Update October 2011

October 3, 2011

Dear Family and Friends, Thank you so much for your prayers and the response to the earlier "Day in the life of" letter in August. I wanted to share what happened later with the circumstances of that day.

(1) First of all the Haitian School has started. We had a great inauguration service in the humble facility a couple of weeks ago. About $2000.00 US was spent on this rustic building. Most of these funds came through donors who responded to the needs as expressed in the first email. I had no idea that so many would respond in this way. Our school donated some nice freshly painted green desks, and some sports equipment for the program. See the attachment included with this email, that shows some neighborhood children worshiping in the building. They still need some help with the bathrooms (mostly a couple toilet bowls and some sinks). I know it looks pretty sad, but it is actually fairly sturdy, and has a good roof. Maybe later they can replace the bark siding with nice smooth boards. Pastor Juan Ortiz worked hard to get the building in shape to use it. Please pray for this project, the next step is getting the parents to make the effort to send their children.

(2) We inaugurated a new church at the La Vega Christian School campus with 150 in attendance; many local churches sent representatives to the event. Pastor Domingo Medina and his wife Clarabel had moved to La Vega about four months earlier, and had expressed a desire to start a church in our city. We had been burdened for many of our school families who do not really know the Lord. It seemed right to allow this new startup church to meet at the school. Debbie and I have committed our free Sundays to help this pastoral couple.
Thanks to financial responses, Pastor D's two sons were able to purchase their uniforms and get supplies for school. Pastor D, is still meeting in homes in another area of our city called Los Pomos. Pray for the pastor's financial situation, they are truly living by faith.
Our second service was last week and we had 27 adults and children attend. We are up and running.

(3) The roof is on in the church in Jeremias. This is the church I mentioned that needed a roof and is still needing a floor. We have collected $200.00 US for the floor thus far, and need $600.00 US more for it's completion. The attachment shows you the floor. Notice the lady kneeling on the rocks to pray. (We have this photo also at our website). Salvador Mota heads up the ministry of construction volunteers who give of their time and energy freely to help with church projects. If we have on hand funds for the project, they will do the work at no cost. They are a blessing to these poor churches. They also helped with the floor of the Haitian school.

I hope you enjoy the photo collages above. Special thanks to Rayven Tallmage (one of our missionary volunteers) who took the great photos.

Mitch and Debbie Martinez
Missionaries to the Dominican Republic

See Original "A Day in the Lives of missionaries Mitch and Debbie Martinez" HERE

See past Newsletters Here