ministry.  I began the day with the thought that I would be possibly leading 3 Bible studies and spending 3 hours with the children of San Jose playing baseball and soccer.  It is now dinner time, and I had the pleasure of "being a member" of the first two Bible studies, not the leader.  It has been 6 months of ministry down here, and now the time has come where some of the Dominican leaders that I have been spending a lot of time with are now going to take the reigns of the Bible studies.  How amazing!  Thank you, Jesus!  My friend Willie Martinez led the Bible study for baseball players this morning at my apartment.  One new player attended, Juan Pablo, and Willie did an amazing job leading the whole group on the roof of the apartmnent (3 stories high).  The topic was "reaping what you sow."  Its pretty cool to look back at your life and see how the best things came from hard work, discipline and delayed gratification. 

After a lunch of rice and beans Dominican-style cooked by my lovely and beautiful wife Jodi, most of our gang took the trip up to San Jose.  It would be Willie's first trip to San Jose and a very memorable one at that.  While Luis, Ezequiel and Javier spent their time coaching the young baseball players on the field, I spent my time playing soccer with the younger girls. Jodi had to stay back to do some work at the house, so I picked up the slack with the ninas. Suffice it to say, they took over the game pretty quickly and I bent over gasping for air.  Willie spent his time talking with members of the community and praying about his talk that would come a little later. 

At about 3pm, we hoped back into the truck and drove up to an area under a tree where Willie could preach to a handful of young men.  Did I say handful of young men?  Ah, how about 35+ women and men from the whole community.  God, you are so good!  Willie spoke for about 50 minutes.  His topic again was "you reap what you sow".  While he spoke to the large group of adults and young men and women, I spent most of that time keeping the children away by playing "tenni-ball" or stickball in the street.  I could play teni ball with kids all day long.  No umpires, no coaches, no parents...just pure fun with a stick and a ball. 

I can clearly see God working through this ministry, Craig and Joanna, Willie and Luis, Ezequiel and Javier, and Omar and Noemi.  Its pretty awesome to see communities change in a big way because God is becoming the focus of everything.  That is why he created us and how it should be.


Here are some pictures from the day:

Bible study on the roof. 

A real practice lead by Luis, Ezequiel and Javier.

Jimmy (young coach in San Jose) instructing some ninos on the infield.  Jimmy has really stepped up as a leader in the community.

Feeling God's presence under a tree.

Finishing with prayer, 35 strong.



Community Transformation: "If you build it, they will come"

Does this phrase not get overused in the baseball world today.  I mean, it is right up there with "if you build it, they will come."  I am right there with you in my tiredness of hearing those phrases. Every time you see a beautiful field, complex or facility someone eventually uses them.  I bet it has happened several times where multiple people say it at the same time. Annoying!  
I am so sorry for having to do this, BUT, let me just once use them the way they were meant to be used. I promise it is for a good reason.  I would not use them if it weren't really a unique and significant situation.

The Unique Place: The baseball field at the village of San Jose, Dominican Republic
The Setting: The community has not had a church, usable baseball field, or athletics program in decades.  All of the children under 15 have never played a baseball game on their field and for the most part, hardly ever play any type of organized athletics. 
The Opportunity: Every Tuesday and Thursday (and sometimes other days) me, Jodi, Ezequiel, Luis and Javier go to San Jose to clean/cut the grass on the field, pass out uniforms, cleats and gloves, and play baseball for a few hours.

We have had a steady flow of about 50 people from ages 4 years old to 30 years old come play baseball on the field and take part in practices.

We have yet to break up a fight (miracle in a DR village).

We have had several adults from the community come and watch and sometimes instruct the kids.

We have three young men named Jimmy, Jayson and Frances that have become the coaches and help with instruction and encouragement.

We have a coach from Boca Chica, Luis, serving in the name of Jesus Christ.  Luis has even worked with the young ladies in the village on pitching a softball.

We have two 17 year olds from Boca Chica spending 3 hours each day serving in a communioty that they did not even know about 3 months ago.

We have a field that had grass up to my knees that is now playable and a work in progress.  We hope to burn baselines and base areas so that we can play a game in the near future.

Best of all, we have seen a community thrive more and more each day.  Almost everyone wants to be part of the baseball experience (50+ people attend each day we have it).  Almost everyone wants to be a part of the church (first service Sunday had 80 people attend).

Today we showed up to the village to show some people around.  I took my glove out of the truck with a tennis ball and within 2 minutes we had a game going on in the street.  The teacher from the school sent the kids outside to play for recess (30 minutes).  There was an excitement and buzz in the community that would give everyone goosebumps for a week.  I was so overjoyed by what I saw.

Community Transformation!

I hope evryone that reads this blog will get an opportunity to come here to the DR to see this place.  I promise that you will not go home the same.

It took some hard work to cut the grass in San Jose with a small mower.  Luis was the man for the job.

Ezequiel hitting some fungos to the youngsters.  These kids come to play and have fun every day without fighting or making things difficult.

 Luis showing the girls how to pitch a softball.  There are some very talented young ladies in San Jose.  It is fun letting them play with the boys on the baseball field.

Jayson, one of the younger men that wants to help teach the kids how to play.  It has been awesome to see these guys get excited about serving the kids in the community.  He is wearing my glove and it is a "Glove for God".  Each color represents a part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some of the kids just want to play a little wall ball before they go back to school.  I do not blame them.  Wall ball was a Mike Shaheen favorite as a kid.

I just sit back in awe when I watch these kids play a pick up game.  This land was cow pasture just weeks ago and now is a place where these boys have so much fun.

This is how we get to San Jose.  Thank you to everyone that made it possible to purchase this truck.  When it rains, we use a little bit of 4x4 and we get there.

Bible study with Coach Cedeno's team on Tuesdays at 10:30am.  I love being able to share with these young men.  They are so patient with my spanish.

Dinner at Rosario's house with the coaches in my Bible study.  Elizabeth Eubanks from Baltimore also joined us for a little dumplings in sauce.  I love hanging out with these guys.

Ok, picture of the month time.  I miss out on having one in January, but this can easily take the place of two months.  This was Grace's first visit to San Jose and what does she do?  Of course, she picks up a baby pig.  She is so cute!