Hello everybody! Strap on your chacos, hug your favorite cow, and get ready to hear about F Squad’s April experiences!
MINISTRY UPDATES
All through April, our teams continued to rotate through Hope Mountain’s 4 week ministry cycle. By half way through the month, we entered our second cycle of ministry. All 4 teams take turns working in Creative Ministry, Administrative Ministry, Property Ministry, and Outreach.
Through creative ministries, all of our teams have learned fully choreographed dances, written and performed Bible skits, and worked with Jaime (@thedancingmissionary on Instagram) to develop curriculum for Hope Mountain’s program for sex trafficking victims.
Administrative ministry changes from week to week. Some teams have worked to write curriculum for Hope Mountain’s children ministry in their churches. Others spend the week blogging, sorting receipts, or cleaning out the campus office.
Property includes many projects to help improve this base for future missionaries. Most of the time, this is done as a team. However, when there’s big projects to tackle, we get the opportunity to come together as a squad to do some good ol’ manual labor.
We’ve mixed, poured, and bucket brigaded concrete onto the roof of the new staff housing.
We shuttled tires relay-style across campus to make a set of stairs. These stairs make it much easier and safer for base staff to access the cow pasture in the early mornings and evenings.
And we assembly-lined fresh made cinder blocks up to the top of a building to make way for a new floor!
Finally, Outreach ministry continues to be a squad favorite. It’s such a blessing to go out into the community with our base hosts and their daughters and pray over the members of their churches.
Outreach has also spent time making and delivering invitations for a free community talent show hosted right here at Hope DR!
And on top of that, our squad has been blessed with the opportunity to do outreach together every Saturday at the local basketball court. We hang out with kids from the community, talk and pray with their parents, and of course, play some basketball.
Beyond our 4 core ministries, certain members of the squad have gotten to participate in some special additional ministries here as well!
Tutoring: Serving the base as tutors for our hosts’ two teenage daughters.
Siesta Project: During our daily siesta, Alex Henrickson, Grace Leuschner, Alex Nelson, Annie Bingham, Sophia Porter, Hannah Gazan, Esther Collins, and Kate Pogue are serving as dancers in a project Jaime (Hope Mountain’s director of creative ministry) is creating to bring awareness to sex trafficking in the DR.
Cow Ministry: Yes. You read that correctly. Every morning, our very own Liv Yoder hikes out to the cow pasture to milk and feed the base cows. Her favorite cow is the little brown one she named Lavender.
MAKING IT COUNT
It’s hard to believe we’re over half way through our time here at Hope DR, but we’re making every moment together count.
Speaking of “Making it count”, here’s a little glimpse of what that looks like…
“Making it count” is sunrise worship on Easter morning
“Making it count” is having terrible photo shoots with our campus dog
Or eating a progressive-fast food-dinner
Or calling your mom from a grocery store pay phone
Or staying up well past your usual 8:30pm missionary bed time to talk about Jesus and good memories under the stars with people you love.
PRAYER REQUESTS
-
Please continue to pray over the health of our host family. They will be traveling to the states in early May to attend to the health of some of their family members.
-
Continue also to pray for the favor of the Dominican Republican government, as Hope DR’s safe house paperwork is being processed!
-
Please pray for energy for our squad! It’s month 8 of the race, and to be very honest, we’re pretty exhausted. We all love what we do, and we’re all dreading the hard goodbyes that are coming up much too quickly, but in the meantime, pray that we have the strength and energy to finish the way we started: on fire for Jesus, and glorifying His name.
Thank you so much for reading this F Squad monthly update, and we’ll see you again for Month 9 🙂
Love,
F Squad, and F Squad storytellers: Kate & Annie
