Be Home by 7pm...Serving with a curfew

The school year has started back up here in the Dominican Republic, and it definitely looks different.  The DR has decided that all schools must be online for the foreseeable future.  That means that Logan, Julian and Avery are at home with Diana, while I'm up at Santiago Christian School preparing and teaching online classes.  Logan and Avery continue at SCS while Julian is taking classes with Acellus Academy.

While they are at home, we are thankful they do have opportunities to continue to pursue their interests.  Logan will continue to do Robotics virtually this year, while Julian will continue to be part of the Crossover Dance Team at Santiago Christian School as well as pick up guitar lessons again.  Avery will be also be doing choir with Eagle Singers again this year.  

While at home and online was not how we planned to spend our 2nd year overseas, we are still excited about what God's plans are for us this year.

Learning to Serve In A Different Way
The Dominican Republic has a curfew in place at 7pm during the week and 5pm on weekends.  This has really shifted the opportunities we have had to serve while here.  We spent the last year serving in a poor refugee community called Pontezuela as part of the feeding program where we helped serve meals to children.  We loved serving there, but everything changed in March when Covid-19 put a hold on that.

We had to learn to shift, and many of you have joined with us over the next 6 months where just through your donations, we were able to provide enough food to feed over 400 families for a week.  We are so thankful for allowing God to use you to partner with us during this time to bring hope to the people here.
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Back At The Community Center
As the DR continues to open more, we are able to start shifting again.  While we will continue to make bags of food for families, we were thrilled to be able to go back to the Community Center yesterday to serve in the feeding program again.   It looked very different, with the meals being served outside, starting a little earlier so we can be home before the 7pm curfew, and everyone wearing masks, but it was awesome to see all the familiar faces(even behind masks) that we had missed so much.  ​​

A New Computer Lab For The Community
The next step we are working on with the Community Center in Pontezuela is to set up a computer lab.  The Community Center not only hosts a feeding program, but they are also a school for the community, opening doors to children who don't have the opportunity to go to school elsewhere.  
It also serves as a place where different job skills classes such as english can take place for the members of the community.  With a computer lab, we hope to begin offer basic typing ,office software training and even computer programming classes to help give the people skills they need to get better jobs and break the cycle of poverty. (the pics below are of the school and the Pontezuela community)

Prayer Requests

• Pray for the Dominican Republic as there are still alot of unemployment here because of the curfew, etc.
• Pray for Julian, Logan and Avery as they are doing school from home this year and that they can find ways to connect with others.
• Pray that God would provide the money needed for the computer lab at the community center in Pontezuela.

If you felt lead, please consider donating to help us start the Computer Lab in Pontezuela.   Even a donation of $25 can go along way to helping build the computer lab. You can donate by clicking here