You sold our hot water heater????

    As I mentioned in a previous blog, we will be moving again in a couple of weeks. There are several reasons for this decision but foremost is the fact that our landlord told us that she is putting the house up for sale. Soon after that notice we were told that an SI family would be moving back to the states and their house was up for rent 1 block away from our current house. It is a little bigger and (my biggest draw) it would be less money per month. Don't mind that they had been broken into an average of maybe once every 2-3 months, it was a no-brainer for us as a family. Here in the DR when you rent a home, it will normally not come standard with common household items like ceiling fans, light bulbs, a hot-water heater, battery inverter system (even though almost every rentable house in town has an inverter) so those items belong to the rentee. I listed the items that we would no longer be needing as for sale and all is/(was) good.
    During the last outreach Brian, our director, had informed me that one of the hot-water heaters had caught fire and needed looked at so as my job of maintenance, I go to find out that sure enough - the wasps had built a nest in it and had plugged the flame to where it blew a gas line and literally "blew up". With no parts available and a team here, Brian told me to replace it with a new one and then made the mistake of mentioning "Hey, didn't I see that you had one for sale?"

Previous location of the hot water heater.

    Back track to several weeks ago. With the temperature rising, the other members of my family here (all female species) would come home in the afternoon and say, Boy I am looking forward to a cold shower tonight". So, remembering those comments, I told Brian, "Sure, I will go home and get it." All went well until that evening at precisely 4:45 when Janae comes out of the shower saying "Dad, there isn't any hot water." I then tell her well no, there isn't, because I sold it. "YOU SOLD OUR HOT WATER HEATER????????"  It is only at that point that I am told they didn't really take cold showers, they just said that it would feel good. Too late now, no hot showers until we move the first week in August. I do have to say though that after a full two weeks of it, we have kind of gotten used to it (well at least I have).
      So it is cold showers for another week and a half. But remember that it gets to the mid 90's each day and only down to mid 70's in the evening so it really is not that bad, and God always provides. He has provided us with a different house with  a hot water heater.
    Just another day at the U house in the DR.
     

Visit from the Cross Family

     It all started close to 20 years ago now, when I worked at HMI, Honeyville Machinery Inc. I

On one of our many excursions to the waterfalls.

was repairing woodworking equipment and Joe Cross was the salesman for the company. Then as the company was being sold, Joe went to work for Honeyville Metal in the sales field and Karen and I bought Kurtz Custom Canvas. 10 years later when we opted to sell the Canvas Shop, Joe approached me about coming on board with Honeyville Metal to help him in sales with the Dust Collection portion of the company. That begin a 5 year working relationship with Joe that went deeper than your normal working friendship. Spending a lot of time together on the road working trade shows and sales calls gave us time to share about our kids, wives, churches, younger years, and older years ahead of us. We had many things in common and formed a tight friendship. Upon making the decision to go into full time missions in the DR. Joe was one of the first people that I told of our decision. He supported us fully and we continue to keep in contact through emails and occasional phone calls. It was a real treat for our family to have Joe and Alpha join us for 6 days last week and we had a great time showing them what we do, where we shop, what we do for fun (waterfalls). Even though the trip ended up with several getting sick,

Joe and Marcy taking a break on one of our hikes

we still consider it a great time. Of all the places we took them (even to a woodworking shop to look at their dust collector system), I have to say that the time spent on the front porch just visiting and catching up was the highlight of their trip for me at least. THANKS JOE AND ALPHA for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come, visit, and support us in what we do here. It meant a lot to us.

Beginning the living-room addition for Samuel and Maribel

     We continue to do well here. Karen keeps getting more applications for new children at Genesis, Marcy and I keep getting new calls for things that need fixed and Janae and Nina, well, they just keep doing the laundry and dishes. We have one more Outreach coming for 1 week next week and that will complete our summer teams. I will be running the construction site again with 2 young men, a 16 and a 17 year old. We will be working on the house of one of the teachers (Maribel) at Genesis. We started to do an addition onto their 2 bedroom, one bath, and kitchen. Hopefully by week end we will be able to put a roof over all of it.

Dominoes is a huge sport here. (even in the street at times)

    One area that you can be praying for the SI DR family is that we are beginning to look at exploring new possibilities to minister to the Dominicans. That can look many different ways and we want to be patient on God and follow His lead and not jump into something and then say "Here we go God, are you coming with us, or not?". Pray for guidance as we look into different options.
    

Keeping the Main Thing, the main thing

Brittany

   In January of 2012, we went to California to the SI main office for orientation before coming to the field.  We were given boatloads of information to remember and I have to admit the I have most likely forgotten some of it. However, probably the most important thing they told us, over and over was that once we arrive at our locations. we need to keep the Main Thing, the main thing. Meaning keep God in the forefront and all else will fall into place in His timing. Don't get bogged down with the sites that we are at, with the many things we need to get done in a day,  all the people that we will affect while they are here but rather keep Him as the main thing.
       Keeping that in mind, as we reach our mid-point through the summer teams here, it is easy to get tired, worn down and out of energy. Even more than that, just loosing focus of why we are even here. We are told that each team deserves our best, our most, our all. We truly enjoy having the teams here and hearing their stories of how they got where they are in life. They all bring us a renewed source of energy and encouragement (and donations), yet in it all we would not be honest if we said we are not tired. With that, I need to think of all the people that in my life have gave their all to me even when they were tired. My parents, my siblings, my Sunday School teachers, my own children, the teams that I was with on the many trips to the south end of the Dominican before we moved. And what about God, does He ever get tired? Discouraged? Ready to give up on me? I don't know but I do know that He never does give up on me! Keep the Main Thing, the main thing.

     So with that, our update: We have all doing good even in the busyness of the summer. Karen is still getting more students at Genesis. They now have two babies (8-9 months old) with Downs Syndrome. They added several new staff, some paid, some volunteer. She has an intern named Erin that has been a huge blessing to Karen and overall she continues to love her position there. With the addition of Chuky and Checky (the special needs goats), they are now considered a petting zoo (if you can get close enough to pet them anyway).
      I had a team of 4 men the last two weeks in June for the construction site. We worked a couple of days on a deck for the guest house. When our group was here from Shore in April, they would all sit on the sidewalk outside of their rooms and the guesthouse host's felt sorry for them so they ask me to put a deck so that the interns and other guests would have a place to sit and relax. It has already been used a lot and seems to be functioning quite well.

Mostly finished new deck

    Then the second week of the outreach we worked at the house of one of the teachers at Genesis, Maribel and Samuel. We added two rooms, a bathroom and a front porch to their house. Thanks to our home church for the funds for purchasing some of the materials for this project. The other project that our church helped fund was the new home for Paulina. We were able to build her a new house, put an inside bathroom in, buy a new cook-top stove and a new bed with drawers under it. She was so excited to move in last Monday. Thanks Shore for helping to fund those projects. The house for Maribel and Samuel continues to be worked on as they have time and funds. I will keep updates on that as progress continues.

OLD DECK!!!!!!!

Paulina's house before.

 

Paulina's house after.

Marcy and Paulina enfenta her new house.