Pictures

We had a 3 day staff retreat last week. A speaker from the states was invited to give several talks and we had lots of time for praise and worship Dominican styles. That means drums, maracas, guiras, and dancing.


No caption necessary here.



Hanley lives across the street from out apartment. He's 11 and he comes over almost every day. That's been a great ministry opportunity for Caroline and I. His dad left his mom when he was born and his mom asked me if I would be a male role model for him because he doesn't have one.


We went camping last weekend on that little tiny island in the center of the picture. This lake is a reservoir about 2 hours from our house.


It was pretty windy with a chance of rain most of the day but we got lucky. We spent most of the day swimming and gather wood for the fire. We cooked food the entire night including 3 whole chickens, porkchops, shrimp, twice baked potatoes, banana boats, and tons of cookies. In conclusion, camping with girls, not that bad...


Caroline and I versus Cristian and Katie in a classic game of Dominoes. It was close but the (half) Dominican team wound up on top in the end.


We used scraps from the chicken to catch shrimp and eat them.


We did not eat any frogs, or kiss any for that matter.

Date Night

Caroline and I have all sorts of things going on lately:

1. 3 months straight of teams starts in May
2. The MF Site starts within a month
3. 3 day staff retreat this week
4. We just had an honorary firefighters dinners
5. We have a new roommate


Instead I'm going to talk about making ice cream and leave you in suspense on these other things.

Caroline and I have been having date nights ever since we got married. Some of our best ones have been:
1. Barnes and Noble photo scavenger hunt
2. Toys R Us to play with toys
3. Hide and seek (except that Caroline is afraid of the dark)
4. Fondue

When we first arrived here we substituted date night for apart night so we could get to know people here, but now we're back to date nights again. Our options are more limited here in Jarabacoa and creativity is neither of our strong points so date night has often meant movie night.

Insert ice cream making. I wish I could explain accurately what the ice cream is like here. It's more sugary but less creamy. It's different and not as good in my opinion. This crisis was solved a couple weeks ago when we learned that the base has an ice cream maker.

So Saturday night we made cookies and cream ice cream. You mix lots of cream with sugar and egg yolks, then mix it up in a container surrounded by salty ice for an hour. I thought ours turned out great.

Since it went so well, we decided to make a list of things we want to learn how to do. Here's our Top 25...If you try any of them and have some pointers let us know. Also: www.leeners.com has also sorts of kits for some of these things.

1. Make ice cream
2. Make bread
3. Sew
4. Write a rap song on Fruity Loops
5. Make cheese
6. Skywatch
7. Create a good DVD
8. Cut hair
9. Paint a work of art
10. Build a good campfire
11. Teach Booper to do tricks
12. Kill a chicken and eat it
13. Cook Dominican
14. Go fishing
15. Parallel park
16. Navigate with a map and compass
17. Build simple furniture
18. Eat with chopsticks
19. Photography
20. Garden
21. Dry fruit and meat
22. Make soda
23. Birdwatch
24. Make yogurt
25. Knit

Semana Santa

This has been a pretty crazy week in El Callejon. We have a team here from a church youth group in California. We have 2 awesome girls working at the Social Work site with us, but also joining us this week is the construction team (led by Ryan). No, the high school boys aren't helping teach crochet. They've been working on an addition to the Social Work site! It's almost finished and is looking sweet. They built an addition on the roof and put concrete on the ground. It will be open, without walls, and will be a huge help as additional work space. We can get pretty crammed in there when there are 30 women working on 30 different projects. So this will be a huge blessing to us.

The art site is also in El Callejon this week working. There is a 10 ft high wall that runs across almost all of El Callejon. It was built because on the other side of it is where the wealthier people live, and they didn't want to have to look at the run-down shacks all the time. Last summer the art site started a project where each student would get a section of the wall to paint however they wanted. It just had to portay the gospel message in some way. So there have been a handful of students here working on that this week also. I don't have a picture of this weeks' artwork, but here's a picture of the wall to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.


This week is also Holy Week. In the States, that doesn't necessarily mean anything special, but here, schools are closed for the entire week, some businesses are also closed the whole week, and those that aren't are definitely closed Thursday and Friday. So this means that there are even more kids than normal hanging around the site. So it's been an interesting week, but a good one. God is using his people to bless the community of El Callejon in many ways.

In continuing with our theme....I'll leave you off with a few new faces to get to know....

Luz. Luz is one of the most talented women that come to the Social Work site. She can sew, crochet, embroider, and cook. She has a lot of great ideas and is currently trying to start a bakery out of her house. Her husband recently was arrested for selling drugs. She cares for her 15 year old grandson who was basically neglected by his mother, who happens to live just down the street. She has a beautifully decorated home, very different from most of the other houses in the community. She is certainly what I would call a strong woman.

Araseli. Araseli is 15 years old and has already had 2 husbands and 4 abortions. She "got married" (I put this in quotations because in the poor communities here, people say that they got married when they decided to move in together one day. Only one couple in El Callejon is actually legally married.) when she was 13 and dropped out of school. Right now she lives alone with no job. Many people in the community look down on her for all of these things. Thankfully, she has sort of become part of another family in the community and she is able to eat with them.