I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, the first child of four from a Christian family living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the big city of Santo Domingo. I grew up attending church, going to public school, and working since I was 11 years old to help a little bit with the family budget. While attending college to be a computer science engineer (20 years old), I was given the opportunity to serve with a short-term mission team organization delivering simple solutions to very poor and remote communities around the country. The Lord used that to place in my heart the desire to serve in missions full-time. 3 years later the Lord opened the door to be hired by VisionTrust, an international sponsorship organization, as the national director. I worked in the Dominican with VisionTrust for 16 ½ years to be promoted to Regional Director for Latin America where I served mentoring, training, and equipping the national directors of 5 countries for 3 ½ years. In 2020, after 20 years of serving in that ministry, I received the call to train others to serve in mission and provide similar opportunities as the ones I was given to a new generation of Christian leaders.
I serve as the Director of Casa Misionera Dominicana, training the Christian leaders of tomorrow today! We work with college students who have been successfully identified by their local pastors or school principals as potential leaders. Our program lasts four years with each group of students where we apply Spiritual, Instructional, Relational, and Experiential dynamics to enhance their relationship with Christ, grow their community of believers, mature their character, and learn new competencies to obey their God-given calling.
Our biggest financial commitment is to provide for the students' college education and the Casa Misionera training program. We estimate each student costs $200 per month or $2,400 per year. We have now 34 students and we are trusting for one-time donations or recurring giving to raise the $81,600 dollars needed per year. We need more recurring giving of any amount to meet the monthly requirements for the students and staff.
As the students get older and busier at college and we work deep in their growing points to become healthy leaders we find out that many of them are in need of counseling for many different reasons. The need guidance as they make major decisions like dating and marrying. We are now on the look out for a partnership to provide some of this support.