Los Liones Valientes

Los Liones Valientes: Ben Van Walbeek, Caleb Davis, Jeff Olson, Liz VanderSchel, Erin VanderSchel, Elizabeth Bourland

For the Bold Lions it started out just like any other day. We woke up and had breakfast, welcomed our leader Ben to the Dominican since his flights were delayed, read our Bibles and got ready. We were able to visit a church in Santo Domingo that our friend Evelyn attends. It was unbelievable and opened our eyes to how vast and powerful God really is—that so far away people are worshipping and know the same God we do. The message the pastor gave was very encouraging as well and it was the perfect beginning to our week. He spoke on living out our salvation in reverence and how it fits into the process of sanctification. God not only has offered himself as a sacrifice for our sin, saved us and given us the Holy Spirit, but he also wants to cleanse us from ourselves. We tend to think that this is all from our own works, but really even the sanctification and becoming more like Christ is all dependent on God. He gives us the desire to obey and do what he asks because it’s what’s best for us. It’s easy going into the mission trip thinking that I have to do all these things God asks and it’s all on my shoulders. But EVERYTHING is from the Lord and our motivation must come from doing things understanding that he gives us the strength and that he has done so much more for us than we can ever do for him. Basically it was great. It was also wonderful to sing in a different language knowing that God is pleased no matter what language we praise him.

After church we came back, ate and prepared for the English classes. We still had some time before dinner so we decided to go down to the beach or la playa. There were people everywhere. We split into two groups of three and went out to talk to people about Jesus. Not a lot of people we talked to spoke English so we mostly handed out and went through tracts with people. As we were walking around, the wind began to pick up and the dark clouds started rolling in. You can only imagine what happened next…torrential downpour. We were soaked within seconds but we decided to go under a shelter with a few other people. A man next to us began to dance with Elizabeth and we talked to him for a while. He was a television cameraman (at least we think he was, he couldn’t speak any English) and he was very excited when we gave him a tract. After it had been raining for a few minutes we decided to run. After about five minutes of running we rested next to a wall, totally drenched. At this point none of us cared if we continued to get wet because we were soaked. So we walked back to the hostel and upon arrival, there was a lot of joy and laughing and pity. But we couldn’t stop talking about how it was the best experience of the whole trip. The streets were flooded and it seemed like a river was flowing so fast that you could get swept up in the current. But we didn’t get hurt and it was really fun and it was a great bonding experience. We ended up being the only group that got to go out sharing that day and it was definitely worth it.