The first weekend in February I had the opportunity to go to Santa Domingo for Friday afternoon and evening and spend the night with a group from our area in Indiana. It was great to see some family, church friends and others. They had just finished a week working in the South West corner of the country in the town of San Juan de la Maguana. I had made several trips to that area over the last number of years before moving here and they continued the work with Solid Rock International. It was really good catching up with all of them and being filled in on the work there as well as updates from our home area.
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| Fritz working on the front curb forms getting ready for concrete. |
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| The drain for the run off water, ready for the sidewalk pour in April | | | | |
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On Saturday morning, when the rest of the group headed to the airport, I brought Fritz and Kris Bontrager back to Jarabacoa to spend the following week with us. Kris spent some time at a couple of the other Students International Sites, learning what goes on at them and Fritz and I worked at the new Genesis site getting ready for our move in April. ( I will have more on the new site on the
Genesis Blog next weekend.) Fritz helped me engineer and pour a concrete drain for the run off water when it rains, as well as a new concrete approach to the driveway back to the building. Those were two jobs that I wanted to get out of the way but had not really planned on doing them until it was evident that Fritz was here to work (at least most of the time). We were able to also get in some moto riding in for a trip to some of the area waterfalls and then on their last day here we rode up to see the Presa de Taveras which is a water basin in the mountains north of Jarabacoa. It is about 500' lower than Jarabacoa but still up pretty high. It is where the rivers from Jarabacoa run into and dump their water. I had heard a lot about it and always wanted to go but never took the time. The scenery was beautiful but the road was the real highlight of the trip. It was about 21 miles there and took us 1 3/4 hours to get there if that tells you how the road were. When we returned home, Karen said that it was like seeing a couple of teenagers coming back from some sort of adventure. Of course my hind quarter didn't feel much like a teenager's but it was still a really good time. What an encouragement Kris and Fritz both were to us here. Thanks so much for taking your vacation time to spend working with us and learning more about what we do here. It meant a lot to both of us.
