Elijah Ligrow is a lifelong member of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) and has been a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Oconomowoc, Wis., for over a year. In June 2026, St. Paul’s sent six members of its young adult group, including Ligrow, on an LCMS mission education trip to the Dominican Republic. Ligrow also has served on two mission trips to Mexico and one to Houston.
By Elijah Ligrow
While each member of our team had different levels of experience with LCMS International Mission, our shared objective was the same: to learn how our church and Synod are fulfilling the mission to “spread the Gospel, plant Lutheran churches and show mercy.”
What follows is a highlight reel of some of the exciting things we got to learn and witness during our week in the Dominican Republic (DR).
Welcome to Santiago
We arrived at the Santiago Airport late at night after hours of flight time and layovers. We met our trip coordinator, LCMS missionary Dana Stigdon, and she introduced us to the area as we rode the bus (locally known as the guagua) to the seminary. She had also stopped for food on the way to meet us, so we got our first taste of Dominican cuisine.
As we ate, Dana described what we would be doing during the week, including meeting with and learning from pastors and missionaries who live and work in the DR. We introduced ourselves and then arrived at Concordia the Reformer Seminary, our residence for the next week. As we unpacked, we were thankful to discover that the dormitories are comfortably air-conditioned, providing a reprieve from the high heat and humidity we would have to adjust to throughout the week.
We wrapped up the day with a routine we had agreed upon before the trip. I grabbed my guitar, and one of our team members led us in praying Compline, with our LCMS-provided field devotions used in the sermon slot. In addition to morning Matins, we would continue this practice throughout the week.
Let the children come
Sunday morning was a slightly later start than most days, much to the relief of our travel-tired team. We helped set up chairs for what would be a large group for church, and someone noticed that there were 15 napkins on the baptismal font.
Our team sat in the back to allow room for a whole family dressed in white to take the front seats. The text for the service was the Parable of the Prodigal Son, a fantastic image of Baptism, where we hear that we, like the titular son, go astray and are brought back to the father by His grace.
After we sang from the Spanish hymnal (which shares much of the same structure and content as the English Lutheran Service Book [LSB], allowing those of us who struggled with the foreign language to follow along), 14 children, along with their parents and sponsors, came up to the font to be baptized.
It was beautiful chaos as the children crowded around the font, having to use chairs to reach it, and congregants snapped photos of the once-in-a-lifetime event. Pastor Ted Krey jokingly said, “You’ve seen it all. You can go home now.” In a sense, we had seen it all: Jesus Himself says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14).
Reaching out with God’s Word
On Monday, we met some of the non-pastor missionaries in the Dominican Republic. We started by riding the guagua to the LCMS Latin America headquarters, where we would meet three people.
The first was Stan Stigdon, regional business manager and also Dana’s husband, who shared specifics on how the mission receives and uses its funds to help bolster the churches, missionaries and other outreach programs that they provide for the Latin American region. He emphasized the three-fold mission of spreading the Gospel, planting Lutheran churches and showing mercy.
Next was Abigail (Abby) Young, who teaches music at both a local Lutheran school and a local public school and assists with English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction. Abby teaches choir, guitar and recorder to children, using hymns and her own songs to teach music with a Christ-centered focus, and utilizes some English hymns to teach ESL.
Third, we met Victor, who leads the Chamos (youth) All-Star volleyball program. This program recruits children of different ages from all over the area, providing volleyball training along with Christian devotions.
The program has only existed for four years, but four of its players have gone on to national DR teams! We played a game with the youngest team and sat in on their devotion, led by LCMS missionary, Vicar Gavin Johnson. I was glad to see an equal level of attention given to both the devotion and the athletics.
Mercy for the homebound
On Tuesday, we broke into teams consisting of volunteers from our group along with members of the seminary community to visit some homebound members of Iglesia Luterana el Buen Pastor (Good Shepherd Lutheran Church). Taking to the mountain on foot, we met several of the locals and their families. Some of our visits were planned, such as when Paster Weber’s team visited a man bedridden with Parkinson’s, and some were impromptu, as when seminarian Luis’ team visited families nearby the seminary.
The visits centered around the readings for the week, which were the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Parable of the Lost Coin. Pastor Weber also used Psalm 119:105, which emphasized repentance and faith. The woman in the Parable of the Lost Coin is the church as the Body of Christ, gathering coins — lost and rejected sinners — into a place where they grow in faith and love together.
Singing under the stars
On Wednesday, we got to spend extra time with the residents of the neighboring group home, whom we had met throughout the week. The residents had been rescued from orphanages in the earlier days of the mission and given a place to call home right next to Concordia.
They and their caretakers (or tíos, which translates to “uncles” and “aunts”) prepared lunch, and we spent much of the afternoon playing basketball, playing Uno, drawing or doing puzzles. The residents take part in activities in the church as well, from serving as acolytes in the Divine Service to accompanying us on home visits and Bible studies.
Later, we set up church for the Wednesday night service. After the service, we were joined on the roof for Compline by several members of the congregation and staff who were excited to attend our English service. In the same way that I was able to follow along in the Spanish hymnal, they were able to follow along in LSB because of the similarities between the two hymnals. It was amazing to hear so many voices under the stars singing along to the service.
From Santiago to Santo Domingo
After some physical labor moving chairs and shelves, we spent a large portion of the day on the road from Santiago (northwest side of the Dominican Republic) to the capital, Santo Domingo (southeast side, bordering the Caribbean Sea).
Thursday’s destination was Pan de Vida, one of two Lutheran churches we would visit in Santo Domingo during our abbreviated stay there. We met Deaconess Leticia, who runs a majority of the after-school program at Pan de Vida, helping students with homework, and Enzo Fritzler, son of the Rev. Sergio Fritzler, LCMS missionary and Concordia the Reformer Seminary president.
See the Father’s love
Our final full day in the Dominican Republic saw us visiting Iglesia Luterana “Amigos de Cristo” (Friends of Christ Lutheran Church), headed by Pastor Lucas Elberhardt, LCMS alliance missionary. Specifically, we got to witness the devotion he provided at his fútbol (soccer) program.
When we first met Pastor Lucas, he ushered us inside to show us a hymn he had written on the whiteboard for us to learn. The hymn was ¡Mirad Cuánto Amor!, based on 1 John 3:1a: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.”
We quickly learned the hymn before singing it with the full soccer group as the devotion opened. Pastor’s message was well received, with the children chiming in with questions and comments as we sat on the concrete field. In a surprise twist (a surprise even to our trip coordinator), Pastor Lucas asked us to play a game against his team, stating that dinner was on the line. With that, we had to join (we were promptly defeated).
Dinner at Pastor Lucas’ house felt like a last hurrah for the trip. We dined with a handful of familiar faces we had met along the way, sharing stories and food. We ended the night by breaking out the guitar and a number of accompanying instruments to sing hymns in both Spanish and English. We got to say our last goodbyes before we spent the next day preparing to board the plane back home.
Christ for the nations
Our week in the Dominican Republic was full of amazing people and opportunities to witness God’s work in expanding the church — pastors who preside over the Divine Service in another language, missionaries who share the Gospel through extracurriculars, caretakers of those who cannot care for themselves, an amazing number of Baptisms, and sports programs that reach a whole new demographic with Gospel-centered devotions.
This trip was a fantastic opportunity to see just a part of what the Lutheran church is doing to spread the Gospel, plant Lutheran churches and show mercy around the world, bringing Christ to the nations and the nations to church.
Visit lcms.org/servenow to find your opportunity to serve the Lord and His people internationally through the LCMS.