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.