Autumn + America

We love autumn.

We miss America. (Happy to be here.) But sometimes we miss America.

We are self-proclaimed self-timer aficionados.

the first Noel

TJ, here. Well, we are wet. As most of the US is in emergency drought mode, we are getting TONS of rain from Tropical Storm Noel. There are no reports of flooding yet, but there probably will be in Haiti, where the storm is projected to hit hardest.

Gus has decided to forget about the grass and taken to peeing off of our stairs to keep dry. Holly (ever hopeful) put out laundry to dry yesterday during a dry spell, only to find it soaked this morning. The Outreach Center has been a little more quiet, since Dominicans fear getting wet from the rain even more than they fear barking dogs (which is a lot). The weather is cool, which makes for great sleeping, but our bed is damp-ish again, just from the humidity in the air.

Last night's Kidchurch went well, and the Princesas did a really great drama about loving God more than things. Matthew 6's " For wherever your treasure is... there, too, will be your heart." I love how that sounds in Spanish.

Pray for the island- Haiti, especially, and that we all make it through the tail end of Hurricane Season with just some damp sheets as damage.

¡Ay, que linda!

We were practicing a drama with the Princesas on Friday night, when Katy paused to ask me a question:

"Jali (that's me), are you and Tomás (that's TJ) MARRIED?!!"

Keep in mind, we've worked with these girls for several months.

"Yes!" I responded excitedly. "We are!"

We showed them our matching wedding rings, and they went into throes of incredulous gasps and chatter. They just couldn't believe how cute that was! They wanted to know if we had a real wedding, with a white dress and everything.

People rarely get married here. Mostly they live together until one or the other wants out. "Wife" is not part of everyday vocabulary, it is more common to say "husband" and "his woman."

We want more for our Princesas. But where do we start?

Snapshots from Santo Domingo

We had a lovely time in the capital, Santo Domingo, a few weeks ago. When Columbus found the New World, he landed in the Dominican. Santo Domingo is the oldest European-built city in the Western Hemisphere. The Dominican has the first cathedral and university, as well as the first European-built road and fortress, in the Americas.


Holly hates birds/is afraid of pigeons, in particular, stemming from a traumatic childhood incident in Trafalgar Square.


Before a night on the town, including a SPECTACULAR dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Hallelujah for free refills!


Our hotel, a 16th century home.



Views from the Columbus family palace.

Santiago Splurges

We were in the "big" city today: Santiago, or la segunda capital, as Dominicans say. We roamed around the gleaming aisles of the ultra-bourgoise Nacional grocery store, which would put any US store (yes, even Publix), to shame.

We couldn't pass up the seedless red grapes, baby carrots, crisp green asparagus, Fugi apples, romaine lettuce, and portabello mushrooms. We used to go straight for the Double Stuff Oreo's, but after a year of the same limp, wilted, dirt-caked (albeit organic) produce, we're drawn to varied, colorful, crisp fruits & veggies like moths to a flame.

We also picked up our mail. (We have a US address, and Agape flies our mail in once a week. We can only pick it up on Thursdays from 11-12 in a city that is 2.5 hours away.) Needless to say, we don't pick up our mail very often.

Today, we were delighted to receive the following:

~ A 3 month portrait of Nathan Carter (now almost a year old)

~ Goodies from Mom (Hallelujah, Hot Tamales!)

~ My brother's law school graduation announcement (May 19)

~ Supplies, teaching aids, and ideas from TJ's sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Myers.

~ Birthday card for TJ (August 26)

~ And my personal favorite: a Christmas card we sent (almost a year ago) to Summer & Eric Millican, "returned to sender, address unknown."

Truly, it made us so happy to receive these unexpected mementos from "home." A reminder that we have another life, that this is not the only place we belong. That although we sometimes feel alone and disconnected, there are so many people who are behind us, loving us still... even if it takes us three months to pick up the card.

From Club Chiquito Today

Club Chiquito is our new special day for the little kids. No big kids ALLOWED!!! Right now we learning about how God created the world. And playing in a parachute.

ps - Apparently we were too late to stop the onset of rat babies. TJ caught one last night. The battle continues.

Church mouse

Over the last few days, a battle of wits has been played out here in RSJ.

Jerry, the mouse/rat has been pilfering our crackers, candies and treats that we keep for the kids in the Outreach Center.

I bought a trap. I set it up. Cheese, peanut butter, potato, hamburger, salami... he
has eaten it all, sometimes setting off the trap, sometimes not. Never could I beat the little guy at his own game. I just kept giving him the buffet of a lifetime.

