yo tengo un Amigo que me ama...

This week has been very busy, but full of adventures, smiles, and lots of reminders of why I love this place so much. I've decided that I like showing what's been going on through pictures so here are a few from this week...

This is Elizabeth, Bryson, and I in Caberete eating lunch. Caberete is a town on the beach that is near some tourist-y areas, but isn't as "Americanized." We spent the day there last Sunday. It was a lot of fun to enjoy good food (other than rice!), relax at the beach, hang out with each other, and of course, eat ice cream :) oh and ps, for all my dominican, tie-dye loving girls... I was representing ya'll Sunday and telling stories all day of what the "C" meant on my shirt :)

Elizabeth (who is also from Kentucky) and I found a sign at a restaurant (in the Dominican Republic!) for a mint julep so we had to take a picture... representin' the good ole' KY!

Yesterday was Coco's birthday so we went all out to celebrate. She has lived here for 5 years and we really wanted to make it extra special. This is the pinata that we made for her. We spent many hours making "Lumpy" and we are going to be sad to see him die... haha.

Yesterday we went on a road trip to see some of the cities in the interior of the DR. It's crazy because you kind of feel like you are in a different country. A lot of the cities in central DR are mountainous and green... while Monte Cristi is flat and pretty brown. We kind of realized that we really do live in a desert town. We toured some historical cites in the morning where Christopher Colombus fought battles and then continued on the Jarabacoa. I loved that place! It is a pretty good sized city situated up in the mountains. It's much bigger than Monte Cristi and looks completely different. We had a picnic lunch at a place where two rivers meet and I felt like I was back in the mountains in the States. There were actually leaves on the ground! The group picture above is all of us at the meeting place of the two rivers.

After we left the rivers, we drove through Jarabocoa a little more and back through some mountain "roads" or maybe just rock paths :) We ended up parking the bus in a little clearing in hopes of finding a waterfall that we knew was somewhere near by. It had started misting outside earlier that day and we actually were able to wear sweatshirts! In the DR! That in itself was a treat :) We started walking down a path into what I would call a rainforest. I had just been saying the day before that I really wanted to go to one, and there we were! It was beautiful! Everything was so green and wet and full of life. The trees engulfed us in this canopy that made me feel like I was in a different world. Even the sounds around us sounded just like what you would picture a rainforest to sound like... birds chirping, water flowing. It was beautiful and the pictures we got don't do it justice.

And then, we made it to the waterfall! It was gorgeous and right in the middle of this rainforest! I loved every minute of our time there and was simply in awe of our God who is all about the details. Who created this rainforest and waterfall simply because it's beautiful. I saw His beauty and His love for us all over that place. These are my roommates, Christine and Elizabeth, and I at the waterfall.

Yesterday was full of so many adventures and I felt so surrounded by the Dominican culture... seeing new places, eating random fruit and bread from stands on the side of the street, talking to kids in Spanish on there way out of school, walking the streets of Santiago and buying plastic-y Dominican hair clips, sitting down at a restaurant and shocking the waiters because we know Spanish, wearing sweatshirts in December when it's still probably in the low 80s just because we can, and on and on and on. I love this place so much.

It's been pretty busy, but I'll try and post a blog of more depth soon... just wanted to fill you in on what's been going on! I'm moving to Jaibon (the other orphanage) this Friday and spending a little over a week there. We are all moving over there to spend Christmas with them and get the place ready for people to start living there again. While I am so happy to see those boys again and get to be able to do something special with them for Christmas, I'm sad to not be spending Christmas here with my family in Monte Cristi. But hey, changes are abundant in this life and God seems to be stripping me of myself more and more each day. I pray that you are all doing well! I love each and every one of you!

y la ultima!

The Christmas tree at the orphanage!

Group picture with all of the interns and leaders from the fall! Minus Sharon and Christine :(

continued...

Elizabeth and I pretending to throw Vivian in the pool.

After dropping Caela three times, we finally got it right!

Elizabeth getting her hair done DR style by the girls at the orphanage. This was probably a two hour process, but at the end her hair was amazingly straight! Although you should have seen this chair... there wasn't a plug so they had rigged it to stick wires in an outlet to make it work... it was crazy!

The GINORMOUS birthday/Christmas cake celebrating Christmas and all the birthdays from October, November, and December.

continued...

Sisters... Indiana and Luz Maria.

Ari with her new toothless smile. She had an infection and a bad tooth that needed to be pulled. We had some dentists here last week so after lunch one day they pulled the tooth. It was quite the experience. Now she goes around telling everyone she got her mouth cleaned and that the dirty tooth is all clean now!

Last night we ate dinner at a local hotel. Elizabeth and I sporting non-OO shirts :)

The group standing on a TINY bridge between two pools :)

a series of photo blogs :)

Things have been pretty busy here the past few weeks, hence the lack of blogs. So I thought I would just upload pictures that tell a piece of the stories from the past few weeks. But for some reason the internet only likes to upload four pictures per post here, so there shall be a couple of posts :) here goes...

We had a HUGE Thanksgiving dinner with all of the kids from the orphanage. It was the craziest, biggest Thanksgiving dinner I've ever seen... loved it! Joanni digging into some good 'ole mashed potatoes and chicken!

Elizabeth (my roommate) and I with all of the older girls.

This is a nativity scene that is set up at a house right outside the orphanage. They decorate for Christmas really early here and they go ALL OUT. It's pretty intense. This nativity scene blasts really loud music from dinner time until the next morning every night.

Nena being picture shy and Mineli con flores, pero sin dientes :)

gracias a Ti, hoy soy feliz...

