Note from Bob Nilsen

Bob sent the following challenge/encouragement via email today:

What is ministry? The last time I asked this question I concluded ministry is love, ministry is people. But that is but one perspective. Please consider ministry from a different perspective.

Gallareta is a small place. A village in the sugar cane harvesting area in the southeast of the Dominican Republic. A hamlet really. A few cinderblock row houses built by the Dominican government possibly 50 years ago as ‘free’ housing for those who worked in the cane fields. It lies at the end of a long dirt road-- a very long dirt road. Nearly impassable in heavy rains. There are no wells in this village. Little fresh water, almost no shade. There is evidence of a once thriving village. A long time ago. Now there are just crumbing processing buildings and a few row houses left. Maybe 100 people all together. Perhaps less. Gallareta is a dirty place with lots of dust.

Pastor Manny pastored a church in a neighboring village maybe 5 km distant. He had begun to witness in this village in 2004 in an attempt to plant a new church. In order to assist Manny in this work we began taking medical teams to Gallareta to draw a crowd and demonstrate the love of Christ in a tangible way, even as Jesus went ’preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing the sick’. The only building available at the time was a bar. It had two doors and no windows. The one wall and roof were metal sheeting. With permission we kicked out several panels and opened the doors. A couple of local women picked up what amounted to several cases of beer bottles and swept out the building. It was like an oven. The temperature was well over a hundred and ten. We were baked all day.

We began by preaching the gospel before we started the clinic. The medical team we had with us from Florida had brought an evangelist who preached one on one throughout the day as well. His name was Ted, a radiological technician.

Just before noon we began hearing singing from outside. The scene we discovered would melt your heart. Ted had been sharing with everyone in the waiting line. We figured everyone heard the gospel 3 or 4 times. It seems two teen men trusted Christ as Savior. They immediately ran across the street and began pulling their friends out of their houses to hear this glorious Good News of a risen Savior. Pastor Manny then began teaching them hymns to sing ~~ these were the hymns we were hearing inside the clinic. There were many professions of faith that day.

Some weeks later I showed a gospel film against the wall of a crumbling processing building-- more conversions.

Several weeks later Pastor Manny was showing me a new ’back route’ to his church, which ran thru Gallareta. I was going to preach in Manny's church that day. The road was nearly impassable and I had to switch our Explorer to 4x4 just to get thru. But on the way, we came upon 12 persons of all ages walking down the road (path really). Manny asked who they were? We discovered to our amazement that they were from Gallareta and were walking to Consuelito to Manny’s church for services! Manny and I were both astonished at their desire to worship. They were walking about 5 km to attend church! Yes, we did fit all 14 of us into the Explorer!

As the ministry developed in Gallareta, Manny began calling to check on Anita, one of the ladies who trusted Christ, who was having health problems. I treated her for various apparently minor problems over the course of several months. Later I referred her to a local hospital where they could do more advanced testing and diagnosis. As the Lord would have it, she died within a year. In her unsaved life she had contracted AIDS back in Haiti. However, after trusting Christ, she radiated a shining Christian character to her last days here on this earth. I knew I would see my sister Anita in heaven.

Manny began ministering in another area and Nate and Erica took over the ministry in Gallareta. We continued to take med teams to Gallareta while other missionaries took teams that fed the village, along with other types of ministries. Nate and Erica ministered weekly to the men, women, and children faithfully at Gallareta. A small open walled church now sits there for the people of that village to worship in thanks to the faithful construction ministry of believers in W. Virginia..

I guess ministry is a place too, at the end of a long, long dirt road --because God is there.