Sunday, May 1, 2011
Paraguay? Volleyball?!
April 25, 2011
Dear Family and Friends,
The trip is 2 weeks long, May 15 to May 30 and will be in the Paraguayan capital, Asuncion. We will be teaming up with a local ministry, New Horizon Methodist School, who are organizing the exhibition games we will be playing and translators to translate as we share our testimonies and present the Gospel. Besides some Christian schools, we’ll be able to use volleyball as a tool to share Christ in several public schools. The team will also work with a local church in the countryside. It’s going to be a busy time – we’ll play several games a day and be involved in many kinds of ministry!
I have never been on a trip like this and I am looking forward to see how God works as well as how a sports evangelism trip is operated. I am also very excited to put my love for volleyball and my love for the Lord and missions together and use them simultaneously.
The trip will cost $1,500 round trip. Because I have come into this a bit late, I’m urgently praying that God will provide the funds quickly. Would you be a part of my support team? Gifts are tax deductible. Checks should be made out to RMI and sent to:
RMI
5475 Lee St. Suite 301
Lehigh Acres, FL 33971
(They’ve graciously agreed to receipt funds for me and forward them to the missionary I’ll be working with in Paraguay. Be sure to enclose a note that the gift is for Dawn Shoemaker.)
Would you be a part of my prayer team? Without your prayers, God’s work cannot move forward! I need your prayers!
The trip is only 3 weeks away, I still have papers to finish and finals to take to finish up my sophomore year here at Trinity College. So pray for me as I finish up my classes, pack up my room, work on getting my passport, Paraguayan visa and pack (it’s almost winter there!) for the trip.
Pray that we have a safe trip.
Pray for the salvation of those who we get to talk to.
Pray God opens hardened hearts.
Pray for spiritual growth of the team going down.
Pray that God provides for the trip financially.
Pray for our leaders on the trip.
Pray especially for me for spiritual growth, to grasp the missionary aspect of the trip, to be able to evangelize beyond the language barrier, to be a living witness to those around me.
Excited to serve God!
Dawn
Questions for me? My email is definitelydawn@hotmail.com. I’ll be posting updates on my blog again, definitelydawn.blogspot.com.
Questions for my dad? His email is dan.shoemaker@rminet.org.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
This is real life
January 12, 2010 changed life as Haiti knew it forever. It has been a defining moment for Haitians around the world just as 9/11 has been for Americans. How can a nation so desperately poor endure the loss of 250,000 people, all of it’s infrastructure, government buildings, businesses and countless schools, churches and homes all in less than 30 seconds?
How can it rebuild? Rebuilding implies that there was something there of worth in the first place. In many instances this wasn’t the case.
A late season hurricane hit the southern peninsula hard, severely affecting crops.
Cholera has reared its ugly head and killed over 3,600.
Life was hard before. Agonizing more often describes it now. But this is real life. It is inescapable and unforgettable.
The world has forgotten for the most part. There have been other happenings that have grabbed the headlines.
We here at RMI have not forgotten, and never will!! It was a “game changer” for us. It brought about a paradigm shift within RMI. One day we were solely involved in the Sister Church Program and Hope for Kidz. The next we were thrust into disaster recovery: organizing and delivering medical and relief supplies, flying in medical personnel, and organizing and delivering relief food aid. Our missionaries and national staff worked tirelessly for months trying to meet the needs of the earthquake survivors.
In response to the ongoing needs for transitional housing, RMI started the Homes for Haiti Program. To date, 28 homes have been built and the material for 24 more homes are in customs. Monies are still needed for homes. There are so many families that need them!!
In response to the ongoing hunger issue, RMI started the Food for Haiti Program. Since this program began 6 months ago, we’ve been able to distribute 540,000 meals – just think about that! God has been at work.
The Hope for Kidz Program is now providing a hot meal for over 1,300 kids every school day. Not only is it meeting nutritional needs of kids, it has become an evangelistic tool. Once people heard that the schools were providing a free hot lunch, they flocked to the school, transferring their kids so they could be a part of it. Those additional families are now exposed to the Gospel on a daily basis!
In response to the cholera issue, we have a cholera handout in creole for each Sister Church to pass out to their congregation and people in their community. This will go hand in hand with a seminar for the people in the community on how to prevent, recognize and treat cholera as well as how to properly treat water for drinking and cooking.
RMI is committed to coming alongside the Haitian people in meeting their needs and helping them as they travel the road to recovery. We are enabling people here in the US be a part of meeting those needs. Hands on ministry that makes a difference
Remember Haiti today. Don’t forget the Haitian people!
We will not forget!
RMI missionary, Amy Long, has many memories of that day and the long days that followed. Here is Amy Long's blog.
