Tuesday, January 30, 2018

A New Journey

In the beginning of 2015 we began walking down a path with the Lord that would change our lives forever. We heard God when He asked us to give up a part of our lives and start over in The Dominican Republic as missionaries, and we obeyed. Our lives have been blessed here. This adventure has been a challenge but I believe God chooses trials and difficulty to grow us and to bring us closer to Him - that has surely happened here. And it is our strongest desire to always seek His will for our lives. When you are where God wants you, there is such magnificent peace and joy and promise. (Mark 8:35). So we continue to seek Him and battle with ourselves to surrender our own plans to Him. Because we have faith that His plans are so much better. (Jeremiah 29:11)

We do not know exactly what the future holds but we are confident that if we take the steps that God asks us to take, if we declare our desire to walk the path He has for us, He will take us where He wants us. Paul writes in Philippians 2:17-18 that even if he loses his life, it will be a faith offering to God and we should rejoice with him. So we are faithfully taking another big step in our lives. No differently than we heard God leading us here; we have heard God saying that this season is coming to a close. In August we will be returning to our home state of Texas. We continue to have desires to serve Latin America in some capacity and pray that God will one day give us another opportunity. In the meantime and in preparation Scott will be taking advantage of the Post-911 GI Bill to return to school and complete a degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies. Carli plans to continue enriching the lives of young people by getting her teacher’s certification and teaching high school math. We are excited to take this next step, but we are also mourning the loss of our life here in the DR. This place has become home and many of the people have become family.

Two years ago we began to wonder what it would look like to see Dominicans leading PPM’s ministry here into the future. We now know what that looks like. We are excited that we will hand the leadership of this ministry off to two incredibly talented and God fearing men, Manuel Jiminez and Jean Carlos Richiez. We are so blessed that God has allowed us to speak into their lives and that they are ready to take the next step. We ask that you would continue to pray for this ministry and pray for Manuel, Jean Carlos and their families.

Please continue to pray for us as we walk through this. We know that God is faithful to His promise to provide for us (Isaiah 41:13), we should not fear but sometimes the flesh gets in the way. Please pray for continued protection, financial provision and a smooth transition, especially for the kids. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to send us a message.  

In His service,
Scott and Carli Ethridge