New Life as Mrs. Gerent

Dear friends,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years with your family this year. Christmas has a special place in my heart for many reasons and especially this year as I got married 4 days after Christmas!! I always enjoy my time with my family and the ability to really focus on Christ and His birth. On top of getting married, I was especially blessed this year, as I was not only able to spend the holidays with my family in the States but also with my new family – The Gerents!!

A lot has happened since the last blog post and I am sorry that there hasn’t been more update on my blog over the past couple of months. In this post, I hope to update you and share with you about my new life along with how my ministry as a first grade teacher is going.

In my previous post I talked about finding God’s will for both my life and Troy’s life. Well, God promises to be faithful and time after time He proves it to be right. In the middle of October, Troy and I found out that there was a job opportunity for him with another ministry in town called Caribbean Mountain Academy (I will talk more about the specifics of the job later). We had already planned a visit for Troy when we found out about this job. And we didn’t learn of the position till the day before he got to the Dominican!

Matthew 6:9-13 says, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptationbut deliver us from the evil on”. (NIV)

Immediately, my heart and thoughts went to these verses when we learned of this job with CMA. I love verse 11, which talks about The Lord giving us out daily bread. We didn’t find out about the job two week before Troy got to the Dominican, not one week after he got here, but exactly one day before arriving on the island! The crazy timing of this all was only one of the many ways God affirmed His will for our lives! A couple days into Troy’s visit we drove up to Caribbean Mountain Academy (CMA) and interviewed for the position of medical officer. The Lord was right with us during our interview time at CMA and we really felt like this was the place for Troy! We prayed for guidance and provision and The Lord gave us more than we needed! God is good!

I now want to forward to December. On December 15h, I landed in Cleveland Ohio and was finally reunited with Troy! It had been almost two months since we’d seen each other and we were so happy to finally be in the same country and pursue our relationship in person. We spent the next two weeks, finalizing wedding details, finding my dress (I bought the first one I tried on!), spending time with family on Christmas day and decorating the church for the wedding. We had a lot of great help with both families together and everything turned out perfect! I hope to post wedding pictures soon so stay tuned! After our wedding, we went away for a couple days and returned so that we could pack up all of our things, celebrate the New Year with family and friends and fly back to the Dominican on the 3^rdof January. It’s safe to say that we were quite busy!

Since being back in the DR, Troy and I have been living in a wonderful little house on the side of the mountain. CMA provides housing for their staff so Troy and I were able to find a house no problem! The Lord has truly been providing for us, as we did not need to look for a place to live but rather enjoy the little house up on the hill that was given to us. Our houses needed a lot of work, as it had not been living in for a few years. The students and staff at CMA fixed up our house while we were away in the States and we came back to a quaint little house with a beautiful view! (see pictures).

We have been back for five weeks and Troy has settling into his job really well. He has been going through a lot of training and spending a lot of time with the students. Caribbean Mountain Academy is a boarding school for American teenagers who struggle in the US with various things and need to be taken out of their environment and placed into a school who can help them. Parents send their child to CMA so that they can get help and professional counseling. Troy’s job is to be their on-hand medical officer. He runs all of the students’ medications, functions as the first responder if any medical emergency were to occur, and helps in any of the daily activities, which can range from sports to small service projects in the surrounding communities. Troy has already spent several hours in the ER with CMA students and staff at our local hospital as it getting accustomed to the “Dominican way” of doing things.

My classroom is going great! It was a little rough getting back into teacher mode after being in the States for three weeks and being so busying getting married, not to mention being a wife for the first time J The students were also having a hard time remembering what it’s like to be a first grader. Luckily little kids bounce back really quickly and they are now back to their normal selves. We are digging into fun subject in science like friction, and the affects of pushing and pulling. In math my students are amazing at addition and subtraction and are really getting the concrete ideas surrounding these sometimes-tough topics. What is most encouraging to me, is their English!!!! My students are doing so well in English. They are learning that communicating in English is actually possible and are creating amazing sentences as they speak and learn to write in class. We have been nailing down letter sounds and learning how to read through sight words and they are super super excited that they can read words on a page and group them into sentences in English. It has been very encouraging to me to see them excelling in their learning and being so excited about their progress and abilities in English. Some of my students came to Doulos with absolutely NO English. They hadn’t been exposed to the language before they came to Doulos and they are now booming in their language abilities!

In two weeks we start our second 8-week expedition. Last semester we learned about healthy eating and keeping out body fit. This semester we are going to learn about families around the world, which is super exciting for me because I love traveling and discovering new things. Students will learn about their family history and what makes their family the way it is. They will also get the chance to explore families in different parts of the world and learn that families can be very different on other continents and countries.

There’s a brief glimpse of my life in the DR as a first grader teacher and new wife.

I have lots of prayer requests for you prayer warriors out there!

Please continue to pray for both Troy and I as we learn and adapt to married life and as we continue with our jobs.
Pray for our hearts that they would be continually seeking the Lord’s will.
Pray for my financial support. I have raised 60% of what I need for the entire year and still need the remaining 40% which is about $8,000. God is faithful and good and I trust that He will continue to provide for me as I work at Doulos. If you would like to join me financially and support me along side my ministry please click here. There you will find all information needed to donate to my ministry. If you would like to email me with questions about donating, please feel free! My email is, lexieluedtke1260@gmail.com
Also, please continue to pray for my students’ hearts. Many of them do not know the Lord yet and are hurting deeply on the inside. We spend a lot of time praying as a class, talking about Jesus and His amazing love and how easy it is to accept Him into our hearts.
I have two specific prayers for my first graders. One of them lost their dad right before Christmas and has been having a really hard time in school and at home because of it. Pray for peace in this little first graders heart.
Another one of my students lost their 2-day-old baby sister. His parents had been trying to have another child for several years and were finally able to conceive. After a full 9 months, the baby girl was born and only lived for a couple days. Again, pray for comfort and joy for this little guy who just lost his baby sister. God is good and His plan will prevail.

Blessings to all of you as you embark on a new week!!

Lexie