I will admit that I am not the most graceful individual. I have taken quite a few falls in my lifetime but have always managed to end up with only a few bruises and maybe some scrapes. Such was not the case about a week ago. This fall I got a slack line (see picture). I had decided it would be fun to bring it down to Monte Plata for some of the older kids to try out. So, the first day we (my sister and I) were here we had some free time and decided we would try it out. Before long we were walking the slackline and even had some kids joining us and trying to figure it out. As I was once again walking the slack line I could feel myself about to fall, but I thought I could recover. Instead I ended up falling off and actually landing on my feet until the momentum of falling off carried me to the ground. I attempted to stop myself with my hand but instead my hand only found rocks as did my knees. I sat on the ground and had a little chuckle at myself for how ridiculous I thought I probably looked, but suddenly I became much more serious as I noticed two deep gashes on my knee and a lot of blood on my hand. I assumed the blood on my hand had come from my knees until my hand began to fill with blood. I realized at that point I needed to get to the house and stop the blood. While faith went and got some help I made it to the house and began applying pressure to the large deep gash on my hand. After cleaning it all up it was decided I needed to go to the clinic. At the clinic they cleaned the cuts up even more and as a crowd including a small child gathered the nurse began shooting anestesia into my cuts and sewing me up. I left the clinic with six stitches in my knee and four in my hand and a new story to tell. My hand and knee have healed pretty well and hopefully the stitches will be coming out today.
Aside from some minor injuries I have really been enjoying my time here. We got here during the week of finals so we spent our mornings stapling all the exams for the next day for all the grades and then our afternoons either playing sports or going to casa monte plata (the orphanage). With the stitches the use of my right hand became pretty limited so we had a lot of lefthanded basketball games. I always enjoy playing sports here because there are a lot of kids that are difficult to connect with but when the basketball comes out those same difficult kids are right there wanting to join in. Then even after the games are over they still want to hang out which opens doors for ministry to happen.
Despite it being the holiday season which sometimes means there's not much to do, we have been pretty busy. This past weekend the youth group at church did pantomimes as an outreach for three nights in a row. We could tell they really put a lot of work into it and a lot of people came out to see it. Then last night we went out to casa monte plata for a celebration dinner with lots of food, fun, laughter, and singing (including a nice solo by me that I was completely unprepared for and then had to make up half the words to the chorus of what child is this, thankfully I was singing in english so many of them had no idea). It was a sweet time to see how how the kids have grown and their appeciation for the people that have taken them in.
Tomorrow is the big Christmas celebration at the school which will be fun with all the kids in school all together and each class does its own little program like a drama or singing for the other students. They also will all get a little Christmas gift that we have spent the last couple days wrapping.
Our time here has really flown by. It is hard to believe that by Saturday we will already be getting on a plane to fly back.
