Day Ten in the Dominican Republic

Well, today was a very relaxed day.......maybe too relaxed.

My day started off with the teenager bible study at the ministry center. Once again, we had a group of eight (or so) teenagers show up for the study. Erin also decided to come along and check it out. We had a very passionate discussion today. We had moved on to 1 Peter 3, which talks about wives submitting to husbands and talking about how we dress. Obviously, there's much more to the chapter, but we had an hour long conversation on those topics (for the most part). They were good conversations with many good questions and insights. I wasn't able to follow all of the conversation, but I was able to pick up enough to get the gist of what was being said. I went from that study to have devotions with the entire staff of the ministry center. They have devotions every Monday morning at 9:30am. From there, I had the rest of the day relatively free.

We spent much of the day reading, writing, drawing, playing games, etc... The kids have also been investing all of this free time in learning how to play the guitar. A friend of mine, Matt Krotzer, lent me his guitalele (a cross between a guitar and a ukele) so that I could maybe lead worship at some of the VBS programs we will be leading. I'm not even sure we'll be able to use it for that, however, the girls have been practicing like crazy and are doing very well. I taught them the chords for "How He Loves" by David Crowder and wrote them down on a sheet of paper. They have been practicing it over, and over, and over, and over again. They are getting pretty good. We've been laughing that it took us coming to the Dominican Republic for them to finally learn guitar. However, was it really took was a slower pace of life and taking time to learn.

That's been one of the bigger struggles for us so far. We are very used to being busy and living on a farm in the country. Now we find ourselves in the city, with a lot of time on our hands. That's a big change. We also don't have access to a vehicle to take off whenever we want and there's not much within walking distance of our apartment. Cabin fever can easily creep in and we can begin to feel "trapped." So, since we were starting to feel "cooped up," and everyone was getting restless, we decided to go for a little walk just to see what we could see. We walked out to the main road and found a little store where we bought everyone a small bottle of pop for 10 pesos (about $.25). I'm not a big fan of walking in cities in general, however, I think Rachel and the girls enjoyed getting out a bit and walking around.

Here are some of our prayer requests:

• We continue to have much to be thankful for:

  • Thankful for the Bible Study going well and good conversations

  • Thankful for Guido and Louisa (the property manager and his wife). They have been faithful in taking care of us and the apartment.

  • Thankful for relaxed days and time to rest

  • Thankful for Matt Krotzer lending us his guitalele

• You can pray for the "cabin fever" Rachel and the girls have been experiencing. They have had much more down time that me so far. Next week will be different, but this week will be pretty slow.

• You can pray VBS preparations tomorrow. We have set aside tomorrow as a VBS prep day. Next week we will be leading a couple VBS sessions, which means I need to prepare to teach in Spanish. That's going to take some prep work. So, pray that I can get that done tomorrow. We also need to prep for some of the crafts we will be doing. So, it will be a work day for us.

I think that's it for the day. All the girls are in bed. Rachel and I will be there shortly.

Buenos Noches!