June 28, 2008

Many things have happened with and through the KCUCS World Missions Dominican Republic 08 Team since the last post, Wednesday, June 26, 2008. We will try to sight some of the highlights.

On Friday the whole team was officially received by the National Chief of Police with a ceremony. More on that in a bit. Let us first go through the events leading up.

On Thursday afternoon the team stayed in Bani. Most of the team headed back to the Haitian village where we had been a part of the life changing church service a couple nights before. The visited with the people once again as well as check and adjust those who had not received on our first night.

The other pàrt of the team went with Pastor Veronica to the radio station to do a program. It is a Christian station that reaches multitudes in the Domninican Republic. It is as well travels throughout the world via internet. We did a half hour show and it was an incredible opportunity to share.

The full team met back at our Villa. A group of 10 from the team went to a church service in Pastor Veronica´s church village (about a 30 minute drive on washed out dirt roads). We had brought a guitar with us and Pastor Veronica asked our team to lead Praise and Worship with the whole team upfront singing. Then an incredible thing happened that is hard to explain. One of the doctors from our team was upfront singing with the rest. He went out into the front row and grabbed a couple children and began dancing with them. It was at this moment the place went crazy and what a powerful experience it was. Even though the sound system was a little challenging the whole congregation was jumping up and down, singing, shouting and dancing to the Lord. The Haitian drummer and others from their Praise and Worship team joined in. A member of our team did the message and opened the alter up to pray with people. A little boy, 11 years old, had been deaf in the right ear was able to hear. It was amazing! I know this may be challenging for some reading this blog but we can only report what we saw. That little boys face said it all. He was in shock. Hearing for the first time in that ear was evident by the startled look he had. Being a small village, everyone knew the little boy and his story about being deaf. He had never heard out of that ear before and was having a difficult time processing what to think about it. Another person had come forward with hearing loss and her hearing was restored as well. The crowd saw the reaction of these two and the alters flooded. We had reports of eyesight returned and other incredible things. The team was not able to leave for a long time and we didn´t get back to our Villa until quite late. All was OK with us!

Friday the whole team loaded up our three vans and headed for Santo Domingo. We were officially greeted via Police escort to be received by the National Chief of Police. We arrived at the Police Academy and they had a ceremony. Even had one of the top Christian Artist from thee Dominican Republic playing piano and singing while the group entered as well as throughout the ceremony. Many TV cameras, photos, interviews for national TV, etc. It was much more than we knew was coming. We checked and adjusted all who were in attendance (about 300 police officers and their families).

We did a presentation about the team and Upper Cervical Care. We as well gave them instructions on what to do after the Correction to best protect it. The team was working at high efficiency processing all 300 in about a half hour. This seems like a short time, but when you have each person on the team contributing many people can be processed in a quality manner. We have already received many good reports from this group.

The Chief of Police´s wife and her Christian organization fed us lunch at a very nice restaurant. After all we had been through with the week I saw many plates heaped up to overflowing coming back from the buffet line.

After lunch we met with the Dominican Republic Secretary of State. He along with his family got checked by the doctors. It was another great meeting. All had positive responses to Upper Cervical Care.

The National Police, as a kind gesture, filled up our van gas tanks. They as well assigned us three Special Forces agents to guard us while we went to Christopher Columbus´s grave house and downtown shopping. It was quite funny when myself and another wondered off from the group. We had walked 4 or 5 blocks to somewhere that was a dead in. We turned around and one of the Special Agents was standing about 10 behind us. We about jumped out of our shoes from shock! How did he do that? We had no idea he was even following us. We turned around to him and he acted like he didn´t even know us. Maybe he was just keeping his cover. I think it was more that he was embarrassed because we had wondered in such a wrong direction. It was all fun.

The whole team ate at a great restaurant last night that overlooked the Christopher Columbus house. They had music with traditional dancing, etc. What a great time the whole team had. Then it was back in the vans, back to normal life at the Villa, arriving back about 1 a.m.

Everyone is chilling out today. 21 of us are in Bani this afternoon either shopping our adjusting more people. We will go to another Villa this evening and have a banquet with the team. Tomorrow we get up early and head to Santo Domingo and then onto Atlanta.

There really is much more to share but we are constrained by time. We wanted to give at least a taste. More pictures will be posted once we return unless an opportunity arises beforehand.

Thanks to all the families who willingly allowed and encouraged those close to you to come. It has been a transforming trip in many ways. We started out in a forgotten area in Dominican Republic without electricity, heat and less food than accustomed to the first day or two all the way to meeting the National Chief of Police and the Dominican Republic Secretary of State.

The full impact of what we have accomplished here will not be known for some time. I can see the changed faces within our group. It appears as though we have taken some important ground.

Thanks to all for praying for the mission and our safety. Also thanks to all who have been following along the blog and making the awesome comments. We will make one or two more posts once we return. We are going to hook up something where all the photo´s can be shared if any are interested. Hopefully, we can get around a 1000 photo´s up. It takes about 5 minutes here to upload one. That is why they are a little more sparse. BTW, one of the pictures above is the team meeting at the Police Academy. Another one is meeting the Chief of Police.