Prayer/Devotion Itinerary Mission trip to Santo Domingo Plymouth Heights CRC April 4 to April 11, 2014 Friday: Flying Days & Themes Meal time Devotion Assignments (prayer & a passage) Traveling. Saturday: Youth Sunday: Church Monday: Work Tuesday: Faith Wednesday: Poverty Thursday: Creation De Vrieses Faber/Rottmans Diepstras Sinniahs & Wunderink Koopmans & Van Swol VanDenHeuvels Dear Participants, family, interested friends, The pages that follow are an attempt to give you some idea of what our days will look like. For each day, as you can see above, I ve picked an idea or theme that coincides with what we ll be doing or experiencing. The devotional part of the page is meant for both group members and for those back at home, and it gives the context for the questions that follow. We ll end every day there by going over the questions as a group, discussing the events of the day and praying together. We d love to have friends and family members thinking and praying along with us too. Please take some time each morning to read what s planned for the day and remember us as you go through your regular activities. We trust you ll be praying daily for things like health and safety and protection, but we also encourage you to pray that this will be an incredible learning experience for all of us. Thanks so much for your support and prayers. We can t wait to tell you about the trip! Steve De Vries, for the rest of the DR gang
Flying Friday, April 4 GR to DR For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. Psalm 91:11 As we were getting ready to go, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was much in the news. One of our meetings was on the day after it disappeared. That makes it hard not to worry, at least a little bit, about all the miles to be traveled, both on land and in the air. The actual amount of time in the air won t be that much, but the trip to Detroit, airport security on this end, customs on that end, and the ride back to the Ministry Center will all make it a long day. As we see lots of land and water out the plane window today, we ll be thinking about how big the world is and about the miracle of being able to get around it so quickly. Not only can we fly other places in just a few hours, we can now Skype or Facetime instantly. It s hard not to wonder whether going so many places and knowing so many people makes our lives better or makes us better people. But we are traveling a long ways today, and we will be meeting a lot of new people. We ve been praying for safety and we will keep doing so right up until we re back home again. And as we pray for safety we also give thanks for a God who truly does have the whole world in his hands. Looking down from the plane today we ll get a small glimpse of what he sees all the time. And we ll continue to wonder about what we ll see next. 1. Does flying make you anxious? Why or why not? 2. Does knowing that God is in control eliminate all your fears? 3. What are you most looking forward to as you fly today?
Youth (La Juventud) Saturday, April 5 Youth Camp near Guerra Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. I Timothy 4:12 We re spending our first day at a youth camp about an hour away from the Ministry Center. We ll be participating for one day in a weekend long event for young people organized around the theme: The Social Crisis and the Role of the Youth in Social and Spiritual Transformation. Maybe that theme makes you smile (we tend not to take ourselves or our youth quite that seriously), but here we ll be exposed to people who take their faith, at every age, very seriously. We ll be asked to share the challenges faced by youth in our country, and we ll listen to the challenges faced by young people in the Dominican Republic. And we ll be called to think about and act on the implications of who we are as Christians. What difference are we called to make in the world around us? It will be an eye-opening experience, in both directions. We ll get a better understanding of the challenges that young Dominicans and Haitians face, and I m guessing we ll be humbled by their faith and their conviction. 1. What did you learn today about the challenges faced by high school and college age people in the DR? How are they similar to your challenges? How are they different? 2. What did you learn about their faith today? What kind of impact does their faith have on their lives? What kind of impact does your faith have on your life? 3. What surprised you most today? 4. What made you smile today? 5. What do you think the Dominican young people learned from us today? 6. Where did you see God at work today?
Worship Sunday, April 6 Batey Duqueza and Los Angeles Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Psalm 95 The pasture where God tends the flock that we ll worship with this morning is on the outskirts of the city dump. It s called a batey because it once provided a place to live for Haitian sugar cane cutters. When it was built the Dominican government essentially bought Haitian laborers from the Haitian government, and settled them in bateyes. They ve always been places of pain and poverty, but they re also places of faith and hope. We ll worship with some of the hopeful this morning. At night we ll head to the church closest to the Ministry Center. We ll be able to walk there from where we re staying, and it will give us a great chance to see what life is like in this community and in so many communities like it around the world. We ll worship with a group slightly more educated, slightly more prosperous and much more Dominican. We ll compare the two different church services with each other, as well as with the kinds of services that we re used to back home. We ll wonder about worship today. 1. What were the main differences between the two worship services today? How were they both different from our worship services? How were they the same? 2. What role does music play in worship here? How do you think the musicians are trained? 3. The pastors of both the churches we worshipped in today depend on jobs outside the church for their income. What do you think that means for the church? What does it mean for the pastor and his family? (Should your pastor get a real job?) 4. Do you think God has a favorite worship style? What is it that really determines the way people worship? 5. What did you see God doing today? When did you sense he was near?
Work Monday, April 7 Celedonia s Rehab Center I Thessalonians 4: 11 Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. Today is a work day. We ll be headed to the north of Santo Domingo, an area called Villa Mella, to work with Celedonia on a building for her rehab program. It will be nice to accomplish something. It s not unusual for mission groups to do mission trips primarily for that sense of accomplishment. We like to feel as though we ve done or achieved something valuable. The Apostle Paul even said it was a good thing to do, to work with our hands. But the following verse also has some interesting things to say about why work is good; it s related to respect and to being independent. Today we ll not only do work, but we ll think and talk about the pros and cons of doing things for people in situations like the one we re working in here in the DR. If we get respect and independence from working with our hands, what do they get when our hands replace theirs? Oops, that should have been one of the questions below. Pray for us today as we talk and think about when helping really helps and when it may even hurt. Pray that there will be a number of people from the community that we can work with and that we can find joy in working together. Pray for a new appreciation for work. 1. Were you looking forward to working today, or dreading it? How did you feel after the job was done? 2. What do you think went through the minds of the people in the community who saw/ watched you working today? 3. Why do you think the building that we painted today needed painting? Why didn t the church or school take care of it? 4. Why are so many people in poor countries unemployed? Don t they want to work? Is there anything we can do to really help? 5. Where did you see God working today? How did you sense his presence in your work?
Faith Tuesday, April 8 Celedonia s Rehab Center 5 The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" 6 He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you. Luke 17:5,6 One of the reasons I keep coming back to the DR is for a faith booster. I m used to talking a lot about faith and challenging people to have more of it. But it s traveling with Mario to place like the one where we ve been working yesterday and today that really help me understand what faith looks like as well as what God s faithfulness really looks like. Most of us live our lives as though the worst possible thing that could happen to us would be for us to have to depend on God. We want to be responsible and independent, we want to provide for ourselves and our families. We want to plan for the future. But sometimes none of that is possible and we can only turn to God. Celedonia and her ministry to alcoholics and drug addicts from the streets is one example of what happens when a woman of faith has nowhere to turn to but God. So as we work with her for a second day today, and as we put on a program for the children in the area, we ll be thinking about how much we really rely on ourselves and how much we rely on God. We ll listen to Celedonia s story and we ll wonder whether we could ever have faith like that. And our prayer is that we ll be inspired by her work, her example, and above all, her faith. 1. What s been the most striking thing about Celdonia and her life/ministry? 2. Could something like this happen in the United States? Why, or why not? 3. What are some of the things that stand in the way of our having this kind of faith? 4. What did you learn about your own faith today? 5. Where did you see God at work today? When did you sense he was close to you?
Poverty Wednesday, April 9 Batey Bienvenido Matthew 19: 21 Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." We saw it already at the airport, and on the trip to the Ministry Center where we re staying. We saw a lot of it when we traveled to Duqueza and Villa Mella. We ve seen it just about every place where we ve been. And poverty is going to slap us in the face again today when we go to Bienvenido. Bienvenido was a community of sugar cane cutters built around a sugar cane factory. The housing was provided in barrack-like buildings by the cane company. But the sugar cane industry has all but disappeared. Because Santo Domingo has grown so much, many have work there in the city. A significant part of the population here is made up of undocumented immigrants from Haiti, people who have no human rights at all. The CRC of the DR has a church here, but it s tough to work in a community like this. Mario s work is to target communities like these and work with the resources that they do have. As in the case of Celedonia, it s often amazing to see how much there is in a place that appears to have so little. Pray for all of us today as we experience something of the difficulties of life in a poor Haitian batey. Ask God to challenge some of our beliefs about wealth and poverty. Ask God to guide us as we talk about an appropriate Christian response. 1. What did it feel like to walk around in Bienvenido? 2. How do you think the residents of this batey feel about outsiders like us? 3. How does being in Bienvenido or Duqueza make you feel about what you have back home? If you saw something like this every day, do you think it would change your life? 4. Do you think more money is the answer to the biggest problems here? What are some of the things that contribute to poverty here? How could it be reduced? 5. Where did you see God at work today? When did you sense he was close to you?
Creation Thursday, April 10 The Beach "Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Job 38:16 At the time of writing this, I m still not sure which beach we ll be headed to today. Mario promised to do a little reconnaissance last week and come up with a recommendation. We ll probably travel across the city of Santo Domingo (45 minutes from one side to the other), on along the palm covered coastline, to one of the many beaches along the stretch of the island east of the capital. The beauty will be breath-taking, as will some of the poverty that we see on the way out there. Today will be a day of soaking up God s good creation and of wondering about the toll that human beings have taken on it. We ll also go to the market and see and maybe even buy some things that are uniquely Dominican. As we think of the beauties of creation we can also think about the beauty of cultural diversity. Every country and every culture has a unique way of demonstrating that its citizens too were created in the image of God. 1. How do you react to the contrast between the beauty of nature and some of the awful and ugly things we ve seen? 2. Does being outdoors in a beautiful place on a beautiful day make you more inclined to think about God, or less? Why? 3. Psalm 19 says The heavens declare the glory of God. How often do you listen or pay attention? 4. If the heavens declare the glory of God, what have some of the poorer communities declared? Did you see the glory of God there too? 5. What reminded you of God s presence and power today?