Damos Gracias (Fall Newsletter 2011)

Happy Thanksgiving! As we write, our hearts and stomachs are stuffed full of thankfulness and pie after a wonderful celebration. It was incredible to look around at our mix of guests and really feel that, though there were many faces we missed, we felt we were among family. Out of the many blessings this last year, our wonderful community of friends here was the most unexpected and overwhelming.

Kristen, Nicole and Jennifer (Margo's Daughter)

Dan's parents were in town to celebrate with us and make the most AMAZING turkey, stuffing and pies! 

Also on our list of unexpected blessings are: community baseball nights, fresh Chinola juice on a hot day, watching our groups show God’s love and serve our community,  and the growing familiarity of places, people, smells and sounds of San Juan. This year has changed so many things about who we are, including what it means to us to truly give thanks... 

Coming up with a list of blessings at Thanksgiving time would usually feel like a mixture of cherished tradition and grade-school cliche. But somewhere during this last year, the act of giving thanks took on a whole new meaning as we found ourselves clinging to it to guard against pride, doubt, weariness and worry.

As you can imagine, our first year on the mission field has been an exhilarating and exhausting ride. Dan has fought with a brain that aches day after day from being stretched and pulled as he wraps his head around the Spanish language. I (Kari) have struggled with frustration in trying to balance my time between all the people and needs. We both at times (maybe more often than not) have felt terribly inadequate for the job before us. And you know what? It made us moody! When things were going well, we were up; God loved us and we were ready to serve. But when things were tough we were confused, hurt and threw our hands in the air.  It took some great friends to point out how much we were relying on ourselves to pull this off and not trusting the character and promises of God. 

Choosing to cling to thankfulness has begun to change our hearts and the way that we view the circumstances around us. It is the quiet reminder to the soul that, whether the day brings productive, meaningful work or the construction materials never arrive, it doesn’t change the fact that God is good. He is present. He is in control. He is owed thanks! Especially in the moments when nothing seems to make sense and we can’t find the words to pray, it is SO good to go back to that simple phrase and thank Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine!

We love our life here and have so many reasons to be grateful- and the more we give ourselves time to stop and count them, the more we find! Even as we continue to find ourselves challenged and stretched, we are so thankful for it! We know that we are being changed and renewed and maybe little by little becoming more like Jesus. 

Things We Are Thankful For:

Supporters

We cannot begin to say thank you enough to all of the friends, family and strangers who have stood beside us, prayed for us, encouraged us and financially supported us this last year. We can say for certain that your love has changed and humbled us greatly! We absolutely cannot do this alone, so we deeply thank those of you who have chosen to journey with us. 

San Juan de la Maguana

We still haven't gotten over the stunning scenery, the bustling life, vibrant colors, earthy smells and beautiful people here. We remain convinced that we live in the most beautiful place on earth. We are so thankful to be a part of this community and only hope to be able to give back a small part of all the joy, hospitality an drove that they've given to us. 

Child Nutrition

This sweet face is one of the 200+ babies that we have in our Child Nutrition Program. Like many of the children, when we first met her she was severely malnourished, weighing only 11 lbs at 14 months old. Thankfully, because of the milk and nutritional education provided for her, she has gained 2 lbs in the last month! Laura Demastus, new the the Solid Rock staff, will be living with us for the next year to help us discover even more effective ways of helping these little ones and expanding this program. 

Will You Join With Us?

Over 10 months ago, we set off with the impossible dream of following God into the specific work that He is doing here in San Juan and somehow becoming a part of it. But, of course, when we arrived in the DR, we were still the same messy people, desperately in need of a savior and a lot of help! Situations here demand and call us to become something more than what we are alone. There are problems that run too deep for any person to fill and prayers that sometimes we are too tired or confused to pray. 

More than anything, we desire to know that we are not alone. We want to be part of a community that goes far beyond San Juan, Minneapolis, or Bristol, CT. A community of people who love God, love people and who long to see His Kingdom come in the world. This wonderful place happens to be the corner He brought us to, and we would love to invite you to share it with us. 

We ask you to consider becoming a part of our community by choosing to support us. Whether it is a one time gift or monthly support, an e-mail or a morning prayer, we long for the encouragement and joy that your partnership would bring as well as the chance to become a part of your story and the community in which God has placed you!

For more information about Solid Rock, our ministry here or to provide financial support, you can visit the Solid Rock website: www.solidrockmission.org and click the "donations" tab. 

We'll leave you with a few more pictures of the friends and experiences we are so thankful for!

 

A Little More About Us...

Seriously, one of the strangest feelings is meeting a someone for the very first time and them knowing strangely detailed information about our personal life. That happens on a fairly regular basis since I forget sometimes that our blog is linked up with the Solid Rock website. 

Unfortunately for them, most of my posts are disjointed personal, and usually un-original, thoughts about life- with a fair number of pictures that serve as an attempt to distract from my word-vomit. But today, realizing that this will most likely be read by lots of weird and wonderful people whom I have yet to meet, I thought I'd avoid the introspective mumbo-jumbo and try to do a little better job of introducing ourselves...

Let's begin with Dan...

Awww! Super cute, right??

