Chacos

Odilsia, Ashley and Robin in our Chacos
Anyone who has been down here knows the benefits of having Chacos. They help support your back, they can get wet, dirty, be washed easily, they go on easily, etc. We love Chacos. Everyone of our staff has Chacos, except our sweet Doña. That being said, we wanted to know if anyone had an old pair of size 6 Chacos that they might like to donate to Doña Cristina!

Dogs

We now have 3 dogs, minimum, that spend their days at our school. They are not allowed in (although the smallest can slip through the gate…Doña stomps her at him as she ushers him back out the door). We are not giving them dog food or water. However, whatever is left over on the kids’ plates is collected and thrown out to them. When the Doña makes chicken the dogs get the raw fat (SICK!) and the bones (dogs here bite through bones as though they were nothing). We started out with only 1 dog: Escuby Doo. Then we added the one pictures below. So far we don’t have a name for him. Any ideas? And now we have a puppy. The Austin Stone work team started feeding him because he was super skinny. Now he and dog #2 are best friends and play all the time. What should we call the puppy? Here’s a photo of #2:

Happy early Birthday, Anne!

Garrett made a DELICIOUS chocolate cake…so moist and yummy

Ashley made the popcorn (real popcorn, none of this microwave stuff)

Anne got the icing on her face (thanks Garrett)

and she blew out the candles that remained on her cake after the fan blew out most of them

Celebrated Anne with lots of sweets and the first 2 episodes of season 1 of 24!

We love you, Anne Boon!

A wall for the school

Here’s the progress that the guys have made since my last post. They have been working and working and working! The wall is huge and so long. And they haven’t finished yet!

Here’s where they are going. It’s the side of the school where the kitchen is.

Looking from the back to the front

Here’s the former fence…block is so much better!

Now we might get to use the guineos and plátanos that grow in our backyard!

Viejo

We have a couple of people working for Makarios who are over 60 years old. One is the Doña; she’s 74 and weighs 95 lbs! She is awesome. She can make a mound of rice big enough to feed 27 children and 12 adults (10 of whom are the guys working on the wall…they eat A LOT). She can also carried that mound of rice by herself from the stove to the countertop. Sometime she walks from Caraballo to the school (probably about 2 miles), then makes breakfast (full pot of some sort of drink), cleans a little bit of the school, washes dishes, makes lunch and washes those dishes. The woman works SO hard!

Another is Kilino (we lovingly call him Viejo, meaning old guy). I actually have no idea how old he is, but he’s up there. Probably around Doña’s age. Today I watched as he axed down a tree stump and cut away at the cactus-type stuff that was our privious fence. It made me happy/sad.

Happy because he can still work. I mean, it’s not easy working out in the sun all day, chopping and carrying and mixing cement. How great is it that his body still allows him to work from 8-5 (with an hour and a half lunch break), 5 days a week? I hope I’m still that active when I’m his age.

But at the same time I was sad that he still needed to work at that age. He’s had a long life of working, working, working. You can see it in the wrinkles in his face and the callouses on his hands. This man has not had an easy life. Why should he have to keep working? Why can’t he retire? Why can’t he let his body rest? He needs to eat and pay bills, etc. So he must keep working.

It’s such a strange mix of emotions. Here’s a picture of the precious Viejo:

What do y’all think about it?

Estiven, Ambiolix, Fransisco

I think I’ve already published a post about each of them, but when they come this cute, who can help but post about them more than once!

Oh Estiven and your big ears! He tucked them in to themselves yesterday, again!

Ambiolix….so cute! Missing a few teeth that don’t seem to want to grow back and with a new scar on his forehead from a fall and 5 stitches, but still the same precious little guy

Fransisco (or Franchicho, as they all say). He really enjoyed playing with Cara’s sunglasses (as all of our do). Sadly he had them upside down!

Look at that cute little face!

makarios in the sudan (aka the trip when anne’s ability to speak dadinga came in handy)

Anne, Garrett, and I had the opportunity to go to southern Sudan a few weeks ago to see how we could help a local couple start a school.  Here’s the scoop:

We were so encouraged to see William and Eunice (Sudanese couple) working in the Dadinga tribe, doing whatever they can to spread the gospel and help meet the needs of the people.  They are not supported by any church or individuals, so they get most of their income from the grain mill they brought in (they were educated in Uganda).  So far they have started a church, a pre-school, and are beginning to start an elementary school.

Let me set the stage a bit.  Nagishot is in the middle of nowheresville, south Sudan.  For those of you who were worried about our safety, we were as far from Darfur as Austin is from Chicago.  There are no roads into Nagishot and it is high up in the mountains, so no one bothers to go there, particularly soldiers.  We were safe!

There is pretty much NOTHING in Nagishot but mud huts, cows (necessary for getting a wife), goats, and chickens.  No stores, restaurants, vehicles, etc.  We camped in tents and were happy to have a nice outhouse to use.  We filtered river water and cooked over an open fire.  Okay, we didn’t really cook – they cooked for us, but sometimes I helped peel potatoes.