So a couple days this week I was blessed with a free hour at school during the day. One day I helped another teacher out, one day I worked on things for my literacy program, one day I cleaned my classroom from top to bottom, and the other day, I read :) I’ve been reading John Perkins and Shane Claiborne’s new book, Follow Me to Freedom and God has been showing me a lot through it. When I was reading one day this week, I came across this quote when Shane Claiborne was talking about his live in inner city Philadelphia…

“Stability is a traditional monastic vow; it is to commit to a group of people and to be submitted to them. Stability is something poor neighborhoods [and really everyone] are starved for. There are so many things that don’t last—like landlords. And missionaries. Things come and go, and people are moving all the time—not far, but often. It’s part of the culture of poverty that is so unhealthy. And it takes commitment—literally, a commitment to become a stable part of the neighborhood to change that.”

After I read that I had to put the book down. I'm a dreamer. I often find myself thinking about where God might take me, what countries I might end up in, ways to bring justice and love, places that need their chains of bondage to be broken. There is so much I want to do, so many places I want to see. I want to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming Jesus' love. I want to do Mission Year. I want to do the World Race. I want to go to Uganda and live in an orphanage. I want to spend more time in the Dominican. I want to go to Eastern Europe... and the Holy Land. I want to go to Papua New Guinea and do Bible translation. I want to do Timo and work with an unreached people group in Africa. I want to live in a trailer park in the States (preferably with Spanish speakers :) ), I want to live in row housing with a stoop, I want to go to Haiti and work to eliminate poverty, I want to raise up leaders in the Dominican to end the racism towards Haitians. I want to breathe the Gospel wherever I go, bringing life to people. Sometimes I talk to people about all these things that I want to do. I want to throw my life at Jesus' feet... and go where He leads. I have often thought about living my life on a year-to-year basis.

But when I read that quote, I just stopped reading. It was like a realization to me that all of those above sentences are about me. I want to here, I want to go there, I want to do this, I want to do that. And though they are all rooted in my desire to show people the love of Christ, I was hit over the head that maybe that's not the way that He wants His love to be shown. Maybe He wants me to build roots with people. To stay in their lives for more than a couple months or a year. Maybe I have a lot to learn about what pouring into people really means. Maybe to invest in them I need to actually move in for the long haul. To live life with them, not just a stint for a year or so and then on to something different. And not that that is wrong. Afterall, Jesus lived His life travelling and ministering from city to city. And I believe God is probably calling some people to devote themselves to that nomadic lifestyle. But somewhere along the line, I think I turned my dreams into my own, instead of God's. I started to take control... and that's the last thing I want to do... because I surely know that His plans are far better than mine! So my reading day turned into God gently reminding me to once again lay my life at His feet. To place my direction in the palm of His hand. And to remember that His plans will far exceed anything that I can even imagine. And I feel Him turning my heart towards putting down roots somewhere. I have no idea where that's going to be. Maybe it's here in the Dominican (can't say I would mind that :) ), maybe it's in the States, or maybe it's in a country I've never even heard of. But I want to devote my life to serving and sharing the love of Christ with whoever God wants me to.

On a side note, when I picked up the book again, I turned the page and about half of the places that I have dreamt about going to were talked about. And the author reminds us that while learning in these types of settings and ministering to these people in short amounts of time are wonderful and bring forth many great changes, it's the long term commitments where we can fully invest in people and see the fruit of God's purposes for us there. So who knows where I'll live the future or for how long... but I'm sure excited :)

Giving Nicol a manicure during a spa we did for the kids at the orphanage.

My roommates! Christine is on the left and Elizabeth is in the middle.

Yulisa, Yenny, Yessica, and I on the patio.

Coral and I at the festival.

...cuando llegaste aprendi a vivir.

me gusta ese paiz...

On Monday, some things came up and I found out that I would not be teaching my classes in the Institute this week, but I will be leading a team of 20 high schoolers that were coming down. I love when teams are here so I was excited about that. The team got here Tuesday night and it has been busy ever since. I have enjoyed the change of pace and being able to spend a little more time with the kids here at the orphanage. The group has been great and this week has been full of special things. On Friday afternoon we took them for a quick swim in the ocean. When we were driving back, we got to catch the sunset...

As we were driving back to the orphanage after the beach, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed with my love for this place. Sometimes these feelings come out of nowhere... but when they come, I freak out thinking about ever possibly having to leave. We were driving down the narrow, curvy road, with the ocean to our right and hints of the sunset peaking out from behind the trees... my ipod was playing Jimmy Needham over the speakers of the bus... words of needing Jesus like a hurricane, like a burning flame, to consume me.. some of the neighborhood boys were driving past on their motorcycle... and there was a bus full of chattering high schoolers behind me... and as I looked out at the ocean, I smiled knowing this is exactly where I am supposed to be. This island is my home. And I'm not sure what will happen to my heart come next August.

This is Yessica.... my prima-hermana as she calls me. Or cousin sister in English. Yessica lives at the orphanage and I spend a significant amount of time with her every day. She doesn't like to show her teeth in pictures, even though her smile is beautiful. I pray that God uses our time spent together to show her His intense love for her.

This is Nena! She is seven years old and is full of spunk and attitude! However, she is also a cuddle bug with a wild imagination and adventurous spirit. Today we had a morning full of activities for the kids with an Olympics theme. Nena colored this picture and hung it on the cabinets with the stickers on the edges. She was so proud of it and wanted me to take a couple of pictures with her standing beside it.

And this is Ari... one of the 3-year-old twins. At the end of the activities this morning, each of the kids received a bag full of goodies. Here's Ari sporting her new sunglasses. All of the little girls had crazy colored sunglasses in their bags that they wore the rest of the day. They were so cute!