The Ft. Myers newspaper, The News-Press, has a reporter and photo journalist in Haiti this week. Besides their general reports, they are visiting several ministries from the Southwest Florida area who are ministering in Haiti. Thursday (tomorrow) they will be meeting with RMI President, Dan Shoemaker, and visiting some of the Homes for Haiti homes in Leogane. Look for links to those pictures and the report on this blog in the next couple of days. Once they return, there may also be a TV report on the local CBS affiliate. (Cool, huh?!)
Crosses mark the site of a mass grave Tuesday in Titanyen, just outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Bodies were brought to the spot after the devastating earthquake of one year ago today (Andrew West/news-press.com)
You can find more News-Press photos here. Reporter Rachel Revehl’s, article for today can be found here.
Additional resources:
Haitians rely on faith-based organizations (video from ABC News)
Haitians turn to God at quake anniversary (Yahoo.com article)
Franklin Graham's crusade in Port-au-Prince (BillyGraham.org)
US Ambassador: Progress in Haiti is slow but real (The Washington Post)
In Haiti, Hope is the last thing lost (Wall Street Journal article)
We know that Haiti’s hope and answer is in Jesus Christ. We are excited that God is using us and you to make an impact!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Thanksgiving 2010
The week of November 22 I wondered if they sold “pop outs” (like large RVs have to create extra rooms) for houses. If they did, I would have seriously considered getting a couple of them. I wasn’t sure how 18 people would fit in the house! Not only was all of Dan’s family coming (11 people), but Dawn was home from college and Devon’s girlfriend, Daiquiri, and Devon’s roommate, Kyle, and his girlfriend, Jules, were joining us, too.
I pondered it while I got the house ready, made the menu and tried to not panic in trying to figure out how to cook 3 turkeys. I’m so thankful and grateful that Dawn arrived the day before Thanksgiving! She was a huge help in making ALL that stuffing, prepping and cooking 2 turkeys the night before. The pies, 1 more turkey and other food was cooked the next morning. It was a lot of food for a lot of people!
We solved the problem of space by turning the breakfast area into a buffet line and after moving things around on the lanai, moved the breakfast table there. Together with the lanai table, that gave us enough space. The 10 young people could be together and 8 of us “old people” enjoyed our expanded dining room table. So I guess I didn’t need the “pop outs” anyway.
Dan and I….still smiling after all the cleaning, cooking & moving furniture around.
My wonderful mother-in-law making gravy. We joked that she found out how to get out of doing anything else – just volunteer to make gravy. We all wanted a lot of gravy, so she made a huge pot. But it just wouldn’t boil! She stood there for a very, very long time stirring and stirring AND STIRRING! Everyone was hungry, picking away at the turkey carcass and the food was ready, but still it didn’t boil. My sister-in-law, Rosie, Mom and I stood there and watched it make first one bubble, then another….and another. Finally! We called everyone to gather for the prayer and were finally able to put it on the table. I’m not sure she’s going to volunteer to make gravy again.
Dawn and her PopPop.
Brother and Sister
Seriously, don’t ask me how those young people could play volleyball after all that food! It was 86 degrees – hot for Thanksgiving Day, even in Southwest Florida. They came dragging into the house later blaming the really badly played game on too much food and too much heat. Go figure!
One more thing. There were leftovers. A LOT of leftovers. Everyone was sent home with turkey, dressing, gravy and whatever else they wanted. AND we actually had turkey leftovers for ourselves! Turkey sandwiches, turkey potpie, turkey stew and turkey….well, you get the idea. The leftovers are the best part!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Revenge of Household Appliances
Recently we experienced what seems like the revenge of household appliances. As new suburbanites, we knew that things seem to happen in clusters, and we certainly experienced that recently. Our adventure started on a Saturday. Dan and I got up fairly early to get ready to join Devon at the Ultimate Frisbee National Championships in Sarasota. We wanted to be on the road by 9. As Dan was showering, I retrieved the bathroom area rugs from the laundry room where they’d been washed the day before. When I came back into the bathroom to put them down before Dan got out of the shower, I saw that the toilet was overflowing. Icky water was everywhere! I ran to get some junk towels to soak it up. I placed the towels around and Dan took the lid off the toilet tank to work on things to make it stop flowing. There was so much water that I ran back to get another armful of junk towels and a bucket. While I was getting them from the laundry room, I heard a loud CRASH. When I got back to the bathroom, I found a very unhappy husband picking up the tank lid, which was in about 30 pieces, and putting it into the trashcan! He had been trying to sop up the water and grabbed a towel that was behind him, not realizing that the lid was sitting up on the towel. When he pulled the towel, the lid went crashing. It was clearly not a superglue job. We worked for over an hour cleaning up the floor, unplugging the toilet and then cleaning the toilet and floor with Lysol! We finally got on the road to Sarasota about 10:30. And we now have a lidless toilet tank.
