The Stork Flies (I mean slides) on Sunday

Tiffany came into the world this morning as fast as a Olympic Speed Skater. We slipped into the parking lot aprox. 1 hour before she was born. Upon arrival we waited for the security guard for 10 minutes to - unlock the door. SMILE This was one of Lubbock’s premier hospitals you know - so to console ourselves Regina and I joked with each other during two contractions that we were no longer in the third world - LOL - YEAH RIGHT!! Tiffany passed the Anesthesiologist with ease - who never made it to give Mama an epidural (a first for Regina). She slipped past our Doctor who didn’t make it until 20 minutes after she was born. And last but not least - she actually slid past the hospital who didn’t have time to admit Regina until 30 minutes after Tiffany was already down the Luge. Thank the Lord for the Registered Nurse from - Grenada - named Esther who delivered Tiffany (with a little help from a emergency doctor) into this Arena of Life at 2:47 A.M. She wins (from her nervous daddy who is sure glad she didn’t come in his bobsled made by Saturn) a GOLD MEDAL for SPEED and CUTENESSS! OUR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS HAPPY PAPA LITTLE BROTHER BECOMES BIG BROTHER

More Tiffany Joy, Timothy Jordan and John Tyler

THE KIDS OH - YOU SCARED - ME DON'T DO THAT AGAIN GRANDMA FRANKLIN GRANDPA FRANKLIN

January's Interactive Missionary Letter

A Whole New Ball Of Wax! A new country, new ministry, new relationships, and a new baby all in less than one year can be a little overwhelming. But for us it has turned into an adventure, blessing, honor and exciting responsibility. Why? Because of God's loving kindnesses and compassion which are new every morning according to Lamentations 3:23. We are confident that it is God, not chance, destiny or coincidence that has opened each one of these doors and that He, in His sovereignty has everything under control. A Wedding Anniversary to Remember! Lee and Ellen Barnes = unforgettable. These two faithful servants of our Lord have labored together for many, many years. Regina and I have never doubted their love for us, in fact I cannot remember one time when being in their presence when I wouldn't hear them say - we love you. Long nights during my courtship with Regina, I would spend with Bro. Barnes playing dominoes. Of course, I could never get the upper hand probably because I was always listening to Lee's fascinating stories of life during and after the depression. From minuteman shipbuilding to jumping trains from job to job Grandma and Grandpa Barnes did anything and everything for their family. When their son moved to Costa Rica to be a missionary they mortgaged their home to get that first church started and today this event is still talked about as one of the shining moments in our families history. They love and support all of us with unconditio! nal, unwavering faith even during the difficult times. They are themselves a gift of precious service - a man and woman of God. This weekend we honor them here in Bolivar, MO before moving down the road to visit more faithful supporters and Believe It or Not we are here celebrating their seventy fifth wedding anniversary. The Lord is good. www.DR4Christ.com is loaded with brand new material on the Dominican Republic and includes up to date prayer requests, needs and more. In addition to this you can download videos, photos for your missions conferences and most importantly you can view all our missionary letters now in HTML - http://www.dr4christ.com/letter/jan06/ and PDF - http://www.dr4christ.com/letter/november_05.pdf format. Stork Approaches! Tiffany, our bundle of joy, is "to be delivered" around the second week of February. It has been 8 years since our last son, Jordan, joined the family, and much has changed. On a recent tour of the facilities, the nurse told Tom and I that they had just installed Wi-Fi in all the birthing rooms. Wi-Fi? Can I ask who wants Wi-Fi when you're giving birth? Needless to say I told Tom that my birthing room will be a "no surfing zone" while in labor. SMILE

Black Eyed Peas?

I sure hope you ate those black-eyed peas this year - I didn't eat any last year (they have no clue what black-eyed peas are in Cuba) and it landed me in jail. LOL Seriously, next week will be one year - a amazingly long time - since being forced to leave our "first love" and our guys there are still blowing and going. Praise the Lord! Regina and I have been blessed with a excellent Doctor here in Lubbock and he has given her the AOK to travel this week - just one more month to go before Tiffany's arrival!! We are looking forward to being with Regina's family this week to celebrate her grandparents - Lee and Ellen Barnes's 75 wedding anniversary. WOW!! Of course on the way we will be preaching for beans - err I mean black-eyed peas and having fun with those who have faithfully supported us over the years. Happy New Year!! We found this immaculately lighted tree in Lubbock last week which reminded us of the vine (tree) and all the branches (lights) that spring forth from Him.

