What an exciting start to the semester! I don’t know that there is a much better way to begin a new semester and a new year of ministry than with a week of serving. Our team of ROC students, staff, and friends spent the week of January 4-11thin the Dominican Republic worshipping alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ at the church in Moca. This is ROC’s second time serving alongside this body of believers as we first met up with them in January of 2016. It was a lot like a joyful family reunion in many ways as we were able to pick back up where we left off with our friends.
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ROC Student Leader Dava Clark and
one of her friends she made in the D.R. |
Our week was full of leading worship, running Vacation Bible School for about 80 kids, sharing testimonies of what God was doing in our lives, visiting a nursing home (whose residents loved to dance), and playing games and loving on children at an orphanage. It was certainly a week of incredible blessings.
Throughout the week I kept thinking of the following verse from Romans… “so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5 NIV). It really is hard to put into words what it’s like to get the chance to experience the “bigness” of the body of Christ until you step outside of your normal context and experience the Church in other areas and within other cultures. Even with differences in language, styles of worship, and cultural norms there is this underlying reality that we belong to one another. Bottom line, I miss my Dominican Church family and cannot wait to return and see them again in a couple years.
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| Dodger entertaining the VBS crowd with some silly songs |
Another exciting development within the ROC community is the arrival of our new Associate Campus Minister, Noah Mulvaney. Some of you may recognize Noah from his time as an intern with ROC last year. Prior to coming to ROC, he spent time serving with Crossoads Missions in both New Orleans and Piedras Negras, Mexico. Noah originally hales from west Tennessee near Memphis. He officially started his tenure with ROC with us in the Dominican Republic last week. We are certainly happy to have him back with us once again and we look forward to the impact that he will be making within the ROC community in the coming years.
With all these exciting things happening, I nearly forgot to mention that it’s the second day of a new semester here in Athens. It’s been so good to catch back up with our students and hear how their time away from campus has been. We’ve definitely missed each of them over break. We have a great semester planned out for them, full of Bible Studies, Crosswalks, retreats, and even more service trips! There is anticipation in the air here within the ROC community.
As always, I’m incredibly grateful for each of you who take the time to read about what is happening in our community and have committed to praying for us. We appreciate you more than you could ever know and recognize the important role that you play in the lives of the college students that we have the privilege of ministering to.
Blessings,
-Dodger
