I Heart Hump Day

Today is Wednesday and I love today.

Today....

Margo taught me to make "Mangu" (cooked/mashed plantains- SO good!) and it was delicious :)

We went to eat a fabulous Dominican Restaurant for dinner (which means an easy day in the kitchen for me!)

We took some of the group to a small public pool here in town and cooled off in the hot sun

I sipped a yummy iced latte that I made from leftover coffee while I wrote this post

I felt completely comfortable driving the blue truck around town for the first time

Made plans for some of the awesome places we want to travel and see during our upcoming weeks off (including a beach so secluded you can't get there by any means other than a small motorboat guided by someone who knows where to find it! woot!)

I shared some Dulce de Leche ice cream with some sweet boys from the orphanage

I laughed so harder than I have in a long time when I found out that one of the girl's has been showering with tape over her mouth this whole week, thinking that if she didn't she might get sick from the water. 

I made 2 new friends who invited me to a goat BBQ next weekend

I ended the night talking, dreaming and laughing with my 2 favorite people here in the DR :)

I Want it All...

Today was the first day since moving to the Dominican Republic that I felt a twinge of loneliness.

It was one of those moments that I thought I desperately just wanted some quiet and solitude in all the chaos, but then as soon as I had it, I wished I didn't because the quiet just seemed TOO quiet. I heard it said once that loneliness is God's call for intimacy in our lives. I haven't been able to prove otherwise.
I guess I've just been running around the guesthouse, thinking that if I keep busy enough and work up enough sweat, I'll just absorb Jesus through Osmosis or something along the way. But all I really get are sore feet and little spiritual "teasers".
Everyday the team comes back from the campo or the clinic and I get to hear their stories. How many needs they were able to met, people they prayed with, miracles they witnessed, relationships that were formed and lives that were changed. It is incredible and I've been eating up all their spiritual morsels. But I've neglected my OWN "daily bread.
Here at the beginning of our life here in the DR I find myself continually thinking how I just want it all! I want to make deep, close friends here, I want to become "dominicana", I want to learn this culture and understand their needs, I want to love people- I want it all!

So this afternoon when Shane and Shane came up on my shuffle during some afternoon chores with their song titled "I Want it All", I found myself pulled into the words of the song. It was easy to belt out the chorus while I thought about all those things that I wanted, but the versus got to me. Especially the line, "To starve is to feast and less of me is more of you, Jesus- Lord, I want it all". Seems like a bit of an oxymoron, to say that I want  "less of me" and that "I want it all" in the same breath? Probably because all those things that I want have an underlying desire for MORE of me.

Calling myself a missionary right now feels mostly silly. I think "stubborn student who forgets to keep her eyes on Jesus while baking yummy cookies" would be a fitting title for today. So I'm thankful for the hint of lonliness today, especially if it means that Jesus is running after me and loves me still.

Cool Thing!

For those of you who are wishing I was better at taking pictures of our new home and our day to day life- you are in luck! kind of...

The Solid Rock website just posted hundreds of pictures of San Juan, the clinic, group projects, even pick ups and departures in Santo Domingo! It is a great way to get a better view of what the country and the people look like, as well as give you a little better taste of what our days look like. Check it out! 

...and just so you know, I'm trying really hard to remind myself to take the camera with us throughout the day and do better at recording our life here!

www.solidrockmissions.org

>Then click "Photo Gallery"

A Series of Long Days....

The last few days might as well have been a few months. I cannot believe the amount of things that happen in one day's time here! In honor of this series of long days, I've complied this series of awesome things that have happened in them:

1. As the result of a lot of head scratching, sweat and tears, a couple of guys from our group with some electrical experience were able to solve a wiring problem that apparently has been unable to be solved since the dawn of time around here! As a result we have light in two very important rooms that never had them before! Woo-hoo!

