A Dominican Christmas

This Christmas was the very first time both Ryan and I were away from our families for Christmas. Though it was hard, we still had a great time. On Christmas Eve, one of our Dominican friends, Cristian, was nice enough to invite us over to his family's house for dinner. It's a little different here than in the States in that Christmas Eve is the day when everyone gets together for a big meal, and then Christmas day is pretty uneventful. So all in all, we felt pretty honored to be invited to celebrate with his family. The dinner consisted of an entire roasted pig on a stick that they had bought off the side of the road, chicken, rice, beans, apple salad, and another Dominican food that I don't know the name of. Everything was really good. It didn't feel too different from an American family meal...everyone ate a lot and then sat around and talked.

Then Christmas day we has a "Virtual Christmas" via Skype with both of our families. It was about the closest thing to being together without actually being together.

Our Christmas tree. The Troyer family was nice enough to let us borrow their Christmas decorations since they were going to the States for the holidays. And our families were nice enough to send us lots of beautiful gifts to put under our Christmas tree.

Skype! On the top is Ryan's mom. On the bottom is a close up of Booper, but if you look closely at the computer screen you can see my sister making a ridiculous face.

Ryan's mom bought us these Frog Toggs, which are completely waterproof clothing. Which is awesome, but at the same time a little goofy looking haha. Especially Ryan's because not only is it hot pink, but the sleeves are about 5 inches too short. We had fun taking pictures in them, and scaring Booper.


OK, so I don't want to be one of those people who is obsessed with their dog and takes pictures of them all the time, but we took Booper to a park the other day and some of the pictures are so cute I just couldn't resist posting some of them!

Booper

Exciting new everyone...we got a puppy! Her name is Booper and she is a 9 week old Chihuahua. She is so sweet and cuddly! We're still working on potty training, but she's learning very quickly. Enjoy some photos!

Her first bath!


Snuggling with daddy


Snuggling with mommy


She's so tiny!


So cute...

Las Fiestas de Navidad

First of all...I want to post a public thank you to both the Bonzek and Holloway families for all of the Christmas gifts! We received 5 boxes packed to the brim with Christmas gifts, none of them weighing less than 20 pounds. I know it was a hassle for everyone involved in this, so THANK YOU again for your generosity! Now we just have stare at them sitting under our tree for 3 weeks until Christmas. My mom told me that this is a maturity test for me to see if I can withhold "sneaking peaks" at my gifts. We'll see what happens....

There have been some great things going on at the Social Work site lately. Each year, SI recieves several donations of Christmas gifts to give to people in the community. With this, each site is able to have a Christmas party for the people they minister to, and each guest is able to walk away with a gift bag. This was a very exciting time for the women and girls in El Callejon.


The girls' party. They are singing Padre Abraham.



Charades!


We paid a woman in the community to make brownies for the party. Of course, the girls loved them!


The girls with their gifts. So precious!


The women's party. This is a game where the women hold a spoon in their mouth with a marble in it and carry it across the room and have to get it into the bottle. I think we used to play this on field day in elementary school :).


La ganadora! (The winner). This was the women's favorite part of the whole thing. Each woman had to bring something small and that they use frequently in the house (like an onion, bag of sugar, oil, etc). We put everything together in a bag and drew a name to determine the winner. This woman, Liliana, won. She was super excited, even though we made her wear a goofy crown :).


We also raffled off this iron. As you can see, Milagros was THRILLED to have won!


And Rosemary was excited to win this shiny new fan! (On the right is my co-leader, Daisy).


So as you can see, the parties were a success! Another quick note, Ryan asked in the last post if you would pray for me as I lead the site alone for 2 weeks. Well, I think God heard your prayers, because this past week went very well! There's been a good turnout everyday. The women had a great study on the parable of the talents and very much enjoyed making hot chocolate! And Ryan has done an excellent job helping me teach the teenagers English (he definitely has a gift for teaching). I think after the first day the girls must have told their friends that it was good because there were twice as many girls the second day and they were all excited and eager to learn. Praise God!

I know this is getting long but just a couple short prayer requests. I know that you all have been praying because we've definitely seen God answering your prayers. So thank you for them! We couldn't do this without you!

1. Continued prayer for Caroline as she leads the Social Work site by herself again this coming week.
2. Ryan is in Santiago today to meet with Esperanza (an established Microfinance organization in the DR) for a 2nd time. They are discussing the possibility of Ryan volunteering with them for a couple months to get a better understanding and vision for what the SI Microfinance site should look like. Please pray for clarity in this situation.

Thank you again and God Bless!