A Short Update

      Since my last post, it seems like not much has really happened but yet again. A lot has happened. I made my first trip to Haiti. Well technically yes, realistically no. I went with the Semester students to the town of Dajabon on the 29th, which is right on the Haitian border. Friday is the market day when the Haitians come across and sell their goods. Which mostly consists of clothes and other donated items that teams have brought down to them when short term teams go to Haiti. They in turn bring them to the DR side of the island and sell them for whatever they can get out of them.

Standing on the Border Bridge the divides Haiti and Republica Dominica

Not a beach but rather a fairly unprotected Border crossing

    On Saturday night (yes, night) Janae and I along with several other SI Staff went to the Capitol, Santo Domingo to run a 10K race. It was a benefit run for the Special Needs here in the country. It went well and was fun to do with Janae. Afterward, on our way to Wendy's for a late dinner, we were stopped by the police for turning right from the right lane where there were no signs that said anything different. He proceeded to tell us that we were just supposed to know that we could not turn right there and he was going to give us a ticket (he was really just wanting a bribe). Vanessa helped to talk our way out of a ticket. It is still hard to get used to having things like that happen. Often when they stop you, they come right and and tell you that they need money to buy lunch. Just another difference between here and what we were used to in Indiana.

Despedita for Raul (going away party)

     Raul, our site leader for the Men's Sports Site will be moving to Indiana the 12th of December this year and so we always have a small staff party for people when they leave the ministry. Blessings to Raul, Mairyn and the family as they open this new chapter in their lives.

Genesis Staff at our place for the annual Christmas dinner.

     
            This past week we also had the teachers and staff from Genesis (where Karen is the director) to our home like we do every Christmas for a dinner. There was a lot of laughter and visiting as we all had a great evening together.

            Friday Brian and I went to Santiago to look at a few more things to get the new country location up and running. We met with a Baptist Seminary just to let them know what we were doing in town and see what they had to offer us or what we had to offer them. We also met with a potential lady to work in our medical site there. Both meetings went really well. As we continue to look at opening that location, there are a lot of decisions to be made and people to be contacted. I had mentioned before that we have four teams scheduled to come down to that location in May, June and July. To get ready for those teams we want to have all four sites by the end of February then spend March training them. In January we should have a lot more to report on that.
      Here are a few random photos of sites here on the island that I have taken over time.

Milking a cow along the road on the way to Marcy's tutor.

At the Mechanics one day and noticed this car had been retrofitted for a person to drive with no legs. A handle pivots and either presses on the gas or the brake. They have a way of making anything work here!

Wrapping up the summer teams 2014

Eating Breakfast in a "local" restaurant. Great experience for all

     On Tuesday morning we said good by to the LIFT Leadership training outreach and have finished out another great year of teams here in the DR. With 12 different outreaches and a total of over 500 participants, it was a great summer here in Jarabacoa. We currently are now hosting the 5 Semester Abroad students from Bethel College as well as 4 Bethel Staff members that are here to see what we do, how we do it and why we do what we do. The Semester program maybe has a little more meaning to me than others since that is ultimately one of the main reasons our family is here. Our daughter Rachel was part of that program in 2010 and we came down to visit her and, well, here we are.

Dave Wenger in the kitchen in Los Higos

       Some things that have happened here are: my folks and Dave Wenger were here for a week and Dad and Dave helped me with a project in Los Higos that I have been working on for a while. We poured some concrete floors, did some plumbing, laid some block and did a little site seeing also. It was good to have them back again for the second and third time.

Dad patching in the sink drain

Dave in the park getting a much needed shoe shine

Filling blocks at the ball park for the Men's Sports Site

      

































Another item that we had here at SI DR was that Megan Adams (Marcy's tutor) had her baby the first part of November so that was exciting. Janae and Karen have been helping her to keep up with her homework as much as possible for a couple weeks until Megan is ready to have her come back so that has been different.

Marcy Dave and baby Joshua.

Marcy the surgeon.