2. Nicole invited us to have dinner with herself and another missionary couple here in San Juan. Miguel and Kristen work for Adventures in Missions and have been living here for over 6 years. We sat out on their BEAUTIFUL patio, chatted, ate yummy tacos and began a friendship that will hopefully last a long time :)

3. The blue truck is working! Dan and I technically own 2 super beastly Toyota Hilux's, however the blue truck is touchy and had been out of commission since we arrived- but yesterday we got it fixed! (at least for now, haha) I drove it for the first time to bring the group to the flag raising. 

Driving that truck is an adventure- to say the least!

4. One of the groups down this week is the VanVleet family. Dorothy VanVleet, I've been told, is 85 years old. She first came to the Dominican as a missionary in 1949 and spent most of her life here. When we went to church on Sunday, one of the elders pulled us aside and said, "It is because of the ministry of this woman that my father came to the Lord and as a result our whole family now knows and follows God. She is one of the reasons that this church was founded and exists." Wow. That gave me goosebumps! Sometimes I find myself wondering how much difference one person can really make. What a great reminder that, when God's working in us, there is no limit to how much he can use us!

5. As a result of some botched reservations, Dan and I ended up skipping our night at the Capella resort and spending 2 nights in the Lina hotel instead. It turned out to be a wonderful break for us and we even got to have our first "date night" since being here, thanks to a fancy Japanese restaurant they have in the hotel lobby (Yes, Dan got his sushi!)

6. The group this week brought us a couple of care packages that were WONDERFUL!! I don't know how they knew to bring all the right things that we hadn't even asked for! haha, we got spoiled with Girl Scout Cookies (even Samoas- my favorite! and Thin Mints- Dan's favorite), Orbitz gum (also my favorite), Milky Way bar (ummm...favorite), Reese's (Dan's favorite), Sour Patch kids (yep- favorite). They even brought Diego some doggy treats! Lol, maybe we are just easy to please, but it was fun to be spoiled non-the-less!

Now all of that is not to say that this week has been completely smooth- FAR from it, I assure you! We have had plenty of craziness and our stress levels have been on a roller coaster. But the point is that we get to the end of every day feeling satisfied and blessed. We have no doubt that we are exactly where we are supposed to be and we are truly happier than we have been in a long time. 

Llego el Dia...

The day has come.

Shannon and Joe officially left this morning. It shouldn't have felt like the surprise that it did. Here are some pictures from their last day with us:

Margo brought them flowers:

Joe and Dan decided to say goodbye to each other in their own special way:

We will miss you guys TONS!! Thank you for all your patience and encouragement! Looking forward to having you as bosses soon ;)

So while Dan and Joe were dancing to strobe lights and trying to start the kitchen on fire with their sparklers, our team of girls from UVA were very hard at work outside! Since the kids were off of school on wednesday, they stayed back with us to help do some odd jobs around the guesthouse. And let me tell you, these girls were AMAZING! Check it out:

It was also the day that we learned a lot about the force of gravity.... and coconuts. Joe told showed us how we will need to climb up into the coconut trees to knock down the coconuts before they decide to fall on their own... and possibly land on someone's head. Here is our first coconut lesson:

Step 1: Set up impossibly tall ladder into tree

Step 2: Have some really strong ladies hold that ladder tight:

Step 3: Send the only man crazy enough, up the tree with a saws-all:

The Carnage

In the process of clearing out that mess of branches and coconuts, the ladies learned a second very important lesson about gravity and coconuts. We asked them to re-inact it for you here:

Yes. Flying coconuts+Gravity+Truck = lesson #2

Haha, we love you guys :)

Who's the Boss?

The very frightening answer to that question is: We are! Ever since last friday morning Dan and I have been flying solo. And I think we've surprised ourselves! Maybe it's because our standards of no one being dead or severly maimed by the end of each day are a little low, but we find it covers the essentials. I realize that it is only 4 days, but it has given us a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, we can not only do this job but even be somewhat great at it someday. Please keep praying us toward that end! And thanks so much to all of you who are/have been/will be here in the mean time and are being so patient with us! (ESPECIALLY Shannon and Joe!)

