Sophi and Raena meet Wilson



Saturday after Thanksgiving we were able to visit with Wilson and his mother, Tatiana. Wilson is a 9 year-old boy who lives in the Hole in Santiago. We got to meet him when he started attending our nutrition center in order to get one good meal in him a day. His mother eventually started cooking for the center. Before long she became a Christian. Wilson was born with a severe birth defect affecting his bowel and urinary tract. He has suffered infection after infection and experiences a lot of pain with his condition. For years we have been trying to find him help and in the last two months the right contacts were finally made.

After having met a willing pediatric surgeon on the golf course, Brook, our founder, connected with the right guy. Within two weeks a meeting was scheduled at Kosair Childrens Hospital and Vicki went to meet with the head of the hospital and key decision makers in order to present Wilson's case. The hospital administration agreed unanimously to treat Wilson for free and within a week all of the necessary paperwork was filed and Tatiana and her son were awarded medical visas to the US.

They are being hosted state-side by ministry friends who home school and are fluent in Spanish. Medically, Wilson is receiving the best care possible as well as one on one education. We were blessed to stop by and share with he and his mother that Saturday afternoon. Within about 5 minutes Sophi and Raena had completely overcome the language barrier and all we could hear were shouts and giggles in the other room.




We were delivery personnel on this visit. While at the G.O. Ministries’ Women’s Conference in La Vega in the DR, Vicki was given many encouraging letters from the women from the church in the Hole that had been written to love on Tatiana. Needless to say, they were a welcome gift. We were able to sneak this photo while she was reading. What a blessing to have them here and have the opportunity to love them well.

To get more info on Wilson’s story visit G.O.s web here

To keep up to date on Wilson’s progress follow him on G.O.’s Facebook page here

Blessed to be Doctors to Our Doctors: Part II

We're grateful to be able to share with you Wave 3's coverage of Eliezar's recieving of his Baha at the Hueser Hearing Institute.




Vicki also took footage and captured the moment Eliezar heard for the first time. You can see that here.

Blessed to Be Doctors to Our Doctors

Dr. Vladimir and Dr. Auris Canela serve as doctors with G.O. Ministries. They could certainly have chosen to start their own practice, but instead, they chose to serve the poor through a daily medical clinic in Hoya del Caimito, Santiago, Dominican Republic. Their medical knowledge, compassion, and care heal the hurts and pains of many people who would not be able to afford medical care on the island. They work in conjunction with local churches traveling with medical teams to remote sugarcane villages, landfills where multiple families are trying to survive, and remote communities far from medical facilities found in the city throughout the year to treat patients as well. In an average three day clinic, they see and treat up to 1,200 people.



On January 3, 2011 they welcomed a son, Eliezer Rosario Canela. In the midst of their excitement, they noticed something strange about his underdeveloped ears. After a visit to an audiologist, it was confirmed that he had a hearing loss due to bilateral microtia with the ear canal. As doctors, they desperately want to help their son, but his issue is out of their realm of expertise. The audiologist told them Eliezer is a great candidate for a Baha, an external bone conduction device that would enable him to hear, but there is not a Cochlear Clinic that provides such services and technology on the island. They know that time is of the essence and greatly desire for their son to hear their voices.

This is a scenario that Vicki and I are all too familiar with and we have intimate connections in terms of the sort of resources that Vladi and Auris need for their son. We have been able to secure pro bono services on behalf of Eliezer Rosario from Heuser Hearing Institute where our daughters attended school for 3 years and receive audiological services; we have received at the very last minute word that Cochlear is donating the necessary equipment amounting to close to $4000, and in collaboration with some of our partners we have raised just over $7000 to help cover all of this families expenses related to the Baha, additional services, travel and hosting.

The final piece of this whole process came together during our service in the Dominican last week. We were able to get letters from the American doctors in Kentucky confirming the dates/appointments and details of the services being provided on behalf of Eliezer. This was the evidence needed in order for a visa to be awarded to Auris and Eliezer for travel to the US. They got it!!

Today we will be picking up Auris and Eliezer at the Louisville International Airport and hosting them during their brief 10 day stay. We are blessed to be a part of this ministry to this family and grateful to report to you that your support of us through your use of the Kroger gift card frees us to do this kind work on behalf of others in Jesus’ name!

Please be in prayer for Vladimir, Auris and Eliezer. Specifically pray that all of the treatment goes well and that Auris and Eliezer are blessed by their time with us here in Louisville. They arrive on the 11th of August, have appointments throughout the week and return on the 19th to the Dominican where Dr. Vladi will be waiting to speak to his son and be heard for the first time!

