Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."

So, I've been home for a few days now and am starting to get back into the swing of things. I haven't started babysitting yet and so this week has been filled with miscellaneous appointments, organizing pictures, seeing friends, family and Jake, and trying to make sense of what happened in these past eight weeks and how that applies to my life back here at home. I'm still processing that a little but have enjoyed sharing stories and pictures with everyone I come in contact with (I even told my dentist about my trip this morning before getting two fillings done! haha)

Anyways, I wanted to just post a final blog thanking you all for praying and supporting me over these past eight weeks. Hopefully I'll get a chance to see most of you in these upcoming weeks so I can thank you personally and show you LOTS of pictures and all the stories that go with them. For those of you who I won't get to see, thanks for your prayers and support. Know that God is doing some amazing things down in the Dominican Republic and that I feel so blessed to have been a small part of His work down there. If enough of you are interested I'll try to put some more pictures up now that I have a more stable internet connection.

One final thought that I was reminded of again down in the DR is how important missions are and how we are all called by God to be missionaries of his love. This doesn't necessarily mean long term missions overseas, but simply living life as a servant to those around you and in that way showing Christ's love. In this way, maybe without even knowing it, we can be a small part of showing someone the loving, faithful, and forgiving God that we serve. Thanks for your support of my trip and I hope that all of you will continue to support others who are considering overseas mission trips but that you will also realize we each have our own mission field in our backyard where God calls us to serve and love His people. May God continue to bless each of you in your own lives. What an awesome God we serve!

Alissa

Wow, one week left. I'll admit, it seems absolutely crazy that my time here is so close to ending. Time has gone by so fast, and although I'm excited to see everyone back home, I'm not quite sure if I'm ready to leave yet. I've established so many new friendships with people here and have fallen in love with the program, kids and country. This summer has been amazing and once again, I can't thank you all enough for helping to make this trip possible for me.

This past week was another fairly large week. We had a youth group from Arizona with about 30 people, some individual volunteers, and then another small group from His House. This gave us a total about about 50-60 volunteers here for the week so we were able to do 4 camps, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We also ended up splitting up even more so by then end of the week we had been in 4 different bateys doing camps, reading to kids, and playing baseball with some older teenagers, as well as having a camp at the baseball stadium down the street and a camp here at the orphanage for neighborhood kids! It was quite the week!

My job was this week was camp leader for the high school group and then two other interns. We had a rough start on Monday as the kids were put into leadership positions without a lot of guidance and started to get into the swing of things (also, not very many of them knew spanish!). And so Monday was a rough day for me, trying to organize everything, keep camp running smoothly, and allow the kids and volunteers to enjoy their time. Thankfully, God once again showed his faithfulness on Tuesday and camp went really well. It was amazing to see the change that took place and realize that God was with us, leading us and guiding us. It definitely reminded me once again how much we need God for even the smallest things that we often think we can do on our own. From Tuesday camp continued to go well both in the morning and the afternoon. We had around 60 kids in the morning and closer to 80 or 90 kids in the afternoon making for two fun camps that were fairly easy to maintain but still had a lot of energy :).

I also had a lot of fun this week getting to know some of the high schoolers and sharing a little bit of my life with them. We had a few non-Christians with their group and it was neat to see God begin to change their hearts a little bit and get them thinking about a lot of new things.

Today, we are just kind of hanging out. It's nice to be able to spend a lot of time with the kids here today and our time with them is starting to become really short. Today will also be a nice day to regroup and get ready for camp this week. We have 20 new volunteers coming in so we'll be doing two camps that should be a lot of fun since we will get to be all together for them.

Some specific prayer requests for this week would be: prayer once again for our camps at a batey called Manzanio and a nearby church; energy, organization, and teamwork amongst the new volunteers and interns; prayer specifically for the interns that we don't "check out" or become to involved in what we want to do in our last week here that we fail to provide a great experience for the one-week volunteers; and prayer for safe traveling and a smooth adjustment as most all of us head home on Saturday.

I guess that's all for now. Enjoy your week and I'm very much looking forward to seeing many of you when I get home next weekend! I'll be leaving here 2:30 AM Saturday morning and if all goes well, landing in Grand Rapids around 9:30 Saturday night. God Bless!

Alissa

Wow! I feel like I've been saying this a lot but here I am with only two weeks left of my summer here.

This past week, it was only us interns here at the orphanage so we didn't have any camps. Instead we were able to paint and clean up the kitchen and also spend two mornings painting the church that we did a camp at the week before. The church looks really nice now and it's probable that a number of years of life were added to the church because the wood was already beginning to rot. Our reading program in the afternoon went a lot well than I had origingally expected. The kids loved spending some one-on-one time with us reading and it was cool to see them get excited about something. We even got to have a little party at the end of the week to celebrate all the reading that took place. Then Friday, we took another day trip to Caberete. It is another town on the coast a little over 3 hours away. It is more of a touristy town but it was fun to walk around and spend part of the day at the beach. There were also some good restaurants that we got to try :). So, this week was definitely a welcomed changed and now I'm really excited to start camps up again! That is a good thing too because we have about 50 volunteers coming in and we are doing 4 camps again.

Two of the camps will be in bateys that we haven't been to yet this summer and both communities are really excited to have us come. That's kind of a cool thing for us to know and any prayers for the two communities (Carbonera and Maguaca) would be appreciated - for planning, energy for the volunteers, organization, teamwork, and for the hearts and minds of the kids (and adults) that come to our camps. We will also being doing two camps for some of the neighborhood kids and prayers for that would also be greatly appreciated. Those will probably be a little bigger camps and most of the kids have come to previous camps we put on so it's exciting to be a continual influence in their summer.

That's about it for now. A bunch of us are waiting for the rest of the volunteers to arrive tonight and are just hanging out. It's been really fun worshipping, serving, and growing in faith and friendship with them all this summer. And I'm starting to realize it's going to be hard to leave everyone here - the volunteers, neighbors, and kids. I've also been starting to think about what it means to go home, yes I'm excited but it also means another period of time adjusting to a different culture. So, that's my final prayer request for today. I know that there still is a while before I head home, but prayers for safety returning home, finding a way to take home what I've learned to share with friends and family, and learning to adjust back to the American way of life without losing what what I've learned here.

Thanks for all your prayers and comments. It's great to hear from you all - even those of you that I don't really know :)

Love, Alissa

So, 5 weeks have passed and I'm starting to get to a countdown point which seems really weird. Part of me is really excited to come home and see everyone again, but part of me is also starting to get really attached to the people and kids here which is going to make it hard to leave in three weeks.

This past week we had a group from His House Christian Fellowship at Central (the church I go to) come down. That was fun to get to know some of the faces that I've seen here and there but have never really talked to. We also had two individual volunteers plus our interns making it a fairly small week. It was a welcomed break from the chaos of last week.

We did two camps again. In the morning we were at Batey Madre and in the afternoon we stayed in Monte Cristi and did a camp at a small church that is actually pastored by one of the ladies that has been helping with the cooking and cleaning over the past few weeks, Adelina. They were fun camps but also hard to do because they were two of the poorest communities that we had seen yet this summer. The morning camp was fairly small with only about 40 kids, which made for a nicer more intimate feeling. I was in charge of story and had fun coming up with different ways to present the story: we acted out Daniel and the Lions Den, did puppets to the story of Joseph, acted out Joshua and the battle of Jerico, and then read the resurrection story from a children's story book. Overall I felt that the camp went really well here. I also got the chance to get to know some of the older adults there too which is fun. We played a little bit of Jenga and talked a little bit.

In the afternoon, we had closer to 80 kids in a very small church/chapel. I made friends with one girl, Jennifer, after singing with her the first day and it was fun to see her wait for me to get off the bus every day after that. It's crazy how these kids remember a specific person or name. I also fully realized that a lot of kids here like me simply because I have blonde hair that I let them play with. I even got a few comments this week of "Is this really your hair???" haha. There were also a few deaf boys at La Capilla which really struck me. It was hard to see these boys and know that it was very likely that they would never receive schooling or be able to communicate with others very well. Yet at the same time, they had managed through their life so far and will continue to do so. It was cool though to see once again the community that was there, as all the other kids would look out for them.

Then yesterday for the fourth of July we went to the beach with the orphanage kids. That was a lot of fun and I got to swim with them for a long time and get to know some of the kids that I hadn't really interacted with. It amazed me there too how they all know my name, even ones who I didn't even know lived at the orphanage!

Today we are just hanging out and doing some projects around the orphanaged. Then this week it's just us interns so we'll be doing a few more service projects in the morning and then doing a reading program with the kids in the afternoon. I'm excited to spend some more one on one time with them during this.

That's all for now I guess. Once again, I can't thank you all enough for all your prayers and support. It is so great to know that back home myself and the work being done here has so much support in prayer. God truly is working down here in my life and in so many other lives. What an awesome God we serve!

P.S. If you would like to look at some more pictures. The team leader here, Eric Woods and his family have a blog where Eric puts up a lot of pictures at. Feel free to check it out at southwoodsfamily.blogspot.com. The pictures are of anything and everything that goes on here and at camps, so they are kind of fun to look at.