I trust you had a great Christmas time with your family and friends. I was reminded once again this Christmas how amazing God is and how much He loves us all. That He loved us so much that he would indeed send His Son as our Savior, the ultimate gift of Christmas. I pray that you were able to see the true reason for celebrating Christmas this year.
I am writing to update you on what God is currently and has been doing the past year through and in me. I do apologize dearly for not getting this done sooner. As most of you know God laid a passion on my heart first of all for missions but more specifically the Dominican Republic (DR) a few years ago. After doing 5 straight summers of 2-3 weeks short-term missions trips to various countries God opened up a great opportunity. I decided that short-term trips were not long enough and that it was time to do something more. So I applied and was accepted into an internship program down in the DR that would last 10 weeks over the summer. I went into this trip with the question to God in mind of "God please let this trip signify whether or not full-time missions is in my future." Well God answered with a yes as well as a not yet. I will get back to that in a little bit. First let me tell you about what I was doing over the summer.
The internship was with Students International (SI). All throughout the summer they have high school and college aged students come down for 2 weeks at a time. The interns support SI as their summer staff to help manage these 2-week outreaches. Along with general help, I was the intern at the construction site for the summer. We were doing random construction projects around the community and at local churches as well as trash pickup for a community that the city decided was too far away to send a trash truck.
Getting back to God's "not yet"… Along with the normal duties of the interns I started helping out with maintenance type projects around the base. As I began to take on these projects it became evident to me that because of all that goes on, SI could really use a full-time maintenance person. Little did I know that the directors were actually in the process of searching for a person to do just that. As a result of my starting to help out around the base the director approached me and asked me if I would be interested in working full-time down in the DR as the facilities manager. As we talked about the expectations of the position it became more and more evident that this is exactly what I would love doing. I was ready to move down at that point. That's not quite where God was though. Through much prayer and listening to God, I felt God's guidance in a very clear way. God said, "This position will still be here in 2 years." This was a very hard decision for me to make but through God's grace I was able to have peace about putting off the desire for full-time a few years. The door was not shut completely though. In talking with the director we decided that someone was still needed to focus just on maintenance for at least the summer. With joy I agreed to go back this summer as an administrative intern. My main focus will be doing maintenance on the base but I will also be there to help with whatever the director needs. I am not not sure yet on dates nor do I have more details of what I will be doing. I look forward to sharing with you more specific information in a follow up letter within a few weeks.
Thank you all so much for all the support, both in prayer and financially, you have given me over the years. It means so much to me to know that I am surrounded by with people that believe in me and want to see God's kingdom expanded. I am blessed to be able to serve Christ around the world.
In Christ,
Jeff Mills
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