[We had a great day with Devon watching the Frisbee Championships. It is an intense sport! Played with a Frisbee, or more correctly called a disk, it is played on a soccer sized field and is part soccer, part basketball, part football and is self governed. There are official “observers” that are there to watch and settle disputes. Everyone knows the rules and “ref” themselves. There are terms for all the moves, passes and fouls. It’s a complete subculture! There were 30 fields set up (yes, 30 fields – it was a huge venue!), teams from all over the US and hundreds of people there. Devon’s team took 2nd in Florida and went to the Regional playoffs but didn’t place to participate in the Nationals. It was fun meeting much of Devon’s team and watching the games with Devon. We had to laugh because since the average player is between the ages of 21 and 32, we were the oldie goldies – definitely out of our demographic.]
Monday evening the wind up garden hose holder betrayed us. We have the kind that is attached to the wall and conveniently winds the hose up using a handle. It’s a great system that is very helpful to me. After several very dry and hot Florida days, I needed to water the various flowers and plants in the yard. I grabbed the nozzle and began to pull on it as I usually do. After a couple of feet, instead of freely rolling out, it stopped and the entire hose holder disintegrated. It split wide open, dropping chunks of plastic on the ground. I don’t know, sure seems like it should have latest more than 1 1/2 years!
We had just bought a 2nd one to install on the side of the house, so Dan had to use that one to replace the broken unit. That wasn’t what we’d planned and now we’re going to have to buy yet another one. Did I even need to say that?
The next day, Dan took a small thermos of coffee to work with him. He set it on one of the back seats in our van, next to a cream colored throw blanket that I keep in the car. When we arrived, we found that it had leaked all over the place…the seat and the throw were a mess. Dan sopped up as much as he could with paper towels. When we got home that evening, I washed the throw to get the coffee out.
The next morning I went to put it in the dryer. When I opened the washer I was greeted with the throw sitting in a washer full of soapy water. It hadn’t finished the wash cycle. I thought it was a little curious but I went ahead and started it again before I left for work. That evening I checked it and found the same thing! The throw was sitting in a machine full of water. My heart sunk because I knew that this probably meant an expensive service call. I couldn’t understand what the issue was, so I pulled a chair into the laundry room, started the machine and sat and watched it as it progressed through it’s wash cycle. But it didn’t get very far before it shut down. It just wouldn’t spin the water out. I was disgusted. I thought for sure this nice washer was supposed to last longer. I left the throw in the machine.
The next morning at breakfast I broke the bad news to Dan. The washer was broken and we needed to have a service call. Since Dan was leaving in 2 days on a week long ministry trip, we needed it fixed as soon as possible. After work that day, I got a bucket and fished the throw out. I rinsed it by hand in the kitchen sink and wrung it out (by hand) while Dan watched the machine NOT do its cycle. He went online and researched the issue and possible fix. After a while, he went in to work on it. I wasn’t sure what he could do since it is a front loading machine with electronic controls. And after a bit, he called me to say that he’d fixed it but I needed to come look at something. He discovered that there was a trap that he could access easily. When he pulled it out he found that it was jam packed and clogged with what looked like cotton batting. It was bigger than his fist.
We’re not sure where it came from. Could the wad of used coffee paper towels have been scooped up in the throw and washed with it? Dan swears he threw those paper towels away. If not that, could it have been that the throw, which was a fuzzy, cuddly, soft chenille one, lose all it’s fuzzy, cuddly softness? Did it slough off all its “chenille”? I’d washed it before with no issues. Yet this is the only conclusion we can come up with. There was white fuzz all over the washer drum. We ran it through another wash cycle and cleaned out the trap again. We washed some junk towels, trying to get the fuzzes out of the washer – we didn’t want our clothes to come out covered in white fuzz.
While all this was going on, I shook the throw out outside. The air was full of fuzz. The ground was covered with fuzz; it looked like it had snowed just in that little area of the grass. I put it in the dryer thinking that I’d gotten it all shaken out. About a third of the way through the dry cycle, I stopped it and checked the lint screen. It was so full I could hardly get it out of it’s slot. There was enough fuzz to make another throw! “Well,” I thought, “that is that, all the fuzz is gone.” I put it in the dryer again. To be safe, after another 10 or 15 minutes, I checked the lint screen again. To my utter amazement and shock, I found yet another full batch of white fuzz. The 2 together were as big as a basketball. I dried the junk towels and got a bit more fuzz. Now tell me, how can a throw blanket disintegrate so much just by washing it??!! It is now not so fuzzy and literally threadbare – and still losing fuzz everywhere it goes. I’ve since put it in the garbage.
At least the coffee stain came out.
And the washing machine works just fine now. (What a great husband I have! He figured it out and took care of it, sparing us an expensive service call!!) I since have heard several stories of people having major “fuzz” issues with their chenille throws, but none as dramatic (traumatic, astounding?) as ours.