Well, I grew fond of Jerry- admired him, actually. So when I finally heard the snap of the trap and found him looking up at me with a "why me?" expression... I was sad. I even said a little prayer for him as I finished him off with a stick.

But now I have to catch his girlfriend.

I said I was sad, but not sad enough to want rat babies everywhere.

You asked for it...

We've created a wish list for the RSJ Outreach Center on Amazon.com.

There's a link to it on the blog sidebar, or you can just search for our names under "Your Lists" on Amazon's homepage.

You guys know you do too much already, right? But you keep asking what we need, so we finally sat down and took a look at what's out there.

Wow. We're blown away by the incredible resources. Why have we been trying to do this on our own? We'll continue to update the list.

It's not as bad as all that...

We sometimes forget that you guys aren't here with us, and don't have all the context that we do. I guess that's what makes good drama, huh?

It IS dramatic, life here... teenagers who are abused, whose parents DON'T actually love them, who will never receive more than the equivalent of a US sixth grade education.

But, because we live in this and have more context, we do understand that the impromptu quasi-lynching was about them not ever having been called to something higher or better.

It all started because they were dragging Joel to come apologize to us for an earlier wrong. Then it became more fun to tie him up and watch him thrash around than to counsel him to apologize. So... there was good intention in there somewhere.

As for the group mutiny, this is par for course. They are not used to a loving expectation and want to show that they, too, have power. It will pass as fast as it came, but it still makes us want to pull our hair out. They won't actually leave - what we offer is too good; the promise of a God that loves them, a life better than what they can see, and the occasional Domino's pizza.

So, keep praying and thank you for responding. Your encouragement means a lot... but don't worry too much. We (and you) have faith that God knows the full context and continues to course-correct all of our days that are like Wednesday.

Meltdown

Things have been going well. Too well, in fact, since our house was robbed. Both the boys and girls bible studies are growing and going well. The English class was a hit- the children's program we started on Wednesdays went swimmingly- we are packing the house on Sunday night worship with kids AND parents...

And then the other shoe dropped. Last night, I walk into our courtyard where the boys are supposed to be setting up chairs and getting ready for the bible study, and I find Joel, our most difficult boy, on the ground and tied up from head to toe with one of our clotheslines. Several other boys were gathered around kicking him and laughing as he struggled to get free.

Now, in fourteen year-old street boy world, this is a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment, but not at my house, not at the bible study where we are about to talk about putting our faith into practice...

I sat them all down and told them in strong terms that I expect more out of them than this, that the Bible study was canceled and that they should all go straight to Joel and ask for his forgiveness.

They left, sat outside the gates, and, as a group, (Joel included!) sent a messenger to come tell me that they wanted to disband the Pescadores. That we only talk badly to them and that it's not worth the trouble to be a part of the group if we were always going to be correcting them.

Basically, we told them that was fine, and that no one was forced to come, but if they did want to come and go on trips and have game nights and english class and watch movies, there were a few things we expected them to try to do- namely, be nice to each other.

We left it at that- and a few of them have returned to say they are sorry, but it was a real meltdown- maybe a good one- but painful, nonetheless. Pray that the boys wise up- and pray that we don't go crazy from this rollercoaster ride.

Kicking our tail.

This new schedule is kicking our tail. Again, mostly in a good way. We're a well-oiled machine, humming and zinging along for the cause of Christ.

(At least, as well as anything hums and zings in the developing world... Just today, for example, we paused to chase down a semi that backed into our car, to ask kids not to poop on the porch, to run on the beach, to learn to make hummus.)

But I digress. The schedule. We posted this somewhat-tongue-in-cheek video earlier about our typical day.

But the advent of our year anniversary and the kids storming our gates have forced us to pause, consider how we can best be used. We added the following activities (read: lots of prep) to our go-with-the-flow schedule of yore.

Pescadores English Class (games, crafts, music, ONLY English allowed)
Princesas English Class
Club Chiquito (little kids only, studying Creation, story time, crafts, games)
Pescadores Youth Night
Princesas Youth Night
Leadership Traning
Sunday Night Worship & Movie
AND Osvaldo will shift his focus to spend one-on-one time mentoring each Pescador.

Whew.

And you know what great thought I'm thinking as I finish this post? We are just a tiny piece. We're all striving to change the world, in hundreds of big and small ways, in hundreds of big and small places. I love that.

Starstruck.

We love Grey's Anatomy. To say that we live for Thursdays nights would be taking it too far, but only slightly.

Therefore, we were a little starