Santo Domingo Update

We arrived in the Dominican Republic safely and spent Monday afternoon with the head missionary in Santo Domingo. Tuesday morning we drove to the Dominican Baptist Convention Office and met with the outgoing president of the Dominican Baptist Convention and the incoming president to discuss Mission Surge’s role in the DR. In this meeting we heard Manolo’s (outgoing president) vision over the past 5 years for the convention. According to his timeline, Dominican churches are supposed to just be beginning to plant churches. However, God has moved far ahead of his vision. The convention has gone from thirty something churches to more than 200 churches over the past 5 years. They have increased from thirty something pastors to more than 100. Total membership in the Dominican Baptist Convention has increased from 1700 to more than 5000 and they are baptizing hundreds of new believers every year. God is working in the DR and Mission Surge has many opportunities to be involved and help speed the work along. I look forward, upon my return to being able to share more about the possibilities.


Tuesday afternoon we met with a young pastor who has just recently planted a church in an unreached area of the city. Tomorrow morning we will be meeting again with Manolo and another pastor named Yojalaver. Yojalaver is going to be traveling to India with a team from Cleary later this month as the Dominican’s first overseas volunteer missionary. The prayer is that this trip will birth an international missions movement among the believers in the DR.

We will leave this meeting and go scout out a camp and conference center where we plan to offer training next year (2011) to Dominican pastors and church planters. Then we will travel to meet a pastor out in the mountains named Socio. The word on the street is he is preparing us a home cooked meal of Bachalau…a salt cured fish. According to the missionary, he was sick for 3 days after eating this meal. PRAY FOR US!!!! Then, we will meet with a Haitian church and pastor that we are working with and eat with them for supper before heading back to the apartment.

Thursday morning we will meet with 2 other pastors that we are praying about partnering with and supporting through Mission Surge before heading home. Please keep us in your prayers as we are going to be making some crucial decisions about our work in the DR in the coming weeks. Pray that God will open doors and raise up the financial support, resources, and manpower to do great things in His Name, for His glory, in the DR. Thank you for your continued prayer support.

I will update you more after we return and settle down at home.

In Christ,


Kevin