College Church STAMP March 2013

Wow. It feels like such a whirlwind since last October when pieces started to move into place for College Church to send a STAMP team down to serve alongside us in Santiago! I was home for a week for College Church's missions festival and had a conversation with the Nussbaums, and next thing you know they are raising money to come down! I love watching how God carefully places a team together, even one on such short notice. This team was special and different in that is was filled with people in very different walks of lives. There were 3 families, some group members were in High School, some in college, some in middle school! Some were just starting to enter the work field, and some were just exiting the work field! But it was very clear that right from the start, God had a plan for everyone who had come down to serve at our site in Hato del Yaque.

One of the biggest blessings for me as I "host" and facilitate short-term teams in the DR, is watching group's fall in love with people and places that occupy a huge place in my heart. This could not be more true about this STAMP team. They came down with no expectations, other than to love on and serve the people of Hato del Yaque, and I know that when they left, they left with Hato del Yaque occupying a huge place in their hearts. From the kids, to the pastor and his family, to the basketball coaches, to the missionaries, this group loved hard and we had to pry them away on the last day!

Here are a few pictures that start to give a feel for what we all experienced together this week. Thank you so much for coming alongside us as we continue to serve together in Hato del Yaque! This was such a special week for me.

WFMP 2013

Wow. I don't think I can put into words what this group means to me (but I'll obviously try!)

My first trip with WFMP was to Romania in March of 2004. The relationships forged there have led to some of my deepest friendships to this day! I had the opportunity to go to Senegal and South Africa and the same thing happens...there is something special about serving alongside your brothers and teammates in a different culture. Whether that means laying block for 5 days straight or throwing kids around or playing pick up basketball, there is something special about WFMP.

I have no been on the other end and had the blessing to have hosted 2 WFMP teams in the DR. I was brimming with pride about my school and my team the whole time they were here (and before......and after....). They made it so easy to be proud of them, diving 100% into everything we did! They really grasped the partnership aspect of the ministry and really the driving force behind everything we do here. They forged incredible relationships with our pastors, our construction workers, with our coaches, with the youth group and obviously with all the kids that they interacted with each day!

Some of the highlights were visiting several of our church plants and encouraging the pastors/communities, playing flag football and basketball against local teams (I guess the youth group counts as a football team!), working tirelessly on our future medical complex, sorting and organizing our new Sports warehouse, and building relationships with all of the kids outside of the church where we stayed.

While getting to know so many of the current (I'm old..) players was amazing, but another aspect that made this trip so special was seeing some real familiar faces here. Having my Dad and brother down here to see firsthand my new life and city was so special, even though we were going 100 mph for most of the week it was fun to have so time with them. Ward and Kristin Kriegbaum have been loyal and dedicated supporters since I became a missionary in 2009 and have now visited me both in Constanza and in Santiago. Coach Peltz has been such an encouragement and resource to me and I really value the time we are able to spend together and the conversations we have! He always pours wisdom and encouragement into me each time I see him!

THANK YOU WFMP !!

(Another thing I learned from this team is that I need to remember to take pictures! But here are a few I was able to round up)

Valor Christian HS Baseball

In February, I had the privilege of welcoming my first team! Now I've worked with lots of teams since joining GO last May, but this was the first team where I "recruited" and helped set up. It was very clear since my first meeting with Keith Wahl that God wanted this trip to happen and He had his hand on it the whole way!

I was absolutely blown away by the maturity the players showed throughout the week whether we were building walls, moving sand, throwing kids around or playing baseball. These kids worked hard and loved hard throughout the whole week! In total we had 29 players from Freshman-Senior and 3 coaches as well. We had a blast playing against 2 top local academies and they practiced one afternoon with our older group and really showed them how to practice at an elite level and how to give 100% effort in a practice. It was a huge blessing and I have already seen first hand how it has CHANGED the way we do things as an academy here!

We also were able to spend quality time in Hato del Yaque, which you can see by my previous blog posts is a place near to my heart. The kids still ask about the guys whenever I'm out there! We also got to experience and participate in a fundraising concert at the Hato del Yaque church put on by Cristo Urbano!

Here are some pics from the week. THANK YOU VALOR BASEBALL!

Carnival -- 2 years of thoughts rolled into one blog post!

Sorry that this post isn’t very fun and won’t have a lot of pictures of cute kids and sports in the DR .. but this topic is something that has been developing in my mind and I have been processing for about 2 years now. I LOVE the Dominican culture, that is probably obvious given that fact that I’ve lived here for about 2 and a half years and plan on being here for a while! But sometimes I tell people that there are 2 things that I really don’t like about this culture – Elections , and Carnival.

Carnival is a huge celebration in the DR and in other latin American/South American countries. It involves some combination of costumes, alcohol, satan worship, more alcohol, dancing, lots of drunk driving and yeahhhhh more alcohol. My first year I had a very limited scope of what Carnival entailed, just seeing the mini version in Constanza. This was pretty watered down and just a big excuse to party for about 6 weekends straight. Lots of cars with huge speakers, big beer/rum advertisements and lots and lots of people. Not too out of the norm though, just lots of partying.

2 years ago for some reason I found myself more aware of what was going on around the country with Carnival. I was a little more independent and saw Jarabacoa/La Vega/Santiago in small parts and how they celebrate. I learned that each city has little differences in which demons/characters they dress up as in the parades and other things like that. I also realized how huge this was in the culture here. I also realized I didn’t like it one bit. There is so much darkness and so much evil you can really feel it during the month of February in this country.

I was out of the country last year for Carnival, but this year it makes me sick! Today was the first parade day for Carnival, which will last for all of February. It makes me so sad to see all the girls wearing next to nothing trying to “impress” and desperate for any attention from the “men” in the country. What makes me even more sad is seeing how early this starts, as girls as young as 8,9, or 10 years old are following the example set by the women/teenagers in how they dress and dance and act.

