Slums, soccer, and spanish

So before I get lost in this post I wanted to first thank everyone for taking the time to read this blog, constantly keeping me in your prayers, and for the encouragement that you've left in the comments. As another quick note, the website for the water filter company is: http://www.filterpurefilters.org/ There's a cool video that shows how it works and they describe pretty much everything there. If you have any questions about how they're connected to the ministry here in the DR just put it in the comments and I'll try to get you an answer before I leave for the states.

So I have a lot to talk about so feel free to scan if you don't have a lot of time. Yesturday we went out to a community called munoz and just went and hung out with the villagers. I got the chance to play some soccer with the kids and with some of the adults. Being the only white guy meant that I didn't get the ball much but I feel like I did well. The time spent before the game was a lot more fruitful because I got to talk to several different guys about their lives and how Christ fits into that. It's crazy how saturated a lot of these communities are with Hatians, I haven't figured out how to tell the difference until they start talking in creole. It's super sad though how many of them have no place to live. Apparently a lot of the Hatian families will live in houses while they're being built so they never really have a permanent place of residence.

Living in half-built houses is actually really fantastic though compared to what I saw this morning. This morning we went to aguas negros (black waters). Which is one of the poorer slums in this area. I have some pictures that I'll hopefully get to post at the end of the week that give a better idea of this but my heart was completely broken over how bad the conditions are where these people live. It's basically a community of barren shacks amongst mud and trash that has washed up around the houses and in most places INTO the houses. The kids really don't have any toys, we were playing some games that didn't require anything like Simon says and run around in a circle chanting something that Micah didn't understand but even with that they seemed to be having TONS of fun. It completely blew me away how happy these people are even with as little as they have. There are several ministries that have started to work in that community and I guess it's been improving, though I would've hated to see it where it was. But it's clear that God is doing a great work there because everyone I talked with said that God had blessed them and that they were thankful for his many blessings....ridiculous!

We're gonna be going out tonight to do an english class in another community that I haven't been to yet and that should be pretty cool. It's been amazing how much spanish I've been able to speak while I have been here, I could've never imagined that I would be carrying on conversations about life and Jesus with random people in the streets and over games of Dominoes (which has been great) in complete and hardly broken spanish. I keep getting asked where I learned spanish cuz I can speak it so well, my family should know better than anyone that that's definitely not me, that's totally the Lord :)

Which speaking of the Lord and speaking Spanish, I need some serious prayer for this sunday! I was apparently volunteered by Edward, one of the Dominicans who works with the ministry here, to preach at a church this sunday morning. The church is basically a little shack but there are apparently like 75 attendants and I'm supposed to preach for 30 to 45 minutes. SOOOO exciting yet SOOOOOOO frickin scary. I'm supposed to have a guy to help translate if I get lost somewhere but I've got a feeling that I won't really be using him. To give you a little perspective on how big of a deal this is, I've never preached for longer than 15 minutes in ENGLISH and the last time I did a spanish presentation in college it was 10 minutes. lol. But God is the one who is in control so I know that He'll take care of it. I've already got my sermon outline so now I just have to work on getting it all straight and translating what I don't know.

Other things that you can being praying for: I've been staying at a local inn while Brad's kids have been doing their standardized testing and they play dominoes there every night. Well last night I played with them for about 2 and half hours and I'm probably going to be playing with them again tonight and hopefully some more throughout the week. I was able to talk to them a little about the Lord but I would love the opportunity to poor more of Christ into them. God has been SOOOO awesome in opening doors and giving me opportunities that I would've NEVER imagined, so also pray that he continues to keep my heart open and dependent on him and that I wouldn't shy away from what He's calling me towards. Pray also for the missionaries that I'm working with, they've been having a lot of trouble with getting water at their house and Brooke has been having super bad migraines. Pray also that the Lord continues to bless me with health, safety, and a focused heart. I love you all and am SOOO thankful for your thoughts and prayers. I hope that all is going well. God bless.