Haiti.. Haiti, Haiti, Haiti. Where do I begin?
As I have said before, God called me to come to Haiti when I was 16, and it is finally my time to be here. Ever since the moment I have entered the country, my heart has never been so heavy and heartbroken, yet my heart has never been so happy, ever. I know God designed a part of me to love these people, and love this country, and I do, more than I thought I would.
Today we went to downtown Port-Au-Prince, to where ALL of the destruction from the earthquake happened, and let me tell you, it's worse than you think, I promise. Seeing everything first hand today absolutely broke my heart. These people live in the poorest nation on this side of the world. And if you come here, you will see it. The children have to work so hard, the people need to go on the streets to sell gadgets, jsut to earn money for the day. Their are what are called "tent cities" here, where there are tent after tent (more like just pieces of tarp though) where families LIVE. And we are there in America complaiing cuz we don't get desert, it is 1 degree too hot in our house or we have 30 shirts, not 40. We need to realize that our country is so spoiled, and we should thik about the people in other countries, living off ONE dollar a day. Today we also went to a "hospital" ... but none of you would think it was a hospital. It was 3 run down tents... out in the heat... with like 20 run down, hot beds under the tents. One tent had babies in it.. most of them were 6 months premature, just laying there, in the heat, so close to death. Outside of the tent there was a live of over 50 people with their kids, waiting to get inside a tent to get their kids mediciine. The people have no emiotn to their faces, so much fear, so much confusion, and anger. This country has hope, but you need to go help them, and look for it. This country is so beaitoful and so amazing, but it is destroyed. I know God has called me here for a reason, and I know i am coming back, hopefully soon. I love it here more than anything. Thank you God somuch for getting to be here. I love you, and I love this country you haev created.

July 6, 2010

So after what happened last night in my life, I feel that it is very necessary for me to write a blog about it. Sometimes, after a while when you are a Christian, you feel distant from God. You don’t feel that He is near you, You don’t feel that He cares about your frustrations, and You don’t feel that you can trust Him; But you can, ALL the time. Ever since we had been on outreach, I have not had the right mindset and attidude, completely in line with God and His will. Sometimes we THINK that we are on the right path, and doing the right things, but in all reality, we have slightly gotten off track. Since we have been here, we have not had the opportunity to take hardly any pictures, and overall, we are at the YWAM base, a lot. A lot of my team was getting really frustrated, because we are now on outreach, but we feel so limited to hardly anything we are able to do. Last night though, it was God’s plan to finally reveal everything to me, and to our team.
Our team has had a lot of diversity since we have been here, and there have been complications and frustrations that have came up almost every day since we have been here; Anything from disagreements to bad attitudes. We have different opinions from each other, we haven’t been around each other much (our group didn’t have a previous close friendship), and we don’t know how to handle each other’s personalities yet. It has been a huge adjustment for all of us coming to the Dominican Republic, and especially the heat. The heat has played a HUGE tole on ALL of us. There are times where it seems unbearable; we sweat so much, so much that we wake up every morning with damp hair and damp sheets. But God has placed each and every one us us on the DR/HAITI outreach team, TOGETHER.
Yesterday, we were supposed to go out into the city (Santo Domingo) and get to lead a ministry night. All of us had something prepared, including me who was chosen to do the main teaching for the evening. I felt God tell me early this morning that He didn’t want me teaching on the subject that I prepared in Kona for outreach (relationships-guy/girl), He told me to teach on “Trusting in the Lord” for the night. So I prepared my speech, even though I did not want to teach at all, because I had a very poor attidude today. I felt so trapped in this house, and I just wanted to be able to have the freedom and opportunity to go out and be with the people in this country. God had a different plan though. We had all been in his house all day, doing work duty and having even MORE “team time” (which we all thought by now we had had enough). A huge storm came yesterday with thunder and lightning and pouring pouring rain. After a couple horus of this, the leader here at this base told us that we wouldn’t be going out tonight. This caused much frustration amongst our whole group, because we were looking forward to going out so much. So I still had my teaching prepared and when the time came tonight for us to meet, I came with a poor attidue, but a sense in my heart that God was going to do something.
Our team began to lead in worship, and in between four of the students shared their testimonies. The audience was our outreach team and about ten Dominicans from the base. During this time of sharingand worhsipping God, He began to absolutely POUR His love and joy and peace in my heart and in my life and my mind. It was a feeling and an experience that I have never experienced in my life before. I just began to smile, and my eyes lit up, because of the joy that the Lord poured into me. When the time came for me to give my testimony, I knew exactly why God had me teach on trusting in Him instead of my orignal teaching. He needed to teach our team, and me especially that He had this while here in the Dominican of daily team time, getting to know one another, getting used to not being in America, and learning to trust and obey His plans, and not ours. It doesn’t matter how WE think our day and our life should go, it ONLY matters HIS plans and HIS way, and it is ALWAYS perfect. My teaching went far better than I even planned, but it was because it was God speaking through me, and not me saying what I thought I wanted. I also got a picture after my teaching of a white heart.. so pure but it also has black at the very very edges of it, just barely. It meant that my ehart used to be so black. Hardened, angry, selfish, and unpure. But now in this season of my life, God has absolutely completely changed who I am, inside and out, and is continually doing it every single day. He knew exactly what He was doing when I chose to quit college, and when I chose this specific DTS. The most amazing fruit has been bore from it. The joy and love I experience last night was like nothing I have ever had in my life, because it was solely from the Lord, because I allowed Him to work through my attiude and my life tonight. I am leanring to trust in Him, every day, each decision in my life. Because He knows exactly what He is doing, ALL the time. Last night was exactly what we needed as a team, and God knew that. He allowed us not to go out, but to have this time of worhsipping God, annd sharing our hearts. It touched every single one of us.
Last night was so amazing, and it has refreshed me in the exact amount that God knew I needed before we head off for Haiti in one day. God you are so amazing and so good. Thank you for showing me more and more every day how to put my completlet trust in You. I love you so much and I cannot WAIT to see what you are going to be doing in my life and in the life of my team during this. Thank you ☺