Recently a study came out that 25% of all pregnancies in the DR are girls between the age of 13-16 years old, and sadly that wasn’t a huge shock to me. That is about right with a lot of what you see in the poorer areas of the country. I’ve seen it too many times to kids I care deeply about and it hurts everytime. The cycle of poverty is so deep here sometimes it seems impossible to make a difference. Sometimes I get depressed or frustrated with deep the issues go in the country. 

The other night I was driving through my neighborhood on a typical weekend party night, it was lined with hundreds of people drinking and dancing and who knows what else. I remember thinking that this is just one small part, of one city, in one of the smaller countries in the world, and it seemed impossible to make a difference. It was an overwhelming moment. I felt like someone would have to be SuperMan to come in and even make a small dent in a place so lost and filled with sin. Then I realized that God already sent someone to do that and it’s already done! He sent his only son Christ Jesus to defeat the power of sin and death over 2000 years ago and He is the only one who can save Santiago or any other city and I will keep dedicating myself to serve and play my role in His redemption story. 

Please, please join me in praying for the DR this week. God's placed some very specific prayer requests on my heart for this month.

-Jess Gates' Volleyball team in Jarabacoa. These girls will deal with all sorts of temptations and choices this month, and I know it won't be easy. I'm praying that God will give them the strength to turn from everything their culture is throwing at them this month.

-The kids in Hato del Yaque. Similarly, I can't imagine how crazy Carnival gets out by our Church there. The kids will no doubt be surrounded by all of it and pray that God would protect them and give them opportunities to get away.

-All of the kids involved in our Baseball/Basketball ministry in Santiago. Especially our older kids, it's hard to turn from temptation when you really don't have to leave your small street to find it. Girls wearing next to nothing will be throwing themselves at these kids and please join me in praying that God can speak to our guys and that our Coaches can be examples for them and speak wisdom/guidance into their lives!

If you made it this far thanks for taking the time to read through all this! It's been sometime that has been on my mind for a long time and it felt good to get it all out! God bless.

New Year for the Baseball Academy!

2013 is going to be a HUGE year for our Sports ministry. We opened up our practices on January 7th, and our coaches have enjoyed having lots of new faces as well as almost all of our players from last year!

Our oldest age group (roughly 15-19 years old) has seen some of the most amazing spiritual and physical growth in the 6 months I've been there. Multiple kids have accepted Christ and many others have been much more active and interested in going to church. I see this as a direct result to having our 4 coaches being able to spend lots of quality time with them due to the smaller group size. One of the biggest blessings/encouragements to us in this new year is that we have almost doubled in size with this group by adding 15 new kids! These kids came over from a local coach who took a job as a regional scout for the Toronto Blue Jays, and he told all of his players that they should look into joining with our program because he believes in what we're doing! 

Please pray specifically for this group of guys and our coaches, that even with the increase in numbers that there will still be great spiritual growth and also on-the-field growth as well. I am so excited to get back on Saturday to see our guys and catch up and start sharing the great vision we have for 2013!

God bless

Some of our new players, gearing up for the first practice of 2013!

G.O. Baseball Academy January Launch / Bible Drive

Friends and Family,

OK I have been waiting for this for a long time and it's finally ready! We are setting up a "Bible Drive" trying to organize around 300 bibles so that every kid in our Baseball and Basketball Academies can have their own brand new bible when we launch our new Academy structure in January! We will be offering an age-appropriate 12 week course for them on the Theology of Redemption (don't worry ... it will be age appropriate!) and we want them to have bibles to use as resources both in class and at home if they want to keep investigating more. This is really what we are all about as a ministry, please join us as we attack this goal! Follow this link to see how you can help, the bibles are very cheap all around $4-$5.

G.O. Baseball Academy Bible Drive Wish List
 

Please check out the TAB above on the blog, or follow this link for more information on our new plans.

G.O. Baseball Academy January Plans

There is still a lot that needs to happen between now and January, so please continue to pray for the ministry as we continue to work towards the exciting start of the New Year! Please contact me if you would like to help us out financially with this project as well.

God bless,

Kyle

DR Teen Pregnancy Stats

This is from the Listin Diario, a newspaper in the DR. So sad. Please read though, it gives some insights and supporting stats as to why we do what we do here in the DR. All the more reason for us to ramp up our sports ministries for girls soon too!

"According to a study by Don Bosco Boys and Girls Center, teenage pregnancy rates are as high as 23% in five areas of the country. The findings were released at a press conference by public policy and education specialist Karina Corvalan, and Candido Encarnacion, coordinator of the Center's social affairs department.

Eighty-seven pregnant teenagers aged between 12 and 19 were interviewed for the study, which concluded that they were more likely to become pregnant when they were from areas of poverty and with a low level of education. The pregnant girls came from the poorest neighborhoods of Barahona, Mao, Jarabacoa, La Vega and sectors in Santo Domingo of Cristo Rey, Maria Auxiliadora, Villa Juana and the 12th kilometer at Haina.

The study showed that 57.6% had had their first sexual relationship between the ages of 12 and 15, 34.1% between 16 and 19 and 3.5% between 10 and 11.

20% of the partners of the pregnant girls were also teenagers but 80% were adults, a cause for both alarm and concern, said the researchers. According to the study 39% of the pregnancies were accidental, and 61% planned and accepted by both partners.

Corvalan revealed that the teenagers viewed becoming pregnant as a way of improving their living conditions and getting out of poverty, because the father of the child would provide for them. For the same reason the girls' parents also supported them as they considered having the child as an advance for their daughter."