Team Heavenly Realm Gangstaz: Day 2

After one of the craziest travel days of all the mission trips I've been on and a relaxing first day here--complete with a Spanish church service, basketball and a good nights sleep--Team Heavenly Realm Gangstaz hit the ground running Day 2. We started off our morning with some strong coffee, a delicious Dominican breakfast and time with Jesus. Before we left the hostel, Herschel brought the heat, talking to us about how to make our lives count and impacting people for Christ. He gave us an African proverb at the beginning of the time that says "When the sun comes up, you'd better be running." He went on to tell us what it means to make the most of every opportunity and preparing each morning to run after Christ. Seriously has to be one of the highlights of my day, Herschel is such an amazing man of God. So wise. We're all so thankful he was able to come with us this year! His love for people is so humbling.

Conviction and encouragement abounding, we left for campus, pumped to meet new people and share the love Jesus has for them!

Earlier that morning, I had contacted our wonderful friend Denny, to meet up with him. I (Steph) met Denny last year while sharing on campus. He walked up while I was speaking to a couple girls about Jesus and told me he was a Christian and spoke English. We became fast friends and he spent the week with us and went with us to translate while we shared. What?! How crazy is God to just send us a translator out of no where. Well, Denny and I have kept in contact all year and needless to say I was pumped to see him. He hadn't responded to my text yet but I told one of the girls, "Watch, he'll just find us." and sure enough, bam!, Denny pops up. Right around that time, I also got to see some of our other friends, Diana, Carlos and Esthervin, for the first time since we got here. God is so good to give us Christian friends here to encourage and hang out with! Also, as we were standing around and chatting, Caleb started introducing us to people from the first week in the DR. People who loved Jesus, knew English and wanted to come and translate for us as we shared. As one of the many who for some reason had lost their mind enough to come of this trip...to a Spanish speaking country... while speaking absolutely no Spanish, there are no words for this blessing! We'll have no problem at all getting the message out!

Quick lunch. English class plans scrambled up a bit. Kayla, Johan (our new bestie) and I set out to share. The weird thing though, he's Jewish...what? 

"wait a minute.. let me get this straight.... you're a Jew. Don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. Don't think he was the sacrifice for our sins, but you're going to come share with us? translating the exact OPPOSITE of the message that you deeply believe? what?!

He actually said to Kayla and I that preaching this message would be over the line and not something he would ever do...but lets go share, I'll translate.

That made absolutely no sense, but we didn't even argue! We didn't want to lose our translator and an opportunity to try to tell our new friend that Jesus loves him and doesn't contradict what he believes, but fulfills it! We started walking and the Holy Spirit told both Kayla and I there's no way we're going to share with others when this guys needs Jesus and he wants to hang out with US! So we started asking him about the Jewish beliefs. Greg joined us not long after and we got into some pretty deep OT theology- sacrifices, prophecy and the like. In the end, we agreed to disagree. I told him I would pray that God would reveal what's true and that we deeply cared about him. Pray that God shows Johan that Jesus came for HIM!

We ended the day with a rousing 3 hour game of sand volleyball at the courts a few blocks from our hostel. What a crazy awesome ministry opportunity! Makes us feel like we're home :) Two guys Ryne and I met at the basketball courts came and we met several new people who just joined our game. So stoked to see what God's going to do with the rest of our week.

Thanks for your prayers friends!
We'll write soon.

Love, Team
Heanvenly Realm Gangstaz