Christmas with The Boys

It sure was good to celebrate Christmas with family this year. The whole day Regina and I thought and prayed for our friends in Cuba. Tyler and Jordan especially enjoyed the festivities with their "Big Daddy" and "Big Mama" and services Christmas day and night were just wonderful. It really has been good to be in our home church here in Lubbock celebrating the birth of our Savior and I have had the opportunity to speak several times. Two weeks ago I challenged about 150 children and teenagers and two were saved. Incredibly I met one teenager who came to church in a Frenship (my high school almamater) letter jacket (it looked just like mine). Bro. Ivey told me to pray for him and I thought it would be good to share that here - his name is Ryan and he has alot of potential and even though I met him briefly he reminded me a lot of a few young men I have had the honor and privilege of training in the past. We wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

From Pencil to Digital

Tyler, Jordan and myself are trying to recover from the "Black Plague of Death" this week here in Lubbock while Regina has managed to stay healthy. Regina told us that it must be those pre-natal vitamins her Doctor has her on that spared her the plague and that we all should start taking them. SMILE I'm afraid that the boys and I are rather convinced that those are for new mommies and we should stick to our Freddy Flinstones. LOL We are looking forward to being at our home church for the first time in four years this Sunday and are currently working on getting out Christmas packets to our churches. The boys have been stuck inside and have been helping us out a lot. The packets are filled with DVD's, Christmas cards and new literature on the Dominican Republic - our re-vamped logo is once again on just about everything. This logo believe it or not started out rather simply - Regina and I were at my father-n-law's camp in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1999 brainstorming with Pastor Jose Arnaldo (currently a associate at Kelview Heights in Midland and President of the Hispanic BBF here in the States) on some logo ideas and Regina and Jose drew up several in less than a hour. After camp Luis Roverssi (he does our web page) told us it would be a good idea if we had some sort of logo for our ministry in Cuba and we took out those ideas and picked this one. We ran it by Bro. Barnes who spoofed it up a bit (he is rather artistic) and Luis and Regina went down to MGI Graphics in San Jose and worked together with them on light boards to turn this idea into a color illustrator document so that we could use it across many different platforms. Currently in its compressed JPEG form we have integrated this into our webpage (Dreamweaver), video (FLASH), professional print jobs (Photoshop) and several other medias and it all started as a simple pencil drawing at a Christian camp in Central America.

Novembers Interactive Missionary Letter

The Family at the Nobska Lighthouse in Cap Cod, MA HAPPY HOLIDAYS II Thessalonians 1:3 - We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth; We started off this year in the valley and "we are bound to thank God always for you" that we are ending on top of the mountain. Regina and I will have fully recovered financially from losing everything to “Hurricane Fidel” in January and have been able to replace many of the items (Bibles, Transportation, Tools, Books to name a few) that are vital for the church we are starting in Santiago, D.R. We have also been very encouraged to see "that your faith groweth exceedingly". In every conference (10+) that we have been in since returning to the U.S. in late August - faith promise has INCREASED. What a blessing!! In addition, many have been saved (8 in one conference), baptized and in several churches young and old alike have surrendered to serve Him full-time - WOW. We also are happy to report "that the charity of everyone of you all toward each other aboundeth" - the Battlefield Baptist church unexpectedly gave us 10,000$ to start a mobile MANNA feeding center in the D.R. - this will be MANNA’s first center there - WOW. Finally, our travels have taken us from TX, to KS, to MA to FL and everywhere in between over the last 3 months and we have been encouraged by Gracia Burnham, Adel Castro (Fidels nephew), Dr. Chuck Lynch, FBI counter intelligence officials, New Tribes representatives and many more. MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!! FYI DR4Christ is loaded with brand new material on the D.R. and includes up to date prayer requests, needs and more. In addition to this you can download videos, photos for your Missions conferences and most importantly you can enroll for our quarterly HTML e-mails at www.DR4Christ.com/enroll - Hurry because the first newly designed HTML is headed your way in January. Tyler and Jordan in Arlington with Hallmark Baptist

Hey, Hey, Hey

The D.R., is just a hop, skip and a jump from our old home and our survey trip in June was FANTASTIC! We were able to spend time with both BBFI missionaries, the Lanes and the Kents. Both couples were very helpful in showing us around and we really appreciated the time they spent with us. After doing some investigating we discovered the tremendous need for more Baptist Churches. If you draw a line down the middle from east to west, there are less than 5 Baptist Churches in the northern part of the island. In the center of this northern part lye’s a city that is on our heart called Santiago. Santiago not only has over 1 million people but has several neighboring towns with no churches at all. There is a great window of opportunity here and we hope you come visit one day.

Without Further Ado

Today begins a bold new world for us - blogging. Hold on to your hats!! Here at DR4Christ.BlogSpot you will find selected tidbits through out the week from Regina (my better half), our friends and I on the D.R. For those who don't know it yet - in March the Lord called us to the Dominican. The Dominican Republic (forever now known has the D.R.) is on the island Hispaniola right next to Cuba. It shares the island with the nation of Haiti and I guess you could say it is next to a ROCK (Cuba) and a HARD PLACE (Haiti). SMILE According to the Joshua project - www.joshuaproject.net (just a source – nothing more) the Dominican has a population of roughly 9 million and is 7.60% evangelized (that is pretty low). We hope that this medium will be used to better communicate our passion/vision for the D.R. and please feel free to read, interact, discuss and just plain be yourself - thanks for tuning in.