Last Blog from the DR

Hola!!!  Tomorrow is officially the day Abbey and I return to the States!  Today is one of those really mixed days emotionally.  I am ready to be home and see friends and family, but I am leaving behind a lot of really great Dominican friends, the people of Cercadillo, and of course, my dear friend, Ina.  The awesome news is that Ina will be in the midwest sometime in early fall, so this is truly a "see you soon" moment.  The last few days have been a lot of fun!  On Saturday, our Dominican friend Rafelina took Abbey and I with her to get our hair straightened.  That was a fun, non-sanitary experience :)  My hair stayed straight for about 2 hours before becoming a huge mop of semi-straight bushy hair.  Good thing it only cost me $8.00 with tip!  After we got our hair done, we went to Rafelina's house for an awesome Dominican meal of chicken and rice and of course, coffee!

On Sunday Ina took us to a really cute bakery place for breakfast. 

 I hate to say it, but they gave bakeries in the States a real run for their money.  Especially with cafe con leche.  Good-bye Starbucks!  Cafe con leche is my new favorite beverage.  I'm going to try to learn how to make it at home.  Next we attended Ina's church and said our good-bye's there.  It was kind of cool because our last Sunday in the DR was missions Sunday so they mentioned the work God is doing in Cercadillo.  After church we went out to eat at Adrian Tropical, a really beautiful restaurant on the water that I went to last year.  It began to rain before we ordered so we ended up at another Dominican 

icon, Don Tato's, for club sandwiches and batidas (fruit smoothies).  That evening we had the opportunity to present a movie in Cercadillo.  The love these.  We showed "The Chronicles of Narnia:  Prince Caspian".  It was a new experience to watch it in Spanish!  It was so much fun to watch with the kids because they got really excited when Aslan, the lion appeared at the battle scene :)

On Monday we headed to Barceló Capella Resort just east of Santo Domingo where we spent 

the past two days enjoying some relaxation time at the beach.  It was a lot of fun to end our time here without a schedule, just enjoying each other's company.  I had never been to a resort before, so it was a totally new experience for me.  Tomorrow we fly home so please pray that we will continue the processing that always accompanies a trip like this.  Please pray that God will be glorified in us, especially if He has different travel plans than we do :)  I will see you all soon!

Crazy, Awesome Days!

This week has been one of the longest and most difficult yet, but also one of the most rewarding! God has been so good to give Ina, Abbey, and I strength, patience, and love for the people of Cercadillo and also with for another. Monday was our Sabbath day so no work :). Abbey and I went to the Mercado with a group of Americans (and a few of our favorite Dominicans) in the afternoon. We think we got some great deals (you're never quite sure if you paid too much), and I improved my bartering skills. I'm still not comfortable with the whole process, but I was less of a pushover than I was last year :).

On Tuesday Ina, Abbey, and I taught our reading and English classes as in the previous week. We began each group with Bingo (with prizes) to encourage the kids to be on time. They hate it when they arrive late and miss the game. On Wednesday Abbey and I continued the classes with the children in one building (with the help of an additional teacher, our Dominican friend Daniel), and Ina worked with the women on making bags to sell in the other building. Some of the women took off right away and did really well on their first bag. Others took a little longer (a lot longer in some cases), but it provided opportunities for all of the women to exercise patience with one another and with Ina. It has been very encouraging to see changes in many of the women since last summer. They are more patient with one another and sometimes remind each other about recent topics from Bible study (putting others before one's self, etc.).

Thursday was a little different from the other days. A couple of women from the Boston area came to do a workshop with the children on worshiping the Lord with dance. It was really fun to watch the kids singing worship songs and waving their flags and banners to the music. Even the boys got really into it! Dominicans in general are very expressive so this kind of activity fits their culture very well. Abbey and I alternated between helping with crowd control with the kids and helping Ina with sewing classes. A few of the women were able to make 3-4 bags in one day while others continued working on their first one. Ina has high expectations for their work since they are being paid for the bags they complete (she in turn sells them on their behalf in the business she has started) so many of them had to redo parts several times until they learned how to do it nearly perfectly or put forth a really good effort. On Thursday night Abbey and I went out for a night on the city of Santo Domingo with several of our Dominican friends we met in past years through Time ministries. We began the evening with a ride downtown on the newly opened Metro train system. This was a very exciting trip because when Abbey and I began coming to the DR four years ago, the work on the Metro had already begun, and we have gotten to see it in several stages of completion over the years. We took a público (a form of public transportation that is very common and basically involves squeezing four people in the back of a little car and two additional people in the front passenger seat for 13 pesos (about $0.40/person) down to a shopping area near the Colonial Zone. The Colonial Zone is where most of the really old buildings are that date back to around the time of Columbus. We enjoyed pizza at a restaurant and then got Yogunfruz (the most amazing frozen yogurt I've ever had with nearly countless combinations of mix-ins, my favorite being waffle cones, pineapple, and strawberries; or is it waffle cones, melon, and mango?). After that we walked down to the historical area and got countless hilarious

photos while our friend Esteban led us on a "tour". Santo Domingo is famous for having "the oldest" of many things in the Americas so Esteban pointed out the oldest tree and the oldest caution cone in the Americas. I think the many security/police people we walked by thought we were all a little crazy, but we had so much fun just being goofy! We ended up not getting home until after midnight (not a good idea when wake-up is at 6:00am)!

On Friday Ina and another missionary, Kirsten, led Bible study with the women. The awesome thing was that God was truly leading the study because before they really began the teaching, a woman confessed to not speaking to her mother-in-law for nine years and wanted reconciliation. The mother-in-law was present and they were able to begin mending their relationship and exchanged a hug. God is up to awesome things that can only be explained by the work of the Holy Spirit! It's exciting to witness it!!! After Bible study we spent the rest of the day completing the bags with the women. They turned out so cute, and the women had so much fun making them and helping each other! Sara, a shout-out to you for a great idea! Thank you for listening to the Lord on this

one! The best thing about the bags is that they are simple enough that several of the women can now complete them independently, but also very relevant in our "go-green" culture. Ina thinks they will be a great project to keep doing for a long time. We are also praising God everyday for the new generator that works wonderfully and is really quiet :)

Please continue to pray for health and stamina. I will only be in Cercadillo at most two more times before I head home, so please pray that God uses those times to show His love and grace through me! I continue to be amazed and the awesome things He is doing!

Happy 4th (now 5th) of July

Just wanted to share a few pics from our 4th of July extravaganza with Ina's American missionary friends! The first two are from early afternoon when we cut into the guanabana that our neighbor in Cercadillo gave us. By neighbor, I mean the guy who lives next door to the school/church buildings who was the first to tell us the Michael Jackson died. I guess he thought that was pertinent information given that we are Americans! He also supplied us with our first batch of mangoes for the season :) The first picture is of me proudly holding up the guanabana and the second is of what it looked like when Abbey cut into it. It tasted okay (really needs to be mixed with other fruit to absorb their flavor because it doesn't have much on its own), but was pretty gross in appearance and texture. We also shot a video worthy of an Oscar nomination for best documentary of the process. You can all see that when I return :) Abbey made us "awesome" guanabana shakes, which we quickly traded in for her world famous mocha frappicinos. She is by far the best barista to ever hit Villa Mella, possibly the entire Dominican Republic. I know it sounds like we are really suffering here, but we have one almost daily :) She's that good!

These pictures are of our 4th of July party! The first shows everyone who came. From left to right: Eric, little Eric, Corinne, Ina, Abbey, me, Mandy, Edwin, Jason. We had a great time talking about differences between America and the Dominican Republic. It was a fun conversation because Eric Sr. grew up in Villa Mella where we are living now but spent 7 years in the states where he met his wife. I continue to love all of Ina's American and Dominican friends. How does one person know so many cool people? The second picture shows the tres amigas sporting our let's-celebrate-America-in-a-big-way clothes :) Ina even sewed new patriotic table cloths and a "flag" for the front yard. Esteban stopped by and said, "What is that thing?" but we were not deterred from thinking it could quite possibly be the best "American" flag in Santo Domingo! I hope you all found special ways to celebrate the freedom we share!

I also wanted to share the link to Abbey's blog: www.fiveweeksincercadillo.tumblr.com
She has a lot of awesome pictures and fun info so check it out!
¡Hasta luego!

One of the longest and best days!

Yesterday was one of the longest yet best days here so far! I am so excited to share with you that God has restored my health in full, and I had so much energy to keep going yesterday that it had to have come from Him. Let me back up a bit :)

I forgot to show you the funniest and most popular activity th

at some people from Florida brought out to Cercadillo last week on Saturday. This is how you make your own slip-n-slide:

you take a tarp, a floatie mattress, a little laundry soap, a ton of water, and a bunch of kids who have never seen anything like it! The first picture shows the success of the operation...the second picture shows what it turned into when you say, "Okay, everyone at once!" Just for the record, being a teacher, I didn't say that :)

Most of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday blur together in a

sea of "ugh!", but I have one moment of seeming clarity that I want to share with you because was in all of the timing and people He used! On Saturday evening when we got home from Cercadillo we smelled a horrible smell in the laundry room. After blaming Ina's neighbors for a while (sorry about that!) we realized that the awful smell was coming from the batteries attached to her inverter (the awesome invention that charges when we have city power and provides power when the city power goes off). Ina had Abbey turn the inverter off, but we began to see that this was not going to be fixed by simply letting the batteries cool off. Ina called our Domincan friend Russell who helped her install the inverter and batteries a couple of years ago. When he came over he said the batteries were pretty much shot and would need to be replaced very soon, plus they would continue to cause the smell. When the Sunday team returned to Ina's late Sunday evening, they had an addition. Stuart, Ina's fix-it-all American friend who was here a couple of weeks ago had surprisingly met them in Cercadillo for church. He helped Ina go buy eight new batteries and carried them in from the house. This was no small feat given that I don't think Abbey and I could have carried one in from the car together. I had no idea they could be so heavy! After realizing that removing all of the old batteries was going to be a two-person job (and none of us could really help Stuart) Ina once again called Russell who was able to come over right away and brought his brother Althusser. The two-person team was able to remove all of the old batteries and install the new ones and we are good as new! We told them they should start a business :)

On Wednesday Ina and Abbey went to Cercadillo to begin our mini-summer classes for reading and English. I stayed home one more day to recuperate. On Thursday I was finally able to get back out to the village. It was an awesome day of working with the children. We kept the kids grouped in their color teams from VBS and had each group attend for one hour. It wasn't long with each group, but we got to see all of them in a "controlled" environment of only about 20 kids at a time. We began each group with alphabet bingo which the kids love because they earn

prizes like stickers, candy, and pencils. The next activity was learning colors and some shapes in English. I taught this lesson most of the sessions since I was feeling better. Each kid received a notebook, and one of the pages was a sheet where they could write in the color words

as I wrote them on the board and then paint the shapes to match the color words. They did a really good job with the painting and enjoyed it a lot! After that we gave them juice, sent them on their way, and set up for the next group. It was a very full day, but it went very smoothly.

Fridays are our days devoted to the women of Cercadillo. Ina began with Bible study and talked with the women about the section in Mark

where Jesus teaches "if your hand causes you to sin, cut if off". I couldn't understand all of the conversation about the passage, but Ina said they had good discussion about how much easier it is to say what is right than to do what is right. Later in the day, Ina said she heard at least one woman say, "Remember what we read today?" How awesome that the Word of God is not falling on deaf ears!!! In the afternoon, we had all of the women come back to learn how to make a new bag that they can hopefully sell in the future. For those of you who know Sara,

these are the bags she showed me and helped me get all the materials for. We weren't able to begin them until this week because Ina's generator quit working and her new one arrived on the Agape Flights plane on Wednesday! Ina recommended that we do a trial bag with old

fabric she already had before we handed over the really fun, bright fabric that I mailed down here. That was a great idea, because as in everything, there were some women who did better (okay, a lot better) than others :) Some have quite a ways to go with their sewing skills to get to a level where their things could be sold. Overall, the day was very long, but when we got home we all had that I'm-so-tired-I-can-hardly-get-out-of-the-car-but-that-was-really-important kind of feeling. We will begin the sellable bags next week!

Happy 4th of July! We are celebrating at Ina's house this evening by having over as many American missionaries as we can get! I've heard rumors of hot dogs, macaroni salad, and mango cake!

Not quite "good-to-go"...

...but getting a lot better!  Thank you for all your prayers for health and strength the past couple of days!  I believe that I am finally going back to Cercadillo tomorrow (Thursday) morning.  I'm definitely not 100% yet so keep praying, but I'm somewhat functional now :)  I would especially appreciate your continued prayers since we will be out in Cercadillo the whole day with groups of kids, and so far the forecast is "hot" again!  (On a side-note, did I mention that Ina read that the DR is expected to be entering a "heat-wave" with temperatures up to 104 degrees and little rain until mid-September?  Man, do I pick the time to come :)  I want to be able to love the kids well without completely exhausting myself.  The Lord will provide the energy and the love!  Ina and Abbey went to the village today to begin our reading and English classes, but I stayed home for one more day and alternated between resting and being somewhat useful (laundry, hanging it out to dry, folding laundry, washing dishes, and laminating flashcards for teaching).  I'll write again soon after I finally do something worth writing about :)  Until then...keep praying!!!

Just a quick note!

So, not a whole lot has happened since I blogged on Friday night, but I thought I'd take a little time to share what I've been up to!  It will only take me a second because I haven't been up to much.  I've been home (well, Ina's home) the past two days with some crazy icky sinus stuff.  I could post a picture of me laying on my bed or the couch and that would pretty much sum it up :)  I am felling a bit better this evening, but would really appreciate your prayers for continued healing and renewed energy since going up the stairs has put me out of breath lately.  I think the symptoms seem worse than they are because temperatures in the house have topped 90 degrees the past few days even with the fans on (Thank you LLBean travel alarm clock with temperature gage).  Thanks for letting me whine a little :)  I'm trying to remind myself that my suffering is small in comparison to what it could be or what I'm called to when I say, "I want to be like Christ!"

VBS was a success!

If you say that with the correct rhythm, it sounds like a chant!  And chant we did!  The VBS ran Monday through Thursday, and we had so much fun!  Each group of children made up a chant for their team color and showed great team spirit!  Ok, so enough with the exclamation points :)  I just can't help it!  God did the impossible through us this week!!!  We just got to show up, do a little work (ok, at times it felt like a lot of work :) and watch the Lord move.  

Each day of VBS began with a large group time of singing our theme songs (Super Viaje, Dios 

es Bueno, Por Siempre, Hoy es el Dia, among others).  Our 

fearless and very talented song leader, Claudia, was so enthusiastic and fun to watch.  Fortunately, she is one of our regular leaders on Sundays in Cercadillo.  For some reason, I keep accidently calling her "Carmen" so now I affectionately known as "Maria" :)  After that we had a puppet show by our good friends from Massachusetts who traveled all the way to the Caribbean to help put on the VBS.  They are really good at what they do and had several clever puppet shows during the week.  After the large group times we split into the five color groups and the kids rotated through five stations.  As I mentioned before, I manned the snack station along with my traveling partner, Abbey.  The favorite snack was galletas con mantequilla de maní (crackers

 with peanut butter).  Peanut butter is very expensive here so most of them rarely get it.  The best thing for us (and the group leaders) was that it is very hard to be loud while eating peanut butter on crackers :)  

Our station was very quiet those days.  I know some of you teachers are cringing, but they don't seem to have peanut allergies out here in the village.  At the end of each day we had another large group session with more songs, reviewing the verses and themes of the week, and awarding group points.  The groups earned points throughout the week by good behavior at the various stations.  

We all learned a lot about teamwork and letting the Lord work this 

week.  Not everything went exactly as we planned, but everything went as the Lord planned.  The most exciting thing for me to see this week was how God used two of the new believers in Cercadillo.  Carmencita and Elida are two of the six women who were recently baptized.  They both took leadership roles by being group leaders, and I have to say that their groups were by far the most well behaved, yet they were having tons of fun!  I believe that God will continue to use 

them to lead the children of Cercadillo and influence their fellow women for the Lord.  They are awesome examples of lives changed!

Another very exciting thing that happened this week was that the opportunity for pure drinking water arrived in Cercadillo!  One hundred ceramic water filters that sit in 5-gallon buckets 

arrived at Ina's house around noon on Wednesday.  One of the cool things about these filters is that they are made in a village in northern Dominican Republic so by purchasing these filters another village was helped.  Through a Christian organization called Agua Pura (Pure Water) and some very generous people, Ina was able to order 100 filters and bring in a person to educate the people of Cercadillo on how to use the filters in their homes.  The filters are not exactly fast, but they do remove a significant percentage of contaminates and toxins in the water pumped from the well.  So far we have sold 11, but at least 30 people are on a list and making payments towards a filter.  They will receive the filter when it is paid for.   It was great to sit and listen to the teacher because the people who attended the training saw the benefits, listened attentively, and asked some great questions.

Today is Friday which means we begin our day in Cercadillo with a Bible study for the women 

and then a craft time for the women in the business with Ina.  I had the opportunity to teach the women how to make some Christmas balls using styrofoam balls and some beautiful ribbon.  (Just a plug without pressure, if you email me that you want one before July 15, you too can have a handmade ornament for your tree this year.  The great thing is that in adorning your tree you can help support a woman and her family in Cercadillo for only $10! :)  Most of the women caught on right away and purchased supplies from Ina to make several more during this week.  In the afternoon a group from Florida came to Cercadillo and put on a singing program for the kids and a time of sports!  It's awesome to watch the Florida group love on the children!  They were all smiles the whole time and were absolutely run ragged by the end...oh wait, that was us!

Please continue to pray for health, endurance, and for us to continue pouring out the love of Christ on these kids and women!  Gracias!  Hasta Luego!