The majority of the Dadinga people have not been educated, but recognize the value of an education and the development that it could bring.  At a parent meeting, one father said, “We are in a pit and cannot pull ourselves out.  If we send our children to school today, tomorrow they can pull us out of the pit.”

William and Eunice started building the school about a year ago, with the help of a few friends from Austin (there’s a good story about how they even became friends with people in Austin, but I’ll save that for later).  The vision was to provide a boarding school for 400 kids from the surround five villages where there are no schools.  In addition to providing a Christian education, they also want to see the children of these warring tribes raised as peacable leaders for the country.

As soon as they started building, about 100 families in walking distance started sending their children.  They didn’t have any completed buildings, supplies, or teachers.  The village voted on who should be teachers – 5 young men who have had some elementary schooling, but nothing more.  They teach class either in a partically constructed stick room or outside under a tree.  The rainy season comes in March and they’ll have to stop until October.

We spent a lot of time as a team assessing the needs, the culture, the values, and the vision.  We knew right away that there were at least two ways we could help – with school supplies and by helping them find sponsors for their students.  We took pictures of all the kids for sponsorship, and got as much information on them as we could.

Sponsor me!

Garrett was able to help with plans for the school building, figuring out quantities of brick and other supplies needed, and did a number of handy-man projects.  Anne and I did a lot of information collection with William and Eunice, and she was able to help them make plans for teacher training.  Garrett and Anne are both open to returning to build and train, as the Lord opens doors.

Garrett and William

Most of what I’ll be able to do from here on out will be from Austin – getting together volunteers, collecting supplies, and getting the word out about the need.  I LOVE the fact that there is a local couple working on this and that there is already buy-in and involvement from the village.  They are not expecting any kind of outside help, but recognize that there are some things they simply can’t do without it (they can only get uniforms and school supplies from a missionary plane that would fly in from Kenya, for example).

A few groups will be going to Nagishot from Austin over the next year, so we’ll send supplies with them.  There is also a young couple from the Austin Stone planning to move there this spring.  They are the original contact to the village.  They will be able to help with the school, but their background is not in education, and they plan to focus more on evangelism and discipleship.  We are thrilled to be able to partner with them to be the body of Christ and together, help address the needs in this community.  What a privilge!

A few of the less-substantive highlights:

Anne taught some village chiefs how to play frisbee.

Garrett, at 6’5” was reffered to by some as “the giraffe.”

When we were dropped off at a grass landing strip in a nearby village, we were approached by two men, one with a gun.  They motioned at our bags and we throught we were going to get robbed.  Turns out they were airport security and wanted to see our visas.  What?  There was no airport, no buildings, just a strip of flat land.  We found out later what they wanted (it was just Garrett, Anne, and I, and our Dadinga is limited to hello, good, and thank you), but we offered them gum and they were happy.  If customs were that easy in the states, I would have brought the twins a long time ago.

A cow was slaughtered for us and we ate the meat from it all week.  There was no refrigeration.  We are happy to not be sick.

Thank you for your prayers!

A Rainy Day

Today, for the 4th day in a row, it was raining. Dominicans don’t really like the rain (they still hold true the idea that if you get wet with rain water you’ll get a cold) and so they tend to stay inside. All the staff made it to school at 8:30 and around 9 o’clock we notice that there were only 7 kids. But breakfast was already made (thanks to the Doña) and we were all there so we had class for an hour and a half. We ate avena (oatmeal in the form of a drink. It’s made with oats , milk, sugar and butter), memorized the Bible verse, did a little arts & crafts project and enjoyed the smaller class (all students were in the same room today). Then at 10:30 we sent them on their way. Here are some videos:

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Memorizing Scripture through song (Ashley is so creative!)

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FINGER PAINTING!

ropa rapido

we’re doing a unit on health and hygiene at the school.  each of the preschool classes have been talking about the necessity to wash their hands, bathe and drink clean water, brush their teeth, and wear clothes.  if you have ever come down to the DR with MAKARiOS in a group then you probably saw a little nudity.  so we’re trying to make sure the kids know why and how to wear clothes 🙂

here’s a few pictures of how the activity went.

jeson and wilcency

bernito and luis fernando

franchesca and marileiny

rebeka and regina (this one is my favorite!)

A December trip to the beach

It’s been awhile since I last did a blog. I took a break over Christmas, but now I’m back and have some updating to do.

On December 11th, the last day of class, we took our preschoolers to the beach. It was a Christmas present from Anne’s mom and the kids LOVED it! Here are some pictures from our trip:

It was a perfectly sunny day

and we piled the kids into a guagua (15 passenger van), headed for Long Beach in Puerto Plata.

Once we got there we sat all the kids down to explain the rules and do one last head count.

Then the clothes came off (except the underwear, of course!) and we headed for the beach!

There was much rolling in the sand…

and playing in the water!

After about an hour and a half we washed the kids off as best we could and brought them away from the shore for lunch. Thanks to the Westlake Bible Church’s men’s group, we had plenty of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They got an apple (a real treat here), a juice box, a sandwich, grapes (another treat) and some cookies.

The kids loved our trip to the beach and have been asking daily when we are going back! Thanks, Sherry!!