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January Newsletter

SHANNON’S CORNER
January 2018

Happy New Year!  The month of January in the Dominican Republic has three main holidays.  New Years Day on January 1st, Three Kings Day on January 6th and Juan Pablo Duarte Day on January 26th.  In understanding the Dominican culture it is important to understand the reasons why they celebrate various holidays.  Some holidays are very similar to ours and others are specific to those nations who were conquered by the Spaniards and still others are specific to their own country.  I want to share with you about these holidays.

Three Magi
Three Kings Day or “Día de Los Reyes,” is a holiday that was brought to the Dominican Republic when it was a Spanish colony.  This day represents when the Wise men came to celebrate the birth of Jesus in Matthew 2:1-11.  The traditional way this holiday was celebrated had been the children would write a letter to the wise men and leave it under their beds along with grass and water for the camels and mints and cigars for the wise men.  During the night the wise men would leave a toy under the child’s bed.  The tradition has changed over the recent years, as the children now know it is their parents who buy the gifts and not the wise men.  For many years, the children thought that the kind of toy they received resulted from either their behavior or grades in school.  But now they know it depends on what their parents are able to afford.  The children now usually go with their parents on Kings Day to the toy store and pick out their gift.  The representation of the gifts Jesus received of gold, frankincense, and myrrh are purification, a light to follow and intelligence.

Juan Pablo Duarte
Juan Pablo Duarte Day is a national holiday celebrated on January 26th, which was Duarte’s birthday.  Duarte was one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic.  The Dominicans were under the Haitian regime and so he founded a secret society called “La Trinitaria” or The Trinitarian, which was a political-military society that had clandestine meetings.  Duarte helped to unify the Dominicans together in order to rise up and fight for their independence, which eventually came in February 1844.  It was Duarte’s democratic ideals that became the main principles in forming the Dominican government.  School students do presentations and have exhibits on Juan Pablo Duarte.  They recite some of Duarte’s famous quotes such as, “To live without country is like living without honor.”  There are also parades throughout the country celebrating the life of Juan Pablo Duarte.  Another quote from Duarte, “God has granted me enough strength that I will not go to the grave without my country being free, independent and triumphant.”

As the New Year has begun so have our season for hosting service teams and our schools have restarted since returning from Christmas break.  New Years is also a time for new resolutions and goals.  Some of my ministry goals for this year are 1)to improve our summer intern orientation program; 2)to have our first debrief retreat for our first-term missionaries; 3)to have written job descriptions and a tool for annual evaluations for our missionaries; and 4)to participate in making a vision and strategies for member care as an organization.  A personal goal is to learn how to be a disciple maker and put it into practice by being a disciple maker with a couple of women and/or girls whom God places in my path.   

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,
as though God were making his appeal through us.”
2 Corinthians 5:20a

PRAYER REQUESTS
Praise the Lord for a great Christmas break!
Praise the Lord all our missionaries are safely back here in the DR!
Praise the Lord His beauty that surrounds us!
Praise the Lord for being a part of His ministry!
Pray for my spiritual walk…growth.
Pray for the different trainings that are and will be taking place (teachers, coaches & phys. Ed teachers, traumatized kids).
Pray for preparing and organizing a debrief retreat for 12 of our first-term missionaries at the end of February.
Pray for the planning of our summer program and our summer intern program.


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