Our daughters Sophi and Raena have Cochlear Implants. Eliezer will be receiving a Baha seen here.

Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel! It extends through us to others who are serving his Kingdom through the gift of medicine.

Hope for Daadli: Part II



We first wrote about Daadli several weeks ago. We’re excited to report that her severe cleft palette has been corrected as of this past Thursday, June 28th. Here she is today!


Much thanks and gratitude to Cross Point Community Church, Operation Smile, Moise and the G.O. Team for helping to make this happen!

The Rogers family will be meeting Daadli fact-to-face in just a few weeks. Looking forward to introducing our daughters to this little lady at the nutrition center in Brisas!

Grace & Peace,

The Rogers







Pray for Our Drilling in Phaeton, Day II (Drill Trouble)



This is the rig we are using in Phaeton, Haiti. As of 4:12pm EST the rig is down. Our drilling team is currently trying to repair it. Yesterday, June 2nd, they were able to drill 60 feet into the ground. Today has been slow going and we think we've only gained another 10 feet. The capacity of this unit is 150 feet. Pray the rig gets repaired and that they can stay at it until water is struck. Pray that there is water to strike!



View Larger Map

This is Phaeton in the map above.


Pray this prayer with us based on Isaiah 35:5:

"Lord, we beg of you, let the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Cause the lame to leap like deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Make water gush forth in the wilderness and create streams in the desert. By your will cause the burning sand to become a pool, the thirsty ground to become bubbling springs. We pray that your grace embrace the people of Phaeton and that by your mercy you would renew their land. We ask all of this for your glory. Amen."

Pray for our Drilling in Phaeton



I spoke to my dear friend and colleague (pictured with me above in Phaeton), Tim Krauss, today, June 1st while he was at the Dominican/Haitian border waiting to enter Haiti. After completing the temporary church/dormitory facility in Phaeton, Haiti, we’re ready to move forward with phase I of the water project i.e. finding some.

Over the next 3 days we will be drilling in an effort to hit deep, fresh water in Phaeton. The current wells in this coastal town are salty and unusable for drinking. The nearest fresh water is 2 kilometers away.

PLEASE PRAY that we hit fresh water. A fresh water well in this community would be a tremendous accomplishment and benefit to the 2500 plus people that live here!
We’ve introduced you to Phaeton, before. Take another look.


G.O.'s Partnership wit the Church in Phaeton, Haiti from Jeff Rogers on Vimeo.



Thanks!

Paying a Dealer’s Debt: Paid in Full-Part III

On a Sunday this past March we celebrated Ella’s 1st birthday. Family, friends and friends from the neighborhood gathered to celebrate her birth. We were blessed by the diversity of this group, people from so many walks of life, one of them, a former drug dealer and pimp. That’s right, at Ella’s first birthday party you’d be hard pressed to find a clown but you could find a former pimp/drug dealer. And he was only there because of the power of the Gospel! We introduced you to Jonesy back in September of 2010 (if you’re catching up read about that here) who changed his name to Al as a means of turning over a new leaf and signifying the beginning of turning away from the path of destruction (read about that here).
We reported in “Paying a Dealer’s Debt: Part II” that a friend and supporter of ours asked, “Would that expense and effort really amount to anything?” And we confessed that we didn’t know but we hoped so.

We had asked you to pray the following:
“Please pray for “Al” and his recovery, for his friendships in the shelter, for those from the community group that will be going to visit him on a regular basis. Pray that “Al” finds a job and sticks with it. Pray that through all of the efforts to serve him and love him that he encounters Jesus and falls in love with him.”

Today we are pleased, blessed and excited to report that Al's debts are paid in full! Expense and effort expressed in Jesus’ name amounts to everything! Please take a moment to hear Al’s testimony read by Brooks Ritter (the man who hosted us in his home the night Al’s dog got shot) and witness his baptism at Sojourn (done by Jeremiah Taylor).









Thank you for your prayers and your partnership in the Gospel!









Please continue to pray for Al’s journey of faith!

Grace & Peace,

The Rogers

Batey 9 Update

Jeff recently led an exploratory trip to in the Dominican and took the leaders he was working with to visit Pastor William Decena, a local leader G.O. has worked in partnership with for years. William was born a sugar cane cutter in the Southwestern part of the Dominican Republic and grew up practicing Vodou, his culture’s typical religious expression. A visiting pastor convinced William of his need of the Gospel. Becoming a Christian led William’s immediate family to disown him. William became a leader in the church and later planted a church in Batey 9. As the church has grown he has raised up and sent out two Timothys, each having planted new churches in two more Bateys.

