“Spirit Lead Me”

Good Morning!

It is 6:30AM, and I am sitting in the DFW airport getting ready to fly to Miami and then on to Santo Domino, Dominican Republic.  I will arrive in the capital at 3:00PM Eastern Time. I am nervous about this new desire to become a “blogger.” I have never been the best writer so everyone will have to bear with me. I am hoping that you all will be able to become informed about all that The Lord is doing in me and the lives of others this summer.  All I can think about at this time is one of my new favorite songs by Hillsong United called, “Oceans.” My favorite lyrics are as follows:

“Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior”

I love the powerful words of this song. The Lord worked in crazy ways to present this opportunity to me for this summer, and I cannot thank Him enough for allowing me to embark on this journey.  These words show the importance of completely devoting all my trust and my whole life to the Lord and allowing Him to use me in ways I could never imagine. I am so excited to see what He has planned!

Anyway, I am going to be boarding my plane soon so I need to hurry up and explain a bit about my summer!  I will be living with a host family in a small community called La Esquina(The Corner) in the northeastern part of The Dominican Republic.  The community has somewhere between 200-300 people living there. You will not find it on the map, so don’t even try! It is near a city called Nagua, if you are interested in seeing close to where me and two of my friends will spend our time.  I, as well as Taylor Whittlesey and Alicen Bessire, will be teaching teachers at a school in our community how to implement gardening curricula into their school.  This school is shared by five other communities and around 500 children attend.  The gardening curricula we are using is Junior Master Gardener, and our particular curriculum that we are teaching is called “Learn, Grow, Eat and Go!”  This program contains concepts, activities, and crafts focused on gardening and the nutrition it provides. Our goal is to teach and explain to teachers the first four concepts in the curriculum so that in the fall they will be able to implement this program into their school.  The first week I am there will just be spent getting adjusted to the new culture, practicing my Spanish as well as meeting the community.  The following four weeks will be spent by teaching a concept per week from our curriculum to the teachers.  We decided slowing it down and allowing a week for the teachers to completely understand the curriculum would be best.  Hopefully they can even practice the activities and crafts on the children that decide to hang around the school during the summer.  After we have completed the training on the curricula we will actually plant a garden! After we have planted the garden, we will just spend time explaining to the teachers how a garden works and how the concepts we have taught them apply to the garden.  I will have access to the internet, but I am not certain how often.  I will try to post some updates every few days and I of course will upload pictures. If you have a Facebook, be sure to like the page titled “The Dominican Experience” and there you will find updates from Taylor, Alicen, and me! Also, feel free to email me at kinseynicolejeffers@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you! I cannot wait to see how the Lord works this summer. Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers over the next nine weeks.

Te quiero mucho,

Kinsey