The First Steps

Hello, and welcome to our weekly blog! (At least I hope this will be weekly.) For those reading who may be new to the wide world of LCMS international mission work, I’ll give some background. My husband, Daniel, and I officially became missionaries in September, but we will not deploy until the first week of April. We went through four orientation phases in the past two months for preparation. First, we had an online phase. We met everyone and began onboarding. Second, we had our first in-person week. We received presentation training and learned about insurance and job aspects. Third, we started speaking at churches and making connections. Fourth, we had our final in-person session. We learned about resilience and more job-related topics like international taxes (yay).

Fall 2025 Missionary Orientation Graduation!

Back row, left to right: Daniel and Marie Lowitz, Gina and Jeffery Teeple

Front row, left to right: Kaelin Peralta, Shauna and Micheal Hageman, Hanna and Sean HcHugh

Our goal now is to spread the word on what the LCMS mission in the Dominican Republic looks like. Daniel and I have been living at the St. Louis Seminary and have been reaching out to various churches in the area, doing language training, and visa work. It has been a wonderful experience visiting churches. Throughout orientation, we heard the phrase, “The church loves her missionaries,” often, and we have been seeing that so clearly in the past few months. Something I wasn’t expecting from the experience was the number of gifts (especially food) and I can assure you they have been very delicious and gratefully received.

Presenting at Messiah Lutheran School in Weldon, MO

Language training has been its own kind of fun. I have the loveliest Spanish teacher from the Dominican, and we get to Zoom for four hours a week for classes. Luckily, I’ve had about twelve years of Spanish training throughout my education, but after my Spanishless college years I forgot most of it. I scored at a high novice level, which was better than I thought. My Spanish teacher and I frequently laugh together, which I think is the best approach to learning a new language, because honestly, I sound like a two-year-old with a bad accent. My favorite part has been when she tried to help me roll my r’s. However, for the life of me, I cannot roll my r’s. I either sound like Chewbacca or like I’m painfully hacking. I ended up crying from laughing so hard with her. Another time when she was rather patient with me was when I was counting. I will say I remember how to count to one hundred, but I frequently would skip the number five. I would go twenty-four, twenty-six, thirty-four- thirty-six, and each time she had to stop me. After the session, Daniel mentioned to me, “I only heard one thing from your lesson, and that was you loudly proclaiming, ‘I promise I know how to count!’” I am so grateful for so many blessings, and my Spanish teacher has been a wonderful blessing.

Our visa has been an experience. Mostly because we have our checklist, and it didn’t seem too bad at first. It was all new but fairly self-explanatory. The first task was getting fingerprinted and sending them in for a background check. It seemed easy enough. I have teacher and nurse friends who have all done it, so it didn’t seem too uncommon. Well, we went to two different USPS offices with no luck on my fingerprints actually scanning. Daniel’s fingerprints worked out after the second try, but as a precaution, they sent us over to the police station, and we got fingerprinted a third time there. However, we needed electronic copies, and they gave us paper ones. So we went off to a third party, which had worked for previous‌ missionaries. It was a small room connected to a yoga studio with fake lights making it look like the sky with fake plants and fairy lights littering the walls. Lo-and-behold, the fourth one worked! That was honestly the only hiccup, and it was an adventure to say the least. We still have a few things left to do for the paperwork so please keep our visas in your prayers!

At the capital in Madison, WI to apostille our paperwork

Last, I want to thank the wonderful and gracious churches who have hosted us, including…

Trinity Lutheran Church in Shawnee, KS

Saint James Lutheran Church in St. Louis, MO

Messiah Lutheran School in Weldon, MO

Village Lutheran Quarterlife Bible Study in Ladue, MO

Pilgrim in Green Bay, WI

Beautiful Feet Conference at Concordia University Wisconsin

Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church in West Bend, WI

Timothy in St. Louis, MO

Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Chesterfield, MO

Bethlehem Lutheran in New Haven, MO

Your kindness and generosity towards us is incredibly appreciated, and we are grateful for all your support for the mission in the Dominican Republic!

Thank you for checking out our blog posts! Today’s post will be longer than others as I try to figure out how to manage a blog and website. So thank you for being a part of this journey with us! God’s blessings to you all!

Philippians 1:3 “…I thank my God every time I remember you.”