Pictures From the DR

DR updates; Haiti in one day :)

Its day 5 here in the Dominican Republic and things are going fairly well. .We are very limited to what we can do here and how often we can leave the base, because of safety issues, so as of now, i am a bit frustrated with the limited time we get to take pictures and how we can hardly leave the base, but I know God has us here for a reason. We leave Thursday morning at 4am on our 10 hour bus ride to Port-Au-Prince Haiti. We will be in that city for 3 weeks. There are "tent cities" there, where hundreds of people who live in a small run down tarp-type tent. We will be doing a "mini DTS" (discipleship training school) one week each in 3 different tent cities. I am so excited to get to spend so much quality time with the Haitians there. After the 3 weeks in port-au-prince, we will be going to St. Marc, Haiti for another three weeks. Then after Haiti, we will be coming back to Dominican Republic for another 4 weeks.

Right now in the DR we are doing different types of little ministries every single day. We have helped served lunch for the homeless, we have went and gave testimonies, sang songs, and spend time with older people in the leprosy center, got to go out in Santiago and meet some of the people and spend some time with the people there. Because i took 3 years of spanish in high school, even though i have been out of learning it for two years, now that I am in a country that ONLY speaks spanish, i have picked up so much of the Spanish that I learned in school, plus everyone here is helping me learn more. I have a couple books I will be taking with me to Haiti to learn more spanish so i will know more when we come back to the DR. It is such a privilege from God to be able to speak in Spanish, enough to make that initial connection with the people here. Tonight we are going to get to go out to a street church in the middle of what they call DR's "china town" and our outreach team has the opportunity to lead worship, share testimonies, and preach God's word. I have a sermon prepared on trusting in God. So we will see if i will be preaching or not :) I am having a wonderful time here, but at the same time, please be keeping my team in your prayers. The people in our outreach team are all extremely different people. The team has a lot of diversity. Also, for our safety here and while in Haiti. It is so uncommon for Americans to be in this part of the country, so we are not looked upon highly in some areas. Thank you again for all of your prayers and support. One more day in the DR, then off to HAITI!!! Here are some pictures from my love feast that I haven't gotten the chance to post (the end of our lecture phase) and also some pictures from since we have been here in the DR, enjoy, thank you, and God Bless :)

-Emily Williamson

July 2, 2010.