The cycle of revenge didn’t end there.
A few days after the fuzz attack I was vacuuming the house. I have a love/hate relationship with this vacuum cleaner. I love it because it works well, does hard floors and carpet, has a special cleaning head for the couch and a good baseboard/corner nozzle. I hate it because after less than a year, the on/off switch busted. Dan was able to bypass the switch and hardwire it so that when I plugged it in, it turned on. To turn it off, I had to go unplug it. A hassle, yes, but it worked. Eventually Dan installed a simple on/off switch on the cord. That worked for a while but one day it “blew up” (with spits, sparks, smoke and melted plastic) in my hands. I’m thankful I was not shocked. Dan hardwired it again. On = plug it in, off = unplug it.
This particular day I was just finishing the day’s vacuuming when the whole hardwire section disintegrated in my hands. It completely separated. I was left holding the “hot” end! Again, it was just God’s grace that I was not electrocuted. It is now hardwired again.
All this doesn’t take into account the belts that have busted and left oily marks on the carpet, smoked and stunk up the house. And no, we aren’t yet going to get a new one – can’t afford it.
……And the ice maker is chugging along. Ice makers are not supposed to chug. Dan has become an experienced ice maker repairman. We have a stand alone ice maker. I guess our many years in the tropics taught us to really appreciate and enjoy our ice! He’s replaced the cutting wires several times. He’s replaced the 2 different pumps a couple of times. We’ve learned that the chugging means that another pump needs to be replaced very soon.
I’m so thankful for a handy husband!! I couldn’t make it without him!
Thanksgiving is coming very soon. My prayer is that no more appliances will get it into their heads to act up, go on the fritz or otherwise go kaput. With 19 people expected for lunch that day, I need everything to hold up its end of the deal!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Jules is Home!!
Thursday, November 11, our dear friend and colleague, Jules Gedna and his wife, Marthe, returned home to Haiti! Many of you have been praying for him and following his progress this past year and a half as he has made his journey through the bone cancer treatments and then a bone marrow transplant. It’s been a tough year in many ways. His health was precarious for most of those days. He and his wife didn’t know many people in Boston, not to mention it was very cold there! For several months they had to live with a future niece-in-law before they were able to move to a small basement apartment. Having no transportation, they had to rely on buses to get them to doctor appointments, grocery shopping, etc. Yet through it all, Jules always had a smile on his face and that same humble, sweet attitude that we all know and love. He was encouraged by visits from friends who traveled great distances just to be with him for a few hours, by the many cards and letters that he received and by phone calls from many people. His 2 sons were able to visit from Atlanta on several occasions.
He was declared cancer free by his doctors, but Hurricane Tomas delayed his return 2 weeks ago. All of the RMI staff and many missionaries that knew them were at the Cayes airport when the plane landed Thursday afternoon. They were surprised and overwhelmed to see so many people there to celebrate their homecoming. From there they were taken to the home of RMI missionary, Rob Thompson, where a welcome home dinner was held for them and the RMI staff. Once they finally got to their house, many more friends came by to greet them. You can see pictures of his return here.
Thank you for your prayers for this dear man of God! Thank you for your financial gifts to help Jules and Marthe. They could not have made it if it hadn’t been for these prayers and financial gifts. Many thanks to Greg Stritch (CrossRoad United Methodist Church, Jacksonville, FL) who flew back with them (since Dan was not able to go in with them due to other commitments). He made sure everything went smoothly as well as helped cover their flight expenses. Thanks Greg!
They are both so excited to be home after all this time. When they left they thought it was for Jules to get his back issue attended to, never dreaming that it was bone cancer. We are so thankful and praise God that Jules is doing so well. Continue to pray for him. He still has to deal with back pain and has a ways to go to recover his strength. Since his return almost a week ago, he’s had a steady stream of visitors coming to see him. He is not only a pillar of RMI’s ministry, but is well loved and known to many people in the Cayes area. What a testimony!
Friday, November 5, 2010
Hurricane Tomas Update
Hurricane Tomas is on its way through the Windward passage today. RMI missionaries report that they experienced high winds from 2 – 4 a.m. Rains have been heavy as well. They expect more wind and rain during the day today. Locally they have seen a lot of branches and crop damage. So far the at least one of the rivers is still inside its banks. They felt that areas to the west of Cayes will have much more damage since the hurricane was closer to that area. They are contacting as many Sister Churches as possible. Port-a-Piment and Tiburon report that they are ok, but the crops are destroyed. Here are a few pictures from the Cayes area:
Flooded garden in the valley below the mission center
We are thankful that God answered everyone’s prayers and kept the eye off the coast. Continue to pray as Tomas is not yet gone! We’ll post more updates when we receive more information.
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