Sneak Peek

This is going in the Lifetree Adventures newsletter tomorrow, but you, loyal blog reader, get to read it here first. And you get the better version, since this one has pictures. Don't say I don't love you.

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Thanksgiving meant a lot more this year to our team of 15 who served on Lifetree Adventures’ final 2012 mission trip, to the Dominican Republic, the week before the holiday. For most of our group, our week in Santo Domingo distributing Operation Kid-2-Kid backpacks and Spanish New Testaments to needy children was the first time most of our team members had traveled outside of the United States or Canada.

We spent most of the week visiting Compassion International projects and one day visiting a World Vision project, and interacted with close to 1,200 Dominican children throughout the week. We were impressed with the work that both of these organizations are doing within Santo Domingo communities but humbled by some of the things we heard during the week:

“Some people in this neighborhood have electricity for just one day a week.”

 

“For many of the children in this [Compassion International] project, the meal we give them is the only meal they will eat all day.”

“This neighborhood has almost no access to clean water. To buy bottled water costs more than some people make in one day, so they just don’t buy it and the drink water that is bad for them.”

 

Coming from a country where we can walk into virtually any public facility (hospital, library, grocery store, etc.) and get a drink from a drinking fountain and losing power usually only happens during a really fierce thunderstorm, and even then it’s usually restored within a couple of hours at most, and none of us have ever lived a day without food, it was an eye-opening and, at times, hard week.

But we also came home with hearts full of good stories of hope and healing.

Three of our team members got to meet children they sponsor through Compassion International. For these children, the bond that they have with their sponsors, now cemented even more from getting to meet their sponsors in person, will give them the motivation to stay in school, learn about God, and rise above the circumstances they were born into. At least one other person on our team came home with the name of a child that she will begin sponsoring later this month.

 

We learned that for every New Testament we gave out, it’s estimated that at least 5 people in that child’s life will read that New Testament. That means almost 3,000 Dominicans will have the chance to read the good news about God’s love for them because of this trip!

 

We discovered that two of the seven sites we visited have already begun clean water initiatives to provide their community with clean, cheap water, which will drastically reduce the number of water-borne illnesses currently affecting these areas.

 

So there is hope in the midst of darkness and reasons to be thankful. Thank you to everyone who financially supported, prayed for, and encouraged our team of 15. This trip could not have happened without you. And we know that the hundreds of children we met and shared God’s love with are thankful for you too.

 

We are excited to see all that God has in store around the world in 2013! Would you consider praying about joining one of our teams?