Dear Bill and Karen,
May the grace and peace and love of our Lord fill you and your family, and may His mercy be new upon you every day, giving you much spiritual wisdom in everything.
I am Ana Griselda Ramirez de B., pastor at the Child Development Center in the Dominican Republic that is attended by your sponsored child. I thank you, very much for sponsoring Stuard, because the help he receive from you is very important in his development.
Our community is characterized for being surrounded by sugarcane. Our children love baseball and one of our work sources is motorcycle taxis. We are a little way from the city and our people are kind.
Currently, one of our biggest challenges as a community is to face the big problem there are with water supply and electric energy. Also as a church; our challenge is being able to change people's way of thinking. We try to provide all the necessary help, so our teenagers do not get pregnant, all that in Jesus' Name.
One of our goal through the Center is to impact every day our youths, so they may be good Christians, better children, good students and excellent human beings. We know this will also impact their families and will lead us to having a better society.
We can see that our children and those who don't attend to the center are different. We see ours know more and are better about the Lord's Word, they use more courtesy rules and are more responsible. We are proud to say that last year we had three children who confessed the Lord.
We want to tell you that in previous months, a girl from the center opened a pressure pot in her house, and it exploded. She suffered from severe burnings due to the accident, but thank God, the church and the Center, she got assistance and her parents were really thankful.
Currently, the church is working beyond Compassion's program with a baseball ministry that works 4 days per week. Two of these days they work on mornings and evenings and that has been well accepted by the community and has had great impact.
I also want to tell you that it is a wonderful blessing to see the joy our children feel when they receive a letter from their sponsor. I can witness some of them have taken their letters and run around all the center, while shouting, "Mi sponsor sent me a leeeeeeettter!"; but those who don't receive a letter feel really anxious and hope they can receive one and hear about their sponsor. Therefore, I encourage you to keep on writing, or write for the first time some lines to your beloved Stuard every time you can.
I also want to tell you that recently our ecclesiastical council had a meeting to discuss our ministries that need the most support are teenagers' and family's. I ask you, then, to pray vigorously for these ministries in our local church, so they can be a blessing.
I say goodbye while really thankful, because we can count on your sponsorship of Stuard, and because I know you love every one of our children.
May God bless you richly and abundantly. Amen.
If you would like to sponsor child from this project, there are a number of children available on Compassion's website and some even have videos! You can see all the waiting children from DR-002 here.
