missionaryMAC

On December 23, 2024, my brother texted me that he and his wife Chelsey "Just did a little last minute Christmas shoppin": plane tickets to the DR. The April dates they picked fell over my nephew Reed's (age 8) spring break, which coincided with Holy Week.  It wasn't their first time in-country; Kyle & Chelsey sacrificed a day at their adults only resort to meet me in the capital in January 2021 , and my mom's side of the family held a June 2022 family reunion of sorts in Punta Cana. It was , however, their first time in Santiago to truly experience my expat life and put faces to many of the names I drop regularly on Marco Polo. I've learned a few things since my parents and sister visited five months after I moved here; our week was a healthy balance of adventure mode vs. vacation mode.  Stereotypical airport arrival photo I make all short-term volunteers take. Santiago is the  Ciudad Corazón (Heartland City). We spent our first two nights at an Airbnb...

Have I told you lately how nice it is to have a washing machine that's still in the same place at the end of each load as at the start?  A year ago January, I called the Santiago-based missionaries' go-to electrician when my washing machine started shaking uncontrollably mid-cycle and making a deep, thunderous hammering sound. I still regret not taking a picture of whatever "fix" he performed with safety pins  (because I couldn't find cloth diaper pins), but it did the trick.    For a time.  The shaking and hammering would come and go sporadically, but a few days before my brother and his family were scheduled to arrive for a Holy Week visit, I threw in a load of laundry before church and came home to find it humming and stuck on Spin. Nothing I tried worked, so I made the snap decision to stop putting off the inevitable and buy a new washing machine before hosting houseguests.  I uncharacteristically did no research, just went back to where I got my microw...

The first week of April, the Dominican Republic had the distinct pleasure of hosting an unprecedented mission education team made up of 10 LCMS district presidents (or "DPs," representing nearly 1/3 of the Council of Presidents, or COP) + 2 dignitaries from our church body's St. Louis headquarters office. While the group indeed spent a week immersed in Dominican culture and numerous aspects of ministry in this place, the 11 sessions presented by different regional team members truly highlighted the work around LAC and even aspects of how the LCMS is Spreading the Gospel, Planting Lutheran Churches, and Showing Mercy globally.  It was a treat working alongside Dana to coordinate the logistics of the event. A combination of factors made them a touch more complex than average, and tag-teaming just made sense; she was busy hosting two teams in March that I only had minimal interaction with, whereas I was essentially free to focus on this once the FORO wrapped up. One of my a...

One of the closing hymns we sing at church often (HL 748) includes the line " Denos pan con que vivir / Y prospere la jornada ." It translates to "Give us bread with which to live / And prosper the __________." According to my go-to online Spanish dictionary , a " jornada " is a workday, journey, or day trip. Last weekend, Concordia the Reformer Seminary here in the DR hosted its 3rd  jornada evangelística - an intensive, multi-day campaign in which the residential students plan and carry out a variety of outreach activities targeting a certain neighborhood.  While said neighborhood was Licey al Medio this time around, the weekend kicked off with a Bible study for Chamos volleyball league players in an area not near any of our current church plants. Chamos is an NGO run by Victor Reyes, a Venezuelan member of Iglesia Luterana Pueblo Nuevo. The growing league currently consists of ~250 players in 2 major cities. Victor's goal is to teach not only volley...