Dan is originally from Simsbury, CT. He has a wonderful family- His mom (Ruth) and father (Gary) along with an older sister and two older half-brothers, which makes him very much the baby of the family :)

Dan struggled with the idea of faith and God during his teenage years, but has a pretty cool story of how he gave his life to Jesus on the way back from a court hearing about some mis deeds... you can ask him about it if you'd like to know more. Since then, he's never looked back. He also has a better story than me about the day he knew he was going to be a missionary... Pretty much, Dan's just an interesting guy with an interesting perspective on life. It's one of the many reasons that I love him.

He bounced around to several different colleges and tried out even more majors, but ended up (strangely) in Anderson, IN studying philosophy and Christian ministry. It was in Anderson that he heard about an organization called "Youthworks" and decided to become "Work Projects Staff" during the summer of 2007. 

This is Dan in Juarez, Mexico with a family that he built an extra room for in his 'free time'. 

Youthworks also happens to be responsible for the fact that Dan and I meet. I think this picture sums up how I felt about Dan that first summer... don't worry, I came around eventually...

Other interesting things about Dan...

He LOVES baseball- the Red Sox to be specific...

He has always wanted to be a pirate...

He loves taking naps with Diego...

...and has a new-found love for snorkeling and spear fishing since we've moved to the DR.

Sit down with Dan for two minutes and I guarantee you that there will be no small-talk involved. He is a say-it-how-it-is, lets-talk-about-stuff-that-matters-without-worrying-who-we-might-offend kind of guy. He will also never pass up an opportunity for a board game or a bowl or chips and salsa. Things you might not guess about him are the fact that he's really an awesome cook and a great gardener! 

Alright, that's all the time I have for today, I'll guess there'll have to be a second edition!

If you are reading this and you are one of the weird and wonderful people I have yet to meet- tell me about yourself! 

Have you come to the DR with Solid Rock before? Do you have a trip scheduled for the coming year? How did you hear about Solid Rock? Or what have your times here meant to you? 

I'm excited to get to know you too!

A Day in the Life (A Photo Journal)

Serving Breakfast and Preparing for the Day

Like most mornings, Wilmer, a young guy from the neighborhood who loves to come by, stops in to say hi to Genny and Diego.

Then there's my laundry. Since it's almost always sunny, the hang-dry method is utilized... which I have grown to love. I like grabbing my sun-warmed clothes off the line in the afternoon... and then they end up in a giant pile in the middle of our bedroom floor... waiting to be folded....

But instead of folding, I decide to drink some AMAZING Dominican coffee and write up the shopping list for the day...

 After that's taken care of, I check for new e-mails, make phone calls and plan for the upcoming teams...

But then I hear some ruckus outside and see that our lost truck has been returned! (it was borrowed 2 days ago)... unfortunately it was returned on the back of a tow-truck...

...with most of it's engine in piece in the bed *sigh*

As I head back to the guesthouse to inform Dan, I find this big mess and very innocent looking puppy...

 I don't find Dan, but instead I see our branch of bananas and decide to make some banana bread...

But THIS time I make sure to set the timer... because I may have burnt several things beyond recognition this last week (the brownies that cooked 12 hours through the night turned out less than gooey...)

And this gives me just enough time to sip more coffee as they bake...

Tah- dah! Delicious!


And thus ends the photo journal part of my day... at 11:00am...mostly because I find it difficult to remember to carry my camera around with me for more than 10 minutes at a time. Perhaps I will try again another day...

Looking back through my morning, I have to admit, it looks less than glamorous or thrilling. But even though big parts of my days (like anyone else's) are filled with seemingly mundane tasks (laundry, cleaning up doggy messes, washing the banana bread goo out of mixing bowls and trying to decide which of my limbs to sell in order to earn enough money to fix the truck yet AGAIN) I LOVE it. Something about living here- in a place with so many vivid colors, raw emotion, and non-stop music, has helped me see beauty in so many places I never looked for it before.

There are still a lot of moments when I REALLY want my life to be special and significant. I want to MATTER. I want to show Mother Teresa how it's done. And I want the lighting in my pictures to cast me just right.
But I think hope, that the moments when I'm content with the mess that I am and the GOOD God that HE is, are slowly become more frequent. Those moments bring romance and adventure into the simple and mundane.
Like the feeling of butterflies that a girl gets in the slightest hint of affection from the guy she loves, God can whisper his love to me in the feeling of sun-dried gym shorts, the way that my knife glides through a perfectly ripe avocado or the satisfaction of pulling perfectly browned banana bread out of the oven.
It's a GOOD day. 

Montecitos

God knows... he knew that I needed mountain majesty, sweet babies, a gift of eggs plucked right from the chicken's nest, fresh breezes, great friends, a delicious lunch made by humble hands and a night under the stars at the baseball field with hoards of silly neighborhood boys that just make me laugh.

I still don't understand God- but I know that he is trying to teach me to trust his goodness and character apart from circumstance or appearances. Looking out across the mountain ranges, valleys, rivers and forests, I can see a God who is bigger, mightier and holier than I could ever comprehend or question.

 "God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; 
he does great things beyond our understanding.

Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like his?"