I'm only a couple weeks in now, but I have a feeling that I will always have a love/hate relationship with Mondays. So far, they are one CRAZY long day, but each one has ended with a HUGE sense of accomplishment at knowing that the craziest part of the week is behind us. It also happens to end with an pick-up game of baseball under the lights in the perfect Dominican evening... that adds to the love part :)

Diego came with us to the game tonight. It was fun to be outside of the guesthouse walls with him... though I'm not sure we'll be making it a weekly thing. I hadn't thought through the fact that there are about a bazillion little boys from the neighborhood who come by to watch the game (along with plenty of adults too...I think we must be quite an odd sight!). They were all a little apprehensive of the dog at first, but once they found out that he was nice and he wouldn't bite them, they all wanted to play with him. and THEN they found out that he knew commands and oh my goodness, you'd think I'd have told them he knew how to fly. They were SO excited. They wanted me to make him sit, and lay down and roll over again and again. haha. Lots of fun, but our poor little puppy is passed out in the middle of the rug on the floor now. Talk about over stimulation! 

And now I'm going to go join him... 

A Few Snapshots of the Last Week...

We had a conversation with Shannon and Joe the first weekend we were here, and they gave us a great piece of advice. They told us to make sure that we write down our stories, everyday. They told us that eventually all the crazy stuff would begin to seem "normal" and unless we journaled about it, we would forget just how silly life is sometimes.

So I don't have anything really big to write about, here are just a few snapshots of the last week:

* February 27th is Dominican Independence Day- We decided that trying to drive around the city that weekend was like a video game. We were driving through the main road in town, when we were deterred by several teenagers in long hippie wigs violently swinging and cracking 15 ft long whips up and down the street. So we hung a quick right, only to run into a political rally that was clogging up that street. We took the next turn available and ran straight into a school parade, haha. Good thing we had plenty of time to get where we were going!

* I laughed pretty hard on Monday morning when Joe, after buzzing his hair, came out to talk to Margo (one of the wonderful women who comes to help us with keep house) and she smacked him on the head! haha, apparently bald people get smacked in the Dominican- I think Joe will protect his head next time.

* We take the group out to dinner and ice cream on Wednesday nights. I went up to ask the ice cream flavors so I could help those ordering- strangely, I didn't recognize a lot of the flavors they were telling me. I found out after trying them why they were unfamiliar to me- It was Rum Raisin and Prune flavored. It kinda felt like trying Bernie Botts Every Flavor Beans.

* Here at the guesthouse we have a pasola (scooter) that we use for running errands around time sometimes. Almost everyone down here has some type of motorized bike or scooter it seems. So Joe, Shannon and I decided to take the pasola to the gym the other day. Squeezing far more people/things on a scooter than should realistically fit is a very Dominican thing to do, so we were a pretty normal sight on our way there. However, we must have been a sight to see AFTER a long sweaty work out. We probably didn't think that one through too well.

* Surgeries this week have been insane. Hand amputation, removal of a HUGE cancerous growth on a guy's hip and another removal of a softball size growth on a man's chest. I know it sounds disgusting (and it WAS), but praise God that we had 3 general surgeons here this week that were able to help these people who have been living with these ailments for years! Just be glad I'm NOT posting pictures. Thank you surgeons!!!

* Between Dan and Joe, the truck's battery was killed several times this week... as a result we have learned the finer art of push starting a car! As someone with lots of experience in killing my own car battery, I'm SO pumped to know that a good running start and some skill with the clutch will get us out of trouble in no time ;)

* Baseball games- On Monday night we were invited by Pastor Juan to a pick-up game of baseball. It was the most beautiful "summer" evening to spend under the lights at a ball park. I've posted a few pics below (though I'm hoping to get better ones in the future!). It was a ton of fun, but also very humbling. The Dominicans schooled our guys! haha. Dan is so excited to get a chance to play every week though :)