Reltionships

              Most people that have visited or lived in a Latin culture will probably tell you that the most important thing to them would be relationships and especially those within family. I would also say that family is very important to me too and even more so since we are not geographically close to them at this time. It’s like the saying, “we don’t realize what we had until we don’t have it anymore”.  I guess the difference is that the people in Jarabacoa DO realize how important family and relationships are even though they often have many of those relatives living right with them in the same house. 

                This was brought to light a little closer this past week as we had the privilege of having our son Fred and his wife Lauren with us here. We enjoyed the time with them so much. We did many things such as visiting 4 different water falls, swimming in the river, going for ice cream,  jumping off of rock cliffs into the river, going for ice cream, they had lunch with Janae and Marcy at their school, an overnight at the ocean………… but as we drove away from the airport form dropping them off, Karen mentioned that she forgot how much fun it was just to “hang out” with them in the evenings at our house. Hearing them laugh with our girls, just having them here was the best part. Driving away from the airport with tears in our eyes I told Karen, I don’t even want to go back with them, I just want them to stay J. Family.  We now look forward to having my folks come down for the last week in October. We may have a different agenda for them. Most likely it will not include jumping off the rock cliffs but needless to say I am sure just hanging out will be another top of the list for us all.

                We now have completed the first two weeks of the school year at Genesis and after losing a couple of the kids because of various reasons, we have also brought in some new ones. I want to periodically highlight one of the kids so you can get to know them a bit more and see into their lives somewhat.

Meet Genesis,  Genesis has been coming to Genesis now for about 3 years and has a motor impairment.  She lives with her mother, Yeralgida and her father and Ramón about 3 miles east of Jarabacoa. Genesis rides the van to each day and always has a smile on her face. She uses a walker to get around and is a joy to have at the site. Yeralgida has been selling clothes out of her home for the last number of years now. She buys them in a “bale” and then washes, sorts, and sells them to the others in her community. The “bales” generally come from the states and are clothes that people like you send to Goodwill or Salvation Army and then when they get more donations than they can use, they send to them to a larger warehouse for baling to send to other countries.

We were just informed on Friday of last week that Genesis will be moving to Santiago, about 45-50 minutes away, the end of October and will no longer be attending Genesis. Yeraglida is concerned that she will not be able to find a place like Genesis to send her daughter and ask us to help her maybe find a place or recommend her to a place. Pray for us as we try to help Yeralgida find a place that she feels good about to send her daughter. Genesis will be missed and maybe someday we can take a field trip to Santiago and visit her at her new home.