Different Chapter, Same Book

This was our first visit to the house. One room, No toilet

Dan and Dennis standing in front of the house

    So as I wrote a couple of weeks a go, I have started to spend my days differently at SI now. Karen has finished putting the last few touches on at Genesis and the teachers came back today after having several weeks off. They came back to a different building and began putting their classrooms together as Karen and Maribel work on arranging the office area. It would probably be at least a little (OK A LOT) untrue to say that I wish I could be back there for this week. I am sure that they are all getting along just fine without me there and my ideas of arranging things. :)  Like I said in the title of this post, Karen and I have both, in a way, started to spend our days differently the last week or so. I have now began working with "site repair" and also general maintenance at the base. There are 14 different sites at SI DR and most of them have buildings on them that have maintenance needs of some sort between three preschools, two social work-sites, Genesis Special Education, Boys club building, Dentist and Physical Therapy site, and a small Doctor's office. I think I will be able to find enough to do. Last week I fixed a couple of things at the base and on one of the vehicles. Then this week I have been working at a couple of the sites just doing somethings that have not been a real priority so far. I think that Karen and I will both enjoy our new roles and as always, it will be interesting to see how God uses us in these roles now. There is no question that it will be challenging for both of us at times but God is good and He brought us here for a His reason so we are both looking forward what lies ahead. 

The best part of the roof to be saved for the new house

Day of demolition. It went fast with 4 loads to the dump.

      Last week I spent a couple of days working at the house of Paolina. She is a lady that was 
an acquaintance of one of the ladies in our afternoon Spanish church. She is 66 years old and living next to her sister here in Don Bosco, one of the barrios in Jarabacoa. Her home was in really bad shape even by the standards of the people here so our home church had a fundraiser and some of the money from that will go to buying materials to build her a new home. One of the men in the church has agreed to head the project up with volunteers form the church as much as possible. It is a pretty small project, The house will be about 12 x 15 maybe with an inside bathroom and outside kitchen.

Looking down the walkway to the house.

When we started, she had small two burner camping-style gas strove tops for her kitchen and no bathroom at all. She would do her business in a dishpan and give it to the neighbors (about 4 feet across the walkway) to dispose of in their toilet. It was a wood, cardboard structure with a "used" metal roof that literally fell apart when we started to tear it down. The aisle way to get to her house  is not even wide enough to get a wheelbarrow down to haul away her old house. We had to use the front and back door to get through.  Here are a few pictures of the before and the demolition day. The day we tore it down, the neighbors were right there scavenging anything that they possibly could. Rotten wood to build a fire to cook with, rusted out metal that may work for an out building, even larger chunks of busted concrete. There were about three sections of the "tin foil type" roofing that were held together by some rotten 1x3's infested with termites. She wanted to save that section to re-use on her new house so we saved it just to pacify her for now. I really don't expect them to use it over. I will try to get more pics as the new construction begins soon.

Taking the wheel barrow through her neighbors kitchen/livingroom

The SI DR Family photo for 2013.

      So this last weekend was our spring staff retreat. It was held at a "semi" closed down resort of sorts. It was a great location and God surely had a hand in the whole weekend from the location, to the music to the study-time, to the downtime. It really was a good time to renew ourselves and get ready for a full summer of teams. The theme was "Quédense quietos, reconozcan que yo soy Dios" . (Be still and Know that I am God). The location was at The Beachcombers Hotel. It was about a 2-1/2 hour drive from Jarabacoa at a really
small resort that had been empty for a little while I think and they are now trying to get it up a going again. We had to supply our own cooks and tables and plates and cups and silverware and........ OK I think you get the idea. It really was a great place. Obviously we had it all to ourselves. The rooms were nice, not fancy but very sufficient, the view was great, right on the North East coast of the Island. There was a pool and a hot-tub. But after all that, the best part of the whole weekend was fellowship, fun, worship and just hanging with our SI family here.