A Batey (sugar cane community) is an arm pit. It’s very existence is the bitter fruit of racism, nationalism and classism working in tandem to oppress a people and impoverish them on purpose. 15 years ago most children that you saw were naked and malnourished and the houses they lived in were made of sticks and mud. Today malnutrition persists but less so thanks to William’s nutrition center where he feeds 80 to 100 children daily. The kids mostly have clothes. Most of the homes are block. There is a school (pre-k to 4th grade) a public park, a basketball court, a baseball field (doubles as a soccer field), a latrine to every two to four houses, curbs and sidewalks, access to well water throughout the community, a water tower to serve as a water back-up, a library with a computer lab (brand new) and a water purification system that has recently been installed. All of this has been accomplished through William’s advocacy on behalf of his community in Jesus’ name. It is a powerful picture of renewal and what a combined Christian effort can do to bring about redemption, renewal and restoration.

Check out Jeff’s brief video tour of the library in Batey 9.



Your prayer support and financial partnership with us aids us in empowering and advocating on behalf of local leaders like William. Thank you!

Hope for Daadli, The fruit of Partnership




Crosspoint Community Church in Nashville, TN are fantastic partners! It was our pleasure to connect them with Pastor Moise, a Haitian pastor in the Dominican Republic serving the Haitian migrant working population there in Santiago. This partnership in the Gospel has been filled with many blessings and many joint ventures. We just wanted a moment to share a recent victory with you that was unexpected and glorious! Crosspoint has partnered with G.O. for years and just this past year completed the church and nutrition center in Brisas on behalf of the Haitian church. In March of 2011 they began funding the nutrition center for the children of Brisas in need. Crosspoint sent a team down who helped with the grand opening. They met Daadli, the little girl pictured above, and were filled with compassion. Erika and Lisa of Crosspoint really connected with Daadli. In an effort to report on their trip and garner support to help Daadli, Lisa, wrote the following:


“What do you do when community is all you have but your community wants nothing to do with you? That’s a question I faced recently on my trip to the Dominican Republic with Cross Point and G.O. Ministries. As a part of our mission work, our team made daily visits to the feeding center at Brisas Church, Cross Point’s sister church in the Dominican Republic. It was there I met this sweet little girl, Daadli.


Daadli is three and as you can already see, was born with a severe cleft palate. It restricts her from being able to talk and eating is extremely challenging for her. What is also a challenge is her opportunity to interact with the other children.


Imagine living every day where children point at you and run away. They look into your eyes with fear and confusion, wondering what is wrong with you and as a result, you are completely alienated from your community.


In the world these beautiful children live in, community is everything. There are no video games and not a lot of toys. So children gather outside of their homes from dusk to dawn and play together. During my entire stay in the Dominican, I never saw a single child playing alone. Except for Daadli. I always found her sitting in a corner, staring into space with no one to play with.


At Cross Point, so many of us have been impacted by the power of community. It’s a large part of how we grow in our walk with Christ. Many of us gather weekly in each other’s homes within our community groups. We strive to serve our outside community on Serving Saturdays. And whenever a misfortune strikes another, we rally together to lift them up and restore them as best we can.
Community has been such a blessing in my life and the lives of others at Cross Point. Now, I desire nothing more than to help Daadli experience the joy of community in her own.


Cleft palate surgery is a remarkably common procedure, performed by dozens of medical missionaries each year in underdeveloped nations. Members of our mission team were so impacted by Daadli that we are now on a “mission” back here in the States to help her. With prayer and persistence, we are hoping to fund corrective surgery for Daddli that could dramatically change the appearance of her cleft palate and the quality of her life.


We all know what it’s like to have backs turned against us. We also know the feeling that occurs when our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ invite us with arms wide open into their community. I’m hoping we can do that very same thing for Daadli.


1 Samuel 2:8 ‘He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.’”


Since that March trip and a couple of young ladies' willingness to start a conversation on behalf of this sweet child, G.O. Ministries has connected with Operation Smile that has a headquarters in Santo Domingo, the capitol. They have agreed to treat Daadli for free. In fact, they treat all poor children for free and have requested that we keep an eye out (we work in 34 different communities on the island) and send any children we find their way! What an awesome new Partnership!
So we are grateful for the Partnership in the Gospel that we share with Crosspoint and Moise that started long before Daadli was even born. Before Daadli was born the Lord was already weaving together a network around her that would ultimately offer her hope and healing. We’re just blessed to be a part of such a network!