And here we are, our first full day here in the Domincian Republic. Words can't really descirbe the culture and how things are here. Hopefully pictures can, once we can start taking them. They don't want us using our cameras yet, becuase there are literally hardly ANY americans (or white people here) at all. We are in Santa Domingo, and it is a city where NO tourists come. The city is well large, but very run down and poor. There are certain wealthy places, but overall, there is much poverty here. The first day being here i did not think i wouldmake it with all the heat here. The heat and humidty put together is somehting that i have never experienced in my life, i mean come on, i live in idaho where is snows and we wear sweatshirts all the time :) But its day 2, and the heat is a LITTLE bit better. its still exrtemely difficult to sleep at night, becuase of hot extrnemly hot it is, even at 11pm. Today we had the opportunity to go to a church (well, outside of the church on the street) to go out and help serve lunch to homeless people. this church has a program where they serve lunch to these people every single day for lunch. There were about 40 men, and about 10 children. Almost everyone here speaks spanish. During high school and middle school, i took 4 eyars of spanihs. i learned alot, but never really had anywher to put it in practice. It has been over a year and a half since i have spoken in spanish, so most of it has left my memory. Today i wanted to see how much ir eally remember and began a converation with a man in his 30's, just talking about anything and everything i could rememember to say. At first, it was very difficult to communicate to him, becuse words and phrases were still coming back to me, but after being with him for 45 minutes, he said to me "your spanihs is perfect) haha but i think he meant it as me being white, and how much I knew. God is blessing me so much with bringing back all of my spansih that i have learned in my past, and using it as a tool to be able to communicate to these people. Seriosuly, the poeple here are soo beautufl. Some of the poeple have a deep olive color to their skin, where others are very very black. But overall, the poeple are just overall in general, very good looking people. We are going to be going out and doing ministry i think everyday that we are here. We leave July 8th to head to Haiti (a ten hour drive) and we will be there 6 weeks then after that we will be coming back ehre to Santa Domingo at teh YWAM base where we are staying to help serve once more. I hope to be able to take pictures soon, to be able to share with all of you. It is killing me not to be able to have my camera, but I know it;s ok and we will haev them soon :-) I will post more blogs as time goes on. God is so good :)

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC!! (Blog written on 6/30/10)
I cannot believe how fast time has gone by in Hawaii, doing my DTS. Every week seems to just vanish. But every week we learned so much about God, and in so many different ways. The last week and a half in Hawaii was really good. I think I could say that we were all ready to get out and go on outreach, but it was good. We relaxed, spent hours packing up our room, and had our final goodbye love feast (pictures to the side). After a huge farewell from our DTS, being the second outreach team to leave Hawaii, we left campus yesterday night at 7pm, our flight leaving at 9:20. We get to the Kona airport, and we begin to check our bags. And right then and there, things seem to start going wrong. The Dominican Republic has a 50lb. limit rule. Some peoples bags were over 70 (I mean, we ARE packing for 3 months). So that took quite a bit of time to get that all situation and figured out. Me and my leader, Cyrielle, were the first two people to get our boarding passes, so we headed off to security. When we get there, there are over a hundred people in line, because there is only a single line to pass through security. It took us over an hour at this point to get through security, and our other teamsmates didn’t get to security till 30 minutes after us. Me and Cyrielle passed security and made it to our gate at about 8:45pm. And we waited there for what seems forever. They began to call boarding, group by group, and eventually got to group 4 which was us, and it was still only us 2 out of the 11. I decided to just get on the plane. At this point I has no faith whatsoever that our team was going to make it onto the plane, because how long checking in took, and security, but my leader kept telling me to trust in God and have faith. By the time we got on the plane and the doors shut, all 11 of us were safely on the plane ☺ I took out my journal to write on it, and on the front cover it says “Trust in the Lord”. I believe that during this trip, God is going to truly show me what it will look like to fully trust in Him and have faith that He is in control of everything. God is so good and I know He is going to be doing some amazing things with our group.
Today we have been in Hawaii, L.A., California, Miami, Florida, and I am currently on the plane as I write this into the Dominican Republic. It will be hot, it will be hard, it will be a culture shock, but God is so good and will be with us the entire time. Enjoy some photos from our love feast, and our beginning travels.. will be posted in a few days :)