Ground Breaking for the new clinic in San Juan de la Maguana

   Jerry Yoder from LaGrange also came down for a visit for a couple days. There was a ground breaking ceremony in San Juan de la Maguana and we both wanted to attend that so he flew in and we were able to spend a half a day celebrating with the Solid Rock International staff, board members and supporters as they began construction on a new clinic. It was an exciting day.

Back Home.......Finally!

Alberto "Miller" de los Santos

     On Oct 15th Karen took Marcy and me to the airport in Santiago for a trip back to the states that was multi-purposeful. We begin in California for 2 days visiting a few supporters, a school, a prospective new agency to partner with that deals in used playgrounds, and then to LAX to pick up Alberto (a national on our staff that was joining me for two weeks of our trip). After picking up Alberto we spent another 4 days in the Fresno/Visalia area for the annual SI fall banquet and then off to Indiana for two weeks visiting more churches, National staff supporters, some of this last year's summer short term staff, some of our personal supporters and several days at Bethel College in Mishawaka promoting our Semester Program. We were even able to get a photo of Alberto in Amish clothes and a buggy ride. We spent one day in Chicago visiting past SI staff members and having a great afternoon/evening reminiscing about the times in Jarabacoa.

Alberto trying to unload corn and text at the same time.

       It was great to spend time with Alberto showing him our home town area and church. He had never been out of the Dominican Republic so this was a whole new experience for him. One that I am sure he will remember for a long time. After spending time visiting SI supporters and taking Alberto to different places, we put him on a plane back to the DR on October 2nd. After a couple more days of meetings with donors and potential "special project" donors, I was able to spend 3-4 days with family and  help my dad harvest his corn crop from the summer.While I was doing that Marcy got to spend time with both Grandparents and other family members also. Sleeping over night with Rachel and Fred both one night each. She really misses her brothers and sisters. We were able to also see the homes of all three of our children in Indiana. They all three had moved into different homes since we left so that was an added bonus to see that.

Marcy helping Grams U make cinnamon rolls

    

 Then on Oct 10th Marcy and I headed to St Louis to meet up with our 4 "Bigs" and their spouses for a weekend together meeting Jeff and Abby (from Oklahoma). The males of the group participated in a 10 mile run with 15 different obstacles (Tough Mudder). I won't say much about that but if you want to know more ask me or one of the boys. I will just say it was for sure a bonding experience for all 5 of us. Marcy and the other 3 girls went shopping or something while we were gone.
       

Bruce and Barb Draggoo. Great friends of our family.

    From St Louis, Marcy and I headed to Miami for another 3 days of visiting current supporters of National Staff and Sites in the Jarabacoa area. We had been gone for 4 weeks+ and it was plenty long to be gone from home. We arrived back home on October 16th. It was great to be back in the heat, humidity and crazy driving. It was good to be back with Karen and the girls and then back to work at SI. Thanks to all of you for your support and prayers. I hope to get back to posting every two weeks. Thanks for the patience.

Nice and clean before the Tough Mudder started

Not so much clean or warmth at this point in the event :(

Why I hate to fly

        I just now found this post that I had written about three weeks ago and never posted so even though it is a bit late........

     So I am sitting waiting to board in Santiago and they come over the PA system and page me. Generally I would be very privileged to have someone call my name out in a huge crowded building and it would make me feel important and all. Not this time. My first thought was, what did I pack that I was not supposed to pack? I go down to the gate area and they have my luggage and are going through it. In my luggage I have 12 small boxes of a natural treatment medicine that had been donated to SI but was not used and I (in a weaker moment) volunteered to bring it back to the donor. There are 16 small glass vials in each box and it is all written in English and they can’t read it. Just as I almost have them convinced that it is not an illegal substance, I am at my wits end and say. “Look, why don’t I just take it all out of the bag and leave it here?” Wrong thing to say at an airport where they are still not sure what this “substance” is and I am now wanting to take it out, put in in a corner and get on a plane and fly away. Not the best option I could have come up with at the time. Now they are really wondering what it is since I was so anxious to just leave it there. After about an hour of litigation, they put my stuff back in my bag and send me on my way.  The last time I tried to help out someone by taking something back to the states for them, it was a case of about 30 books for another missionary. That time they called me down and went through each book, page by page, to make sure I didn't have drugs that I had supposedly stashed between the pages.