News Coverage One Year Later: Part II

News Coverage One Year Later...

Last year on the 12th of January Jeff was leading an exploratory trip and felt the ground shake at a local elders home in the impoverished barrio of Hato del Yaqui in the Dominican Republic.

Quake in the DR from Jeff Rogers on Vimeo.



We thought it was just a mild tremor. What followed was devestating. How God leveraged our ministry to respond was tremendous and humbling. One year later there is still so much more to be done. Much thanks to Wave 3 for reminding Louisville, Ky of the continued need to serve.



We're blessed to be able to respond...

Grace & Peace,

The Rogers

Pieces of Cane II: We the People...



The following is a direct quote from someone responding to a text to donate fundraiser on behalf of G.O.’s Haiti restoration efforts on Facebook:

“although they need the help...I believe in helping home land first...then spread out....something we have ALL failed to do.”

We should start out by saying that we have no intention of judging the person who made this statement. They may or may not agree with the Christian worldview that drives us and informs our posture towards the world. We get it. It’s a belief we too used to share. It’s a position that we used to hold even as Christians, but it’s a position that ultimately ends up being unfaithful to the implications of the Gospel which is what we came to discover over time.

The sentiment assumes an “us first, others second (maybe)" mentality. A close reading of the Scriptures (Galatians 3:28 might be a start) simply won’t allow for that kind of division or order of care. We’re dealing with this “us first” sentiment in the “Pieces of Cane” series both because it’s something we legitimately had to struggle to understand and also because it is a false obstacle for many to get intentionally and powerfully involved in making a difference for the Kingdom both locally and globally.

Why is helping the homeland first or taking care of our problems first before helping “them” problematic?

The title of this post is “We the people.” The reason for that is because at root how we understand ourselves as a people will affect how we carry ourselves in the world. From a Christian perspective the sentiment to help the homeland first or “our own” first is based on a case of mistaken identity, namely our own. As Christians we have a deeper citizenship than the one described by our nationality. Our identities in Christ unite us across national, political and ethnic boundaries joining us in a political body called the Kingdom of God that dynamically has been established, is coming and will be fulfilled. This unity in Christ, this political reality trumps all other allegiances that would divide it. In Jesus Christ there is no more “us” and “them" i.e. Galatians 3:28. Our “homeland” describes us socially and culturally but our identity resides in the person and presence of Jesus Christ.

There are far too many Christians in the United States that are Americans first (you can sub-categorize that as far down as you’d like from Democrat first or Republican or black or white or Hispanic, etc.). We confess that this was a path that we had been on for quite some time. We are not judging those on such a path. We are stating, however, that it is a wrong path to be on, one we’ve struggled to leave. The label needs to shift from American Christian to Christian American. That may seem an insignificant adjustment but what it means is that the Kingdom of God becomes the dominant story and ultimate reality, not any other story. It means that we can’t make of ourselves an “us” that does not include every “other” that exists in the world because Jesus has made himself available to the world and died for it, not just the people of a specific geographic location.

So the “We” of "we the people" must be understood in a Christian context to include everyone who draws a breath. Ultimately, this is the answer given the law expert in his effort to justify himself before Jesus by asking, “and who is my neighbor?” It should not surprise us that Jesus would raise the bar for us far higher than we ever would ourselves. When we recognize that “We” means “All” in the Kingdom of God it delivers us from the “neighbor confusion” that would lead us to only help those considered to be a part of our “in group.” When we try to draw up lines that create insiders and outsiders Jesus would simply ask us “and who was a neighbor?” and then, assuming we got the answer right, he would tell us to go and do likewise. Doing likewise, at least for us, proves to be a process of learning and failing and sometimes getting it right.

Today or this week or this month, a year after the quake or whenever this post happens to find you, would you consider responding to the need of our neighbors in Haiti by texting GOHAITI to 85944 to donate $10 to G.O. Ministries efforts in restoring Haiti? Would you allow this to be one modest way that you can be a neighbor to those suffering in Haiti? It's a means of providing a meal for a boy, education for a student, medical treatment for someone who might not get it otherwise. It can literally save a life. Of course, you can always do more. To find out how just click on "contact us." We'll be glad to help you.

You can also make an online donation here.

Grace & Peace,

The Rogers