Day Six in the Dominican Republic

Well, the big story of the day regards a small move for our family. There was some miscommunication between organizations, which resulted in us sharing our apartment with a few other young women in their early twenties. They had one room all to themselves, we had two of the rooms, and we shared the common area in the middle. Two of the young women headed back home yesterday, and the other is heading to another location in the next couple of days. So, we were able to rearrange the sleeping arrangements. This was a big deal for our family because their room had A/C! The girls were very excited to be able to get a break from the heat throughout the day and were looking forward to sleeping in a room with A/C. The only issue is that A/C only works when the power is on. So, there is the possibility of not having it throughout the night. However, we will have it at times. That's a great thing. We were creative with organizing the room so that the whole family could sleep there together (as you can see from the picture below). We'll see how it goes :-)

I realized that I haven't shared many pictures of what our apartment looks like. So I decided to do some of that in today's post. The picture at the top of the post is of the kitchen/dining/living room :-). Basically, that's the common area of the apartment. The picture of the beds is the room we will be sleeping in the rest of our stay. There are another couple of bedrooms that are off to the side of the common area. Every bedroom has it's own bathroom and shower. So, once again, we have more bathrooms in the Dominican Republic than we do back in the States. Below is a picture of one of the bathrooms.

My day was spent in more meetings with the Christian Reformed Church of the Dominican Republic (ICRRD--Iglesia Christiana Reformada de la Republica Dominicana). Today I only understood about 25% of what was said in the meetings. They had to deal with some difficult issues and were speaking very passionately--which means they were speaking very fast.

I went straight from the meetings to the small group Bible study with a group of teenagers. It was a small group today--probably eight students. I led (somewhat) an Ignite style Bible study with the group. These studies are heavily discussion based and involve the teenagers in asking and answering questions. I could tell right away that these students were not used to doing Bible studies this way. However, this is the way Steve asked me to prepare the studies. He said that they were used to being taught all the time and listening and it would be good for them to have to think and ask questions. Although they were not used to doing studies like this, a few of them caught on, took charge, and did a very good job. It was fun to watch. It was very difficult for me to "lead" the group. I love leading these type of studies, but the language barrier prevented me from being able to really enter into the conversations. It was kind of frustrating. However, I talked with Steve afterward and he felt that it went well. So, we'll count that as another win.

After we finished with the small group Bible study, Steve and Sandra had us over to their house, along with Megan (one of the young women we are sharing the apartment with), and Troy and Jackson (the World Renew supervisors from Haiti). They have a beautiful place and served us a wonderful meal. We had the opportunity to each supper on the roof of their house, while sitting in the shade and feeling the cool breeze blow. It was great! Our whole family had a blast. The girls had a bunch of fun playing girly games (at least that's what I call them) and Rachel and I enjoyed the conversations with Steve, Sandra, Troy, Jackson, and Megan. It was the perfect way to cap off the day. Steve even helped the girls pick some fresh Mangos from the trees by their house.

Here are some updated prayer requests:

• More prayers of thanksgiving today:

  • For A/C and the opportunity we have to use it while in the DR

  • For another great day and an evening at Steve and Sandra's house

  • That the teenage Bible study went well

  • For a good meeting for the ICRRD today

• Tomorrow I will be doing the teenage Bible study without Steve's help. That's a little intimidating. So prayers would be nice:

  • Prayers for understanding what they are saying

  • Prayers for being able to say what I want to say

• Continue to pray for the health of our family. So far so good, but want to keep us covered in prayers. Getting sick is no fun. Getting sick in a foreign country is miserable (been there, done that).

• Pray for my (Jason's) mind to calm down. It's hard to explain. Because everything is new, and because so many different things are happening, my mind is very scattered and I'm easily distracted. It's been hard to read and stay focused.

Along with Paul, our family says, “[We] thank [our] God in all [our] remembrance of you, always in every prayer of [ours] for you all making [our] prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” (Philippians 1:3–5, ESV)

Buenos Noches!