      So I am now I sit in the Miami International airport watching people hurrying to catch a flight or those that are not in a hurry, walk down the middle of the aisle blocking those that are trying to hurry. There are also those that are glued to their phones texting away to some unknown place. I am reminded why I hate flying. It’s not the actual flying that I hate. Ok, well I hate that too, the sitting for hours on a plane with nowhere to go and no room to stretch out. But I am talking more about the parts in between the actual flying. Like the checking in, the waiting between connections, the standing in line in customs, the PA systems saying  #$$&^^@*99aljhh........... BOARDING NOW! Why is it that the only part of the announcement that you can understand is the “boarding now”?

      So that gives you a small taste of why I hate flying. Problem is that when you live where we do, your options are pretty limited as to ways to get back and forth to visit your family.

     Hopefully many of you that are reading this I will get a chance to visit with face to face within the next few weeks. Spending the first week in California doing some fundraising and meeting donors of SI then off the Indiana for another week and a half of meetings and visiting more SI donors and then a week of just hanging out with family and then back to where I am right now, Miami, visiting more SI donors and supporters. It is a pretty full time but I get to spend it with our daughter Marcy so that is an added benefit I guess.  

Stepping up and taking ownership

     I sit on my front porch on a Sunday morning here in Jarabacoa and over look the mountains like you can see in the picture. Life has slowed down considerably for us in the last two weeks in one sense at least since teams are over for the summer, and a great summer it was. So now we begin the busyness of meeting with the staff that we never took time to do during the summer just to sit and visit and see how they are doing. That is probably one of my favorite parts of the job here.
      Over the last couple of weeks I have been presented with an abnormal about of "Culture Differences" that I admittedly am having some trouble getting past. Not that it matters exactly what they are but more, that I can't get past them, and make up different kinds of excuses why "they are wrong" and "I am right". Then I run across this article from Bill Cosby about the Black Race of which he is.

BILL HAS GONE AND DONE IT AGAIN...

They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English.

I can't even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.
And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.
The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.
These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.
$500 sneakers for what?
And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.
Where were you when he was 2?
Where were you when he was 12?
Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?
And where is the father? Or who is his father?
People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?
People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?

Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?
What part of Africa did this come from??
We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa .....

I say this all of the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid.
I was born here, and so were my parents and grand parents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany , Scotland , England , Ireland , or the Netherlands . The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa . So stop, already! ! !
With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap ......... And all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.
We have got to take the neighborhood back.
People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.
We have millionaire football players who cannot read.
We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job.
Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.
We have to start holding each other to a higher standard..
We cannot blame the white people any longer.'

~Dr.. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed..D.

I don't think that this article so much about the "Black Race" but more about us as a "People Race" that need to start to own up to our own actions and take responsibility for what we say and do. After reading this I had to think about all the times in the last two and half years that I have thought, "Can't you just learn to speak English so we can communicate??" even though I am the one that has crossed the border and now live in a Spanish speaking culture, and that is just the beginning. In Missionary Training in Colorado almost 4 years ago now, we were taught a phrase to remember and it was "God help us". So now I pray God help "me" to quit blaming others for what I can change myself. And to thank Him for the adversities that we go through here, that we may learn from them and it may somehow help others. 

   

Summer coming to a close (at least here)

      Our last team for the summer is here now and will be leaving on Sunday, August 3rd. It has been another busy time but yet we have had a lot of opportunities to make new friends and build relationships. We also have had the privilege of working with 12 interns this summer and they also will be taking off in less than a week. Hard to believe as it seems like not too long ago I was in the Santo Domingo airport picking up three of them, and now a week from today I take those same three back to fly to their home in the US. Part of the way I spend my day here is working with the two people that take care of teams and the interns. It has really been a special privilege to me to get to know the interns on a closer basis than before. They are a great bunch of young adults that have a positive attitude and will for sure make their mark on the world. It will be hard to see them go for sure.

Marcy reading to Nina.

