Gracias por mis amigos en los estados

      Friday morning at 12:15 am we said good bye to the Smoker family, Jason, Sara, Allison, and Jaren. They had spent the previous 4 days with us here in Jarabacoa and we were so thankful for the time that they took to spend with us. After missing a flight in Chicago on Wednesday and then put on stand-by and missing the flight on Sunday morning, they did make the next flight and arrived at 2:00 on Monday morning. We had fun showing them a couple of the waterfalls in town and the spent part of one day at Genesis with us. Michelle Sharick was to be with them on the trip, but with the change in flight plans, that didn't work out then. So we now have that to look forward to another time and she will be able to bring Mark along then. so that will make it all worth the wait.

       We will be leaving on Saturday morning June 30, to return to Indiana to witness our daughter Rachel become Mrs Rowe. She will marry Elliot on Saturday July 7th. We are so excited for them both. It is hard to see our kids keep growing up but that is all part of the parenting process. Elliot is a welcome addition to the U's.

      Our life here has not changed much since my last post. The most exciting thing (which says a lot about our life in general here) is that hey brought 5-6 loads of crushed rock and delivered them at various spots in our road so they did their part. Of course Janae and Marcy were so glad to get up a couple of mornings before it got hot and helped me with a wheel barrow and shovel, fill in the worst of the pot holes. Some of you will remember the video that I had taken. It is much better now. Nina will no longer get any more concussions from head hitting the side window of the car as we drive to and from Genesis each day.
      We finally have a reliable water source at Genesis as the well is now fixed. When we arrived the end of April, the well pump had been burned up and so I contacted the city about taping into the street water line that went right by our front gate. They said sure, that was no problem at all and it would be about $65 to hook it up and then $18 per month. It seemed like the logical thing to do since I was told that the actual well that the pump was in was bad and it could not be fixed. After they did the hook up and I ran about 200; of 1/2"water line to the building I was told that the water only runs two days a week. They were not sure which two days but they were confident that it only ran two days a week. after waiting for a week and a half with still no water in the line, I started to ask soem of the neighbors what was up. THAT, was when they told me that there was NO water in that line. So why did they hook me up to it? Well, it was my fault for not asking first if there was actually water in the waterline. Silly me just assumed that a city water line would have water in it. I found out that the pump downtown is not big enough to pump it all the way to where we are. There has never been water in that water line. One would have thought that maybe that would have come up when I paid them to hook it up???????? Anyway, we have water now. After I realized that our only alternative was to find a way to fix the existing well, I worked on it one evening and was able to convince the area plumber to try to repair it, and sure enough, it works now.

Fiesta de Los Maestros

      On the first Thursday night of each outreach team we have what we call “dinner in the community”. That is the evening that we go to a current or previous student’s home for dinner with our interns and outreach team. It is a great time for the interns and team members to interact with the families of the children at Genesis (the school where Karen and I are working). This last Thursday was a bit different as we didn’t have any outreach members so we took this time to invite all the teachers and families to our own home for dinner to get to know them a little better in a setting different than the school. What a great time we all had. The trampoline was the hit of the evening. 

Not so much with the children but rather with the parents and adults. The laughing and fun continued as I took the pictures I had taken and put them on the computer later for them to see.

After dark and most everyone had left, Maribel was even caught on it but it was too dark for a photo. We had rice and beans with salad and iced tea to drink. I am sure that everyone slept well that evening.

We had an extra surprise that evening when our daughter Rachel SKYPED in just to visit a little and here were all the teachers that she had worked with when she was at Genesis 1-1/2 years ago when she was here with the Bethel  College Semester program for 4 months.

     Another way that we are trying to get more involved in the families is we are going to visit the children after school gets out for just 20-30 minutes or so. We also are trying to visit the ones that have quit coming for some reason and see if they are interested in coming back or if there is some other way we can continue to help them out. On one of those visits, we went to see Omar because he has not been attending since the end of April. His mother said that his dad left and she is now working hard to just keep food on the table and can’t afford the tuition. The RDU 500 Pesos (about $13.00 US) per month that we charge is mainly to cover the food cost to feed them lunch each day. The other costs - payroll, electricity, rent and so on are covered by donations from people like you to Students International.  We also have a “scholarship program” where the mothers can come in and clean for 2 hours a week and then they can send their children for free. One mother is going to start coming in for a couple of hours 2 days a week and help teach Spanish to the children. That is obviously their primary language, but just as we teach English to our student in the states, they need to be taught Spanish here. We are trying to make every effort to allow any child to come to school here regardless of if they can afford the total cost or not.

     I was asked to make a short video for our sending church in Indiana so below is the result of that. It just gives a quick glimpse of what our days look like here. This was a way for us to show you what you have to look forward to when you come visit us.

    There have been challenges since arriving here but many many more blessings. Almost every day, Karen or I will say to the other “It feels so good to be here doesn’t it.” We had been going to an English speaking church on Sunday morning then a Spanish speaking on Sunday afternoon. It ended up being a pretty full day and so we have decided to drop the English Speaking church for now and keep going to the Spanish church in the afternoon. We had gone to two services in Costa Rica but one was on Saturday night and that didn’t seem to make such a full day then on Sunday. Several of the local staff go to this church so it is nice to worship with them.