The best of times, The worst of times ( Mostly good :) : 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.