Jarabacoa, summer program, vbs, weddings....

So we have just completed our first week of summer program. With that things have dramatically become busier over the past two weeks. A week and a half ago I left with four other Dominican girls and Ramon (Dominican missionary) for Jarabacoa for summer program teacher training. There I met our two new interns Shaina and Jennifer. It was a fantastic time in Jarabacoa attending what I think has been the best summer program training yet and getting to connect with some people that I had met when I interned in Jarabacoa. I also got to meet all the interns and speak English a lot. All in all it was a good two days. The day after we arrived back we met with all the teachers that are working with us this summer to go over the curriculum and prepare for the next week. After getting everything ready in the classrooms and spending the weekend inviting the kids to the summer program and making many copies, we felt somewhat ready for the coming week.

Monday started our summer program. We had around fifty kindergarten through second graders. We started it all off with a chapel service where we sang some fun songs and talked about Ephesians and Paul. Our Bible theme for this summer is put on the armor of God, and we're very excited to see how it goes. It was great seeing the kids ready to learn and enjoy themselves. This summer I am not teaching I am "co-directing" as Rebekah calls it. Pretty much I make copies, take kids home, and teach in the classroom if there is a need. I like what I am doing a lot because when I take the kids home I get to see their homes and where there from and meet family members. I also like being able to play with the kids and enjoy time with them without being in the classroom. We had prepared for this week to be difficult with a lot of discipline issues since that was the normal experience of the summer, but aside from a few kids having to be sent home because they could not behave the kids have been great and listening and learning. In our daily devotional time with the teachers we talked about how we saw God moving and it was great to hear how God was moving not only in the students but also in the teachers. What is even more exciting is that one of the students who was expelled from the summer program last year after a couple days has only been sent up to the office once, and not only that but other than one day she has been on the list of excellent behavior for three days in a row. We are so excited to have her in the program and to see her growing. There are still many more weeks in the sumer program but we are praying that she will be able to continue in this way and stay in the program.

Not only did we have summer school this week but we also had the church's VBS (picture above). With 450 to 500 kids in attendance daily (even though it was raining) we came home every night pretty worn out. Most of our time at VBS was telling kids to sit down and to stop talking, but there were 450 to 500 kids daily hearing the Word. There was also a youth VBS in the evenings which we didn't go to, but we are hearing of how God moved in that and how He changed lives through that. It was a very exciting and draining time, and thankfully Saturday morning allowed us to catch up on some sleep.

After the week of madness, we went up north yesterday for a wedding of one of the guy's here in Monte Plata. It was my first time at a Dominican wedding and it was very very unique. There were probably fifteen girls involved in the wedding each representing a different thing and doing little dances down the aisle. In typical Dominican fashion the wedding started two hours late, so Rebekah and I spent some time working on a Rubic's cube which we have now solved multiple times. It was a very pretty wedding and a lot of fun and thankfully the rain held of so we didn't get drenched outside during the ceremony.

This next week we continue with our summer program in the mornings and we'll probably be going out to the orphanage in the afternoons to do stuff with the kids and then this coming weekend we will be going to Jarabacoa to go rafting and we are taking the eighth grade and high school graduates from the orphanage with us, so we are very excited since this will be the first time any of them have done this. Also at some point during the week we'll be taking one of the houses with us out to a waterfall for some fun.

I have been here a month

I have now been here for just over a month and it doesn't seem like it has been that long, but I have been enjoying my time here so much.

This week was supposed to somewhat be a week of vacation or calm before the storm of the summer program, but it seemed to be a pretty busy time. This past weekend (Thurs. Fri. and Sat.) we went to a conference in the capitol featuring John Piper, Miguel Nunez, and some other pastors from the Dominican Republic. It was a great time of hearing men of God speaking on very important topics as well as seeing the large number of Dominicans in attendance and coming together and being built up in the faith as well as worshipping together. It turned out to be a long weekend. On Thursday we were there for half the day, then on Friday again half the day although our plans were changed a little when a hose on the car broke on our way to the capitol meaning we had to get that fixed by a kind stranger on the side of the road and then take it to a mechanic in the capitol to make sure everything was okay. After that though we were able to make it to the conference. Then on Saturday we begun our day at 5 a.m. which for me is far too early for anyone to be waking up, but we did and thankfully I was able to stay awake the whole day, which some others had some troubles with, but we were very much spiritually encouraged that day. It was really great to be able to take each day different people with us that were either in the youth group or leaders in the church, and we hope they were encouraged by their time there.

After a busy weekend we still had church on Sunday, and then after church we pretty much ate lunch and all took very long naps. On Monday Nadelli and Rebekah went into the capitol to apply for Nadelli's passport, which has been a long time in the making since they first had to get her a birth certificate, which is difficult since she wasn't declared and her parents are both dead, but in a month she will finally have a passport (a Haitian passport although she has never been to Haiti, but it was the only way it could be done). On Tuesday we went back into the capitol to do some dress shopping for the girls for dresses for a wedding coming up in the next couple weeks as well as some paint to paint the exterior of the house here. Rebekah and I had high hopes to finish the painting of the house in two days. After one day we realized that would not be achievable. On Wednesday we painted the inside of the porch and the ceiling. Then on Thursday Rebekah and I headed out to Jarabacoa to help get some things ready for next week for the training for the summer program. I did some fun coloring and mosaic making, which will be used for examples to show how the crafts are supposed to look. I also ended up staying up until 3 a.m. laminating over 150 papers that are for each of the sites and will be passed around from one classroom to the next. The laminating process took a long time since the machine is a basic laminator where you have to put sheets of plastic around the paper and then put that in a cover and then send it through a machine that melts it one at a time. The next morning we woke up at 7:30 a.m. so I was pretty tired, but we started working again and since the continent focus of the summer program this year is Europe I spent the morning drawing maps of Europe until the power went out. That left us with not much to do, so Rebekah took a nap and then we got back on the road to make the drive back to Monte Plata.