     Karen is also finishing up this week too at Genesis (the special education site). They currently have 33 kids registered along with 10 staff including Karen. With two of the teachers leaving this fall to take jobs in the public school system, it will look different when they start up again in September.

Janae Helping Marcy with some harder words

  Nina is now one of the older students at Genesis. She loves going to school there and is picking up on Spanish little by little, she loves eating with the team members and interns at meal time at the base. She will turn 19 this December.

Mike and Janae on their date night. 

        Janae returned from her two weeks in the states. She spent one week in Indiana visiting friends and family, then went to Georgia to work as a counselor at WellSpring Camp (a camp for special needs children). She then spent the past two weeks helping Karen at Genesis. She will start at Doulos again on August 11th. Tonight Janae and I had a date night at a restaurant in La Vega. It was fun to just sit and spend time catching up with her. It is easy to get busy and not take time for those moments.
     Marcy will begin tutoring with the wife of a new SI staff member coming on next week. Megan Adams will be working with her for 2-3 hours each day and then she will be going to Doulos again for a couple of hours of Bible, Spanish, Art, Music, and PE. Her curriculum books came in last week and she is already 3/4 of the way through her first reading book, "Henry Reed Inc." We have seen real growth in her this summer - both physically and emotional. Pray for her as she enters the school year in a few weeks as it will be a different learning style than she has had in the past.
     

The Friends and Family plan

Day at the beach with Greg, Abby, Jeff, Rachel, Fred, Lauren and the littles

Once again we have been so blessed with family visiting us here, and this time it was our four older children and a couple of their spouses, all at the same time. We had a great time with them and as I write this, Rachel is still with us for another week. We rode some motos, went to some of the waterfalls, went to the beach one day, worshiped together, shared many meals together, played some games, watched some movies, and just had a lot of fun. This is the third time for most of them to come down and visit. Elliot, Rachel's husband was not able to come this year as he had started a new job and did not have any vacation time coming yet. 

Family photo at our home in Jarabacoa

Family Photo taken at the SI Base

          Rachel will be going back on June 27th and Janae will be going back with her. Janae will spend a week in Shipshewana and then meet Karen in Atlanta for a week at WellSpring Camp, a camp for special needs kids. Janae will be a counselor there for the week and Karen will spend a couple of days planning for when WellSpring comes to Jarabacoa and does day-camp for Genesis. Janae will then fly back home when WellSpring comes down on July 15th. WellSpring will then be here for a week of day-camps. It will be good for Janae to have the opportunity to go back for a week but also a but scary to have her flying alone. But I am sure she will be fine.

     We also have a praise that we have spoken to a lady that her husband is coming on staff with SI in August, and she will be tutoring Marcy this coming school year. We have met them before as they have been here on outreaches other times and have actually lived in the Dominican Republic for a couple of years in Santiago in the past. They will be arriving on August 3rd and we are all looking forward to having Dave Adams join our men's sports site and then to have Megan tutor Marcy. It will be a bit of a different schedule but should work out great. 

A laptop charger that was  fried through the wiring.

The corner with all the supplies that got he worst of it.

 Another point of news here at SI is that on Sunday night at about 8:30, I received a call that our Physical Therapy site was on fire. When I got there, the one fire truck in town was on the scene and had the fire "mostly out" enough that we could start to go in and get things out and put them in our Dentistry site, right next door. It had started by a transformer blowing out on a pole outside the clinic. The electrical fire followed the wires inside and sparked the inverter we had inside and then followed all the wires inside the walls in the building. There is not a lot of protection again these kind of surges so it is something that we live with. We could put a disconnect switch and turn it off each night but, that is when the electric is on and it charges the batteries for the day, when the electric is off. It is so foreign as to anything we would experience in the states but, WE ARE NOT IN THE STATES. We spent most of Monday cleaning up the mess then on Tuesday started the "final cleanup" of scrubbing walls, pressure spraying, rebuilding one wooden wall, (everything else was concrete), and getting ready for painting. Hopefully by Monday we can start to paint and be ready for our next outreach there on June 30th.

The place where the fire started

      Pray that we can use this incident to praise God that it was not worse than it was and that no-one was hurt.