Why are we here?

Every once and a while we get asked the question "Why are you here?" It is a pretty normal question when you are on the mission field. Whenever we meet other missionaries, we ask them the same question. It is a quick way to know their focus. As well, when we meet Dominicans, often they will ask the same question. I imagine they wonder - What would cause someone to leave their homeland and go to some distant land, leaving family and all they know? And it is a great question!

For us, the story of God's calling is exciting to share. We love to share it when people ask. But in this entry, we want to focus on what we feel God has called us to do while we are here.

When we were support raising we shared in our presentations three reasons that we feel God has called us to the Dominican Republic. These reasons have not changed, although we have changed some of the wording.

1. Equipping has been changed to Church Planting. We were asked, "Who do we want to equip and why?" We are here to equip the people of Iglesia Nueva Vida Jarabacoa and the people in the Nueva Vida daughter churches with the purpose of developing strong leaders for their church plants. Pastor Bill Hanson of Iglesia Nueva Vida Jarabacoa has created a plan for discipleship in Jarabacoa that was not there two years ago. As a result, our focus is drawn to the daughter churches. We are working to develop a plan to train nationals within these rural churches.

Present Action Step: We are leading the believers in El Montaña church through a four session workshop. We desire that they learn to share their faith with their neighbors, family and friends. So, our training is focused on Relational Evangelism. In addition, we want to prepare them to join a team that is coming to evangelize in their community. This brings us to #2.

2. Teams has been changed to Partnership Development. This change in words really helps to communicate our focus for bringing teams. Partnership speaks of the relationship between the church in the United States and a Dominican church. Our desire is that churches in the United States or elsewhere will make a longterm commitment to building a relationship with local Dominican churches. As each church has a greater understanding and trust of the other, we believe there will be greater impact. Development speaks of our desire to see teams involved in the equipping of the local churches for ministry. This does not always happen. It is very easy for a US team to come and do ministry while the local churches stand by and watch. We desire to use teams to equip and develop the believers of the local churches.

Present Action Step: We have a team coming from California in November. It will be their first mission trip here. They are coming to support Nueva Vida in El Montaña and evangelize its community. As I stated above, we are preparing this community to work side by side with the the evangelism team from the United States.

3. Networking has not been reworded and remains the same. We are very impressed with the many ministries here in Jarabacoa. Many are growing and expanding. We have the heart of a networker. It is our belief and desire that ministries will have a greater impact when they to work together more frequently and effectively.

Present Action Step: Learning who is here and what are they doing. United World Mission (UWM) calls it "mapping." As we get to know people, their ministries and churches, we will be looking for areas of connectedness. How can we work together? What are the things that we could do as a unified body, things that no individual church or ministry could do on its own? So for now, we are learning, praying, and seeking to understand what is necessary to get greater communication in Jarabacoa.

Much of our work is connected with the ministries of Iglesia Nueva Vida. There are currently five daughter churches. Each of the churches struggles in the area of leadership. As we work to equip the believers in the different churches, we are looking for leaders within those communities.

Finally, our mission, UWM has a system where each field develops a Strategic Plan. Missionaries that come to the field, then develop goals and action steps which fall in line with the Strategic Plan. We are the first UWM missionaries here so we get to develop the Strategic Plan as well as our goals and action steps. We are overseen by our directors, Joe Milioni and Paul Pitman. Joe currently serves in Uraguay and Paul lives in Costa Rica but his ministry focus is in Cuba. Recently they visited us. We talked a lot about the ministry here and in the last few days, we began to create a Strategic Plan. This plan is still developing, but what is above is a reflection of that plan.