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...