Friday afternoon we had planned to take naps, but that did not happen, so we headed out to church that night with mints in Rebekah's purse, which we sucked on throughout Friday night church to stay awake. It worked and we headed home to finally get a good night's sleep. We got to sleep in this morning and then we spent the rest of the day painting the house and we were able to completely finish the porch, so now we just have the other three sides of the house to paint, but we're hoping that will be an easier task than the porch.

This next week Rebekah heads out to Jarabacoa again for the summer program's directors training and then on Wednesday the Dominican summer teachers and I will be heading to Jarabacoa for the teacher training and then we'll all be back Thursday and the summer program begins the following Monday, so things are going to be getting pretty busy pretty fast.

Getting pulled over

I had figured I would not be writing another blog for a while, but due to tonights events my mind has been changed. Today was a pretty simple day. Rebekah is back and I'm happy to have her back. Today was what she claimed to be her vacation day so for lunch we had cereal and quesadillas. We had a good time relaxing for the morning and then in the afternoon we went over to Casa Monte Plata (the orphanage) to meet the new set of houseparents. There's a lot of changes happening there. Thankfully this new set of houseparents have allowed Juana and Ramon to move out of the house parent role and focus on being the directors of the orphanage which is an answer to prayer. Not only did this new couple move in with their two adorable twin boys but also this weekend another set of houseparents will be moving in to the fourth house and finally (it has been many years in the making) all four houses will be occupied and also there will be some more kids coming in. We met the very nice couple right as the entire orphanage was about to leave to go shopping. We had not planned this so we found ourselves with some extra time.

We decided to go visit the barrio where Nadelli grew up. It's always difficult to go there because its one of the poorest areas of monte plata and there are many people and children in need of help. Both of Nadelli's parents are dead, but when we go we visit the woman that took care of Nadelli and her siblings when she and her brothers were living alone without parents. The lady is quite old and Haitian and although she knows Spanish she does not speak it as her first language so it can be a little hard to understand her so sometimes we need a translator to go from Creole/French to Spanish for us. It was a lovely time listening to her talk about how God is always providing when she asks Him. She talked about when Nadelli's mom died and how she prayed that someone would come and take care of the kids and it happened that the orphanage was able to take Nadelli's brother and Nadelli was able to move in with the missionaries here. She said she praises God for that because if Nadelli was still living in that neighborhood she would probably be starving and married (Nadelli is 16). I enjoyed spending time and hearing the testimony of what God had done.

Now to the title of this blog. We went to church tonight for the weekly Wednesday night prayer meeting. Everything was pretty ordinary lots of singing and praying and then afterwards we took one of the elderly ladies home, which changed our route to the house a little bit. Rebekah had stayed in since her mom had called a little while before we were going to leave and they were still talking, so I was driving. We got to the intersection right before the house and I realized that there were a lot of police men in the street. I was confused because rarely do I see police men in Monte Plata let alone ten police men. I didn't really know exactly what to do so I kept driving until one of them told me to pull over. So I pulled over and rolled down the window as I'm doing this Alba is telling me to just pretend that I don't speak Spanish and say "Ramon Prenza" (the name of the Dominican missionary here that everyone seems to know), but this left me really confused since I had forgotten the story of the Colombian missionary here who appears somewhat American and how when he got pulled over he pretended not to speak Spanish and just said Ramon Prenza and they let him go. Anyway the police man (dressed in camo with a doo-rag on his head) came up and he told me to shut off the car and for all of us (Nadelli and Alba were with me) to get out of the car. I got out of the car, not sure if I was supposed to put my hands in the air or what not, so I just looked at Nadelli and Alba who weren't putting their hands in the air and assumed I didn't need to. The two men then proceeded to search the car and asking us questions about where we were coming from and what we were doing. They asked me if I had my passport, which I didn't since the missionaries had told me I wouldn't be getting pulled over in Monte Plata. I told the guy that I didn't have it but that it was at the house just down the street. Apparently it wasn't very important and the doo-rag guy continued to search the car while the man with a helmet also clothed in camo and carrying a large gun stood there supervising. They searched the back of the jeep and then when they saw our Bibles they asked us if we were evangelical Christians to which we responded yes and they proceeded to search within our Bibles saying that a lot of people hide drugs in Bibles. Upon finding only Scripture and head coverings in the Bibles they decided we were innocent enough and let us continue on our way. I made the two second drive to the house and was very happy to be back. We then all had a good laugh about the events that had happened. Tomorrow we will be going to the capital to a conference featuring John Piper, which will be exciting especially since I'm not sure if Rebekah knows how to get there and she's the one driving...