Domicia Republice was supposed to be a week full of sports ministry. Of invitation to the court as a Segway to invite them to getting to know our friend Jesus. Little did we know it would rain almost the entire week. But at one moment as I started to get anxious of yet again what seemed to be another plan fell through one of the group leaders touched my shoulder and he said he felt the Lord say. Let the weather be your clock. Si that’s what we did. Rain brought on new ministry, new plans, and new time line while other times we pushed through and didn’t let it scare us away. We had the opportunity for discipleship and intimacy which led to baptisms and professing of faith.

It lead to prayer walks and moments of ask the Lord where we saw the Lord faithfully show up and alignment of what students heard. Before we went prayer walking one day we gathered and prayed and the Lord brought to mind a wheel chair and pineapple through the children. Lo and behold while we were walking a man in a Dominican make shift wheel chair was selling pineapples. The students were so excited as we prayed for healing and got to swap testimonies about what He has been doing in our lives. Below you will find more encouraging testimonies from my dear friend and leader Aliseya.

This past week in the Dominican Republic was one filled with a mixture of the sweetest heavenly fruit and the most torrential earthly rain. God spoke and moved in tangible ways that shifted my understanding of His nature—not for the first time and certainly not for the last.

One day we decided to take a moment to go out into the community and do ATL (Ask the Lord) ministry. Ask the Lord is just a method of praying, listening, waiting and going in the direction God is leading us to reach out to the people around us. That could look like walking into a nearby convenient store to speak to and pray for the worker behind the counter. It could look like passing by a group of teenagers chatting outside of a restaurant and the Lord leading us to go and ask if we can pray for them. It could look like sitting with an elderly woman on a park bench and listening to her story…

God has shown up in more ways than I can count in these encounters when we simply listen and obey His guidance. And this week was no exception.

We prepared to go out to do ATL in the community with the students, and just as we were prepared to go, that rain I mentioned earlier hit us like the flood of Noah. We quickly took shelter under the roof of the porch on the ministry base and tried to wait it out for a few minutes. It only rained harder. Eventually, when it was clear the rain wasn’t going to stop and that God was having a fun time throwing us off our guards, we decided to pray and ask God what He wanted us to do: should we stay and avoid getting caught in the rain? Or should we go and walk blindly into the storm when half of the students didn’t even have rain jackets for protection?

We prayed together in both laughter and nervousness, and one of the student’s group leaders spoke out saying, “I believe the Lord is speaking that we came here to serve, so are we going to let this rain stop us from doing what we came here to do?”

These wise words were the motivating push that we all needed to step out on faith and believe that God had a plan for us to go out into the downpour and watch Him work a miracle out of our mustard seed of faith.

We split up into small teams and went out into the rain, some of the students humbly and hilariously wearing trash bags as their only protection from the elements, and we shared the Gospel with whomever God sent us to speak to. As I was leading my small team of students, the rain poured harder and harder.

We came to a fork in the road, and I asked them what they felt we should do next: keep going ahead, though we saw no one else out in the rain to minister to, go back from where we came and take cover from the rain, or turn into a small driveway that lead to someone’s home and simply knock on their door? With resounding agreement, we decided on the third option, though we walked up to this stranger’s home tentatively. An elderly woman and her son lived on the property, and they immediately welcomed us with joy and excitement. We chatted with them in Spanish about their lives, their faith, and some of the hardships they’d faced in life. The woman was a strong woman of God, and even ministered to us by telling us we were doing incredible work for God’s Kingdom, asking if she could pray over us and the ministry before we left. As she prayed and encouraged us, the rain finally stopped, and the sun came out. In that moment, I knew that God didn’t just desire for us to go out and share the truth of His love to those who didn’t know Him; He wanted us to be reminded of that very truth by those whose faith was perhaps even stronger than our own. We spent the rest of the week visiting churches, hosting kids’ programs, and ministering to the mothers of the children in the communities.  Watching mothers of faith sit with their young daughters and make beaded bracelets together while talking about the love of Jesus made me realize the simplicity of this walk with Him. To follow like a child would, to sit at the feet of God and laugh and eat sweet treats and make beautiful things: that is the very definition of the Garden, the very desire of our Heavenly Father for His children. It’s easy to forget that reality in the midst of going and serving and obtaining more knowledge. What He wants more than anything, what He’s wanted since the dawn of time was for us to be as little children. I’m grateful for that small reminder as I walk amongst the hustle and bustle of this life. "