Dear Friends,

Greetings in Christ! We pray all is well with you, your families, and congregations. Now that our delegation/mission team calendar has come to a close for 2002, we find ourselves not only planning for next year, but also doing a lot of reflecting. And how appropriate it is to reflect on things for which we are thankful during the month we celebrate Thanksgiving. We first want to say how thankful we are for all the love and support you have given us during this past year as well as these past five years we've been in the Dominican Republic. It has been a blessing and an honor to work together with you and the Dominican Evangelical Church (DEC) for the glory of Christ our Lord.

In times of thankful reflection, Pastor Jack of Batey Algodon comes to our minds. He has always been an example to us of being thankful to God and trusting in God's goodness. For those of you who do not know Pastor Jack, he is an angel of God, or the phrase used here, un amor de Dios (a love of God). He is a Haitian who came to the Dominican Republic about 15 years ago to work in the sugar cane fields, as do many of the Haitians who come to the DR. After cutting cane for a number of years and sharing the love of God all these years, he felt led to become a pastor in the batey where he lived, Batey Algodon. "Bateys" are harsh camps where Haitian cane cutters and sometimes their families live.

The congregation in Batey Algodon where Jack became pastor grew by leaps and bounds. Soon the little hut where they met was full, and they had run out of space. In 1989, the sugarcane landowner gave Pastor Jack a plot of land to use for a church. Jack and his growing congregation drove a wooden stake into the ground to mark their claim. They dedicated this plot of land as Holy Ground where the future church of Algodon would be.

They knew that the church would be built not in their timing, but in God's Perfect timing. God's timing took 10 years. We first met Pastor Jack through the Reverend Pedro Kery Johnson, pastor of the DEC of Barahona. Batey Algodon is located on the outskirts of Barahona. Pastor Jack and Rev. Pedro had been working together and encouraging the DEC to become involved in ministries in the bateys around Barahona. Building the church in Batey Algodon was adopted by the DEC, and we were asked to help coordinate mission teams and delegations to join in the effort.

After several years of everyone working hard together, this community is on the verge of having water. They now have more latrines, and a clinic has been built in a neighboring batey. The clinic is staffed full-time by a local doctor, and visiting medical groups help with outreach and support. The batey where the clinic is located also has a church now as do several of the neighboring bateys. The community has seen the love of Christ not only in messages preached in the church, but they have been a part of Christ's love in action with many of you, your congregations, and DEC congregations. Is this not the heart of mission? Together, we have received Christ's love and hope.

So in this time of thanksgiving, we give thanks to God for the examples of faithfulness that we have witnessed along with our sisters and brothers in Algodon. Thank you for being a part of that faithfulness!

God's Peace!

Ben and Shannon Langley

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, page 240