The Dominican Republic North District held its first Maximum Mission May 1 through 3 in the village of Coco. Activities included working with children, conducting ophthalmic consultations, cleaning a ditch, holding evangelistic campaigns, and showing the JESUS film.

This activity represents the beginning of missions from a local perspective. While the district has conducted other evangelistic and compassionate activities, they have never been self-sustaining. This time the entire event was lead by local church young people. At least 18 adults and 60 children accepted Jesus into their hearts. The Church of the Nazarene in Coco will follow up with these individuals.

Angely de Jesus, a 23-year-old sound engineer who attends the Santiago church, retold his experience:

“For me it was a challenge ... to hold the hand of a stranger, unbeliever, not with words but with deeds, to show them that God really loves them. It was also was an opportunity to be able to respond to the cry for help and learn to give and serve others is the highest form of life. This is what Christ came to teach us; surrender and be instruments in His hands to heal the world, help build lives. It’s learning that the gospel is not just words, but an action, a verb that moves, transforms everything it touches.

The way I remember it, I especially remember the children from the baseball game, because of the way that they understood things.  For them, we were the strangers coming from another world, and what was necessary or urgent wasn’t to clean up or help them, but to see the world in which they lived. They showed me things with pride, like someone that was showing you a small piece of paradise…their homes, the road to the best river, the school, the places where they fallen down or played, their “baseball stadium” (which a man previously told me used to be a valley, on the highest part of the hill). If you ask me, yes, it was a stadium.  A stadium where one dreams, one believes, one wins every single game. Seeing them so happy in what some would call poor conditions helped me understand that the truly poor were really other people.  These children were the fortunate ones, the rich owners of the future and dreams.

In the end, my body was exhausted, but my spirit revived, with bags packed for the next time, I thanked everyone for allowing me to help, being a part of their lives and praise the Lord in a different way. THANK YOU!”

--Church of the Nazarene Mesoamerica Region