York Dominican Missions Newsletter

Greetings once again from the Dominican Republic. We’re sorry to report that our house was robbed on Saturday, Feb. 7th while we were away at a retreat. Four armed men came and overpowered our Haitian guard, Franklin Dorval. They tied him up and then broke the lock on the back gate of the house and got in. They stole both our computers, the photo copier, our generator, camera, money and most of Suzanne’s and Laurie’s jewelry. Suzanne had just brought back some jewelry her mother left her. It didn’t have a great deal of economic value but a lot of sentimental value was attached to it.

Needless to say, this hit us pretty hard. We got a phone call at the retreat about the robbery and I was able to leave and get home and get things cleaned up and back in order before Suzanne and Laurie got home. It was weird coming in the house and seeing it ransacked. We are thankful that we were not home and that Franklin was not hurt too badly. He was hit on the head but no bones were broken. Crime has gotten worse here so we are getting a security system installed in the house this week. We estimate the loss of about $10,000 worth of things. Several of our supporting churches have already written or called about helping replace what was lost.

Our 7th annual Christ in Youth Conference was a real blessing for all involved. We anticipated a good attendance. The Committee for Youth Activities had done an excellent job in planning and promoting the camp. They had visited almost all of the churches throughout the island and enthusiasm was running high! The dates were January 2-5 and on December 28th it began to rain, all over the island. We had not had a good rain for several months and we got more rain in 5 days than we had in the previous six months. We figured that attendance would really suffer as a result but the rain turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We had a total of 420 register and we could not have held many more! We had mattresses everywhere and mud almost everywhere but a great time of fellowship! We had games and classes and concerts and excellent food. The committee is already working on next year’s conference and trying to plan another one for the summer if possible. Our Family Camp will be August 14-16, Lord willing.

We were blessed to have a work team down in January from the Christian Church at Cogan Station, PA, where our good friend Bud Yoder is the preacher. There were eight guys on the trip, lead by Bud, and they worked very hard making bunk beds for the camp. They raised over $7000 for the materials and made 65 beds, using treated lumber. We have a lumberyard here that is selling pressurized treated wood for the first time and it is very good quality. The beds are professionally made and should last for a number of years. Each bed cost about $140 to make. The team made several pews and a few tables also to help get the camp more functional. The church at Cogan Station has been such a blessing for the work. They have built two church building and remodeled another and now helped with the bunk beds at camp. They are already committed to help put the second floor on the church that Benito Martinez is building here in Santiago in Los Robles section of town. That will be sometime in 1999, Lord willing. Thanks to all the church in Cogan Station.

As many of you know, Suzanne’s mother, Thelma Swango, had been battling cancer for the past two years. She died peacefully on Thanksgiving morning at her home in Ohio. Suzanne and her brother Roger and our families were there with her when she died and it was a blessed time to be together. Thank you for your many cards and e-mails of condolences for Suzanne during this difficult time.

The churches here have received the blessing of two special medical teams from the Untied States in the 6 weeks. Brook Brotzman led a team from the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY that included medical personnel and a dentist, Dr. Rob Schroeing. Dr. Schroering worked on a number of preachers and their families, doing fillings and extractions, all free of charge. Good dental care here is expensive and as a result many families go years without seeing a dentist and when they do it’s for a bad tooth that has to be extracted.

We’re excited about the possibility of setting up two dental clinics for the churches and church leaders here, one in the Santiago area and one in the Santo Domingo area. The idea behind the clinics is to get donated equipment brought into the country and build a couple of small, useful facilities for the clinics. We could then coordinate dentists coming from the US and periodic free visits for all of our preachers and their families and churches. We are in contact with Dr. Schroeing about this project and our first step is to raise the funds for shipment of the equipment. We’re estimating $1000 US to ship two dental chairs and other equipment to West Palm Beach, Florida from Louisville and then another $2000 US for air shipment via our Missionary Flights International, our mail service, and also paying customs duties here in Santiago.

Please begin to pray for this project. We also need to consider the location and construction of the clinics. We could put one at the camp for the northern area of the country. We also are thinking about the new church going up in Los Robles here in Santiago. That building will be halfway finished by Christmas, Lord willing, and we could raise funds to include the dental office there. With that project a realistic cost would be $10,000-12,000 US to get it ready. At the camp we would have to start from the foundation up and the cost would be probably $5000 more. The advantage of the camp would be that a larger group could come and spend the night in the dorms and wait for treatment.

For the past seven years we have had excellent results in our Leadership Training courses that we have organized and offered the leaders in the churches from throughout the country. Our leaders have grown and mature and now they are eager for a more formal Bible training school. A committee of seven leaders and myself was formed to begin discussions about what was needed and wanted by the churches. We have formally organized the Instituto Teológico Cristiano here in Santiago. Our classes will run on a quarterly basis with 16 hours of classes each month divided in two weekends. This first quarter we are offering three courses; The Pentateuch, New Testament World, and Study Techniques. Typically we will offer 4 courses.

We have several sizeable hurdles to overcome as we organize and develop this program. The first problem is the wide diversity of educational levels of our leadership in the churches. We have college graduates and leaders with graduate degrees and a fee leaders that have never finished High School. We have leaders with a low educational level but who have been in leadership positions in church for 25 years and know the Scriptures well. We also have men with college degrees that are relatively new in the faith.

We also face the challenge of acquiring materials at reasonable cost. Books in quantity are impossible to buy here and we have to order from the US or another country. The texts are expensive and we are subsidizing part of the cost but we will need additional funding for this project as it grows. We are hoping to have 60-70 leaders for each quarter.

We are also facing accommodation problems. If we have the classes at our camp in Salcedo we have plenty of room to sleep, showers and dining hall. We don’t have electricity(except when we have a generator) so classes at night are almost impossible. If we use the school in Santiago we have nice classrooms and lights and desks and chalkboard but the people sleep on the floor and cooking is outside over a fire. We do have a church parsonage there that we designed the second floor to be two big dorm rooms for our leaders to use when we had class. The only problem is the second floor has not been built yet!. Cost of that will be about $25,000 and would be a blessing for the leadership throughout the country.

We were blessed to have a team of youth leaders lead by Robin Sigars and John Mouton of Christ In Youth come for a training session in January. CIY has started a training program specifically designed for international workers that work with young people. This was the third year for our leaders and we’ll have at least two more years in the program. CIY, in my opinion, is the most pro-mission para-church group in the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. We’re really thankful for the relationship we’ve had with them for the past several years. Thanks CIY!

Our family was unexpectedly together at Thanksgiving time for the death and burial of Suzanne’s mother. Despite the circumstances we enjoyed our time together. Emily is doing very well in her first year at Lincoln Christian College. She will be going to Mexico on a Missions Trip in April and we’re proud of her. She has to present the Missions Moment at the chapel service this week(Feb. 26) and she is a little nervous speaking to almost 700 students. The college there is taking up an offering to help with expenses caused by the robbery here.

Laurie continues to do well. She traveled with me from Ohio to New Orleans when we were in the US. I had to go to an accreditation meeting for our school’s accrediting conference. Suzanne was supposed to have gone and we had nonrefundable tickets so Laurie went instead as Suzanne got her mother’s things organized and packed away. We had a good time and were able to see a few sights and eat at the same restaurant, Toujaques, that Suzanne and I ate at when we were on our honeymoon 23 years ago! Prices have gone up just a little in 23 years!

Suzanne has been especially busy working on her Masters Degree from Azusa Pacific University. She hopes to be done with four more classes by the first of May and then will have four more classes in June, with assigned work the rest of the year. She should finish all of her class work by May of 1999 and then have a year to finish her final thesis. Lord willing, she’ll have her degree by May of 2000.

I continue to be busy-often times too busy. School continues to go well and I learn to delegate more and more. We’ll be finishing our Theater Arts building this summer and adding a Technology room on to the Library, Lord willing. We continue to be blessed with wonderful harmony among the staff and school board, which makes my job a lot easier!

Thanks again for your continue prayers for our work. The Lord continues to bless in many ways. We learn more and more to seek his will and fit ourselves into His will. Pray that we will always be open to His leading!

Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to: Franklin Christian Church - franklin.christian.church@usa.net
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Dominican Update Newsletter Feb 1988