Merry Christmas!

Our Christmas card and letter.



Dear Friends and Family,

As we enjoy the holidays, life goes on as normal for the families that we serve in the bateyes of the Dominican Republic. Please remember to pray for those who will be hungry, sick, and discouraged this Christmas.

God has blessed us and we don’t want to take that for granted.
With that in mind, here are some of the ways the Lord has blessed us this year:

After three years of holding classes in stuffy, inadequate buildings, Makarios opened its first school this fall, located in the town of Montellano. Through our sponsorship program, we are able to feed, clothe, educate, and share the gospel with 160 children from three villages.

Using money from both an individual gift and The Great Society Fund from the LBJ School at the University of Texas, we were able to purchase land for a farm project. This program provides vocational training and employment for people in need.

We added six new staff members in the DR and two in Austin, and have been blessed by the gifts and spirit of service they bring to our team.

We hosted 20 work teams and 18 interns who blessed and encouraged us and the people we serve. Sure, some of them got parasites, others unintentionally swam in the toxic river, and one fell into a village cistern, but they all got to go to the beach, right? No complaints there.

We only had a few fender benders, and considering the way they drive in the DR, we’re quite pleased. Wait, there was that one time Jennie backed the jeep into an open manhole – well not the entire jeep, but one of the tires. Fortunately some men came along and lifted it out.

In a year of joys and challenges, God has been faithful and has given us a glimpse of Malachi 3:10 where He says “see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”

For more stories and pictures from this year, please visit our website at http://www.makariosinternational.org/.

Thank you for praying for us, for loving and encouraging us, and for being a part of what God is doing in the Dominican Republic. You are a blessing to us!

In Him,
Sharla, for the Makarios crew