2015 Dominican Republic Trip Day 2

Today was the first real day of work on this trip to the Dominican Republic.  We began our teaching and discussion times as we covered a couple of topics.  The first pastor introduced the idea of how we are to study the Bible by offering some really good tools for study.  The people seemed to get most of it.  The second pastor began sharing about the Sermon on the Mount.  There is no way that we could cover Matthew 5-7 on this trip, so this pastor is taking a key passage from each chapter and doing a study through it.  Both of these men did a fantastic job (as did the translators).

I had the privilege of teaching on what the Gospel truly is and what role does baptism play.  Any time you want to talk about the Gospel, you can just bank on some things coming up.  There will be things that try to take the focus off and confusion to set in.  I am grateful that the Holy Spirit filtered a lot of the junk out so that we could clearly see what was important: the Gospel.  We had a really good discussion about whether baptism was necessary and when it should happen.

I believe that the highlight of the day (besides being able to FaceTime with my wife and boys) was the worship experience that we had at the beginning of the conference time.  Two guys who are helping out with HMM led in worship (see picture below).  They did a fantastic job.  God has given these young men talents beyond measure and a heart for worship.

One moment felt like the curtain was pulled back and we were actually worshipping at the feet of the King.  We were singing the song "I Surrender All".  In the room, we had Dominican Republic folks who speak Spanish... we had Haitians who speak a Creole type language... we had 4 Americans who spoke English... For a moment, you had all three groups singing the same song in their native tongue at the same time.  On the surface, you would think chaos... what took place was a thing of beauty.

Oh, what a day that will be when people from every tribe and nation come to the feet of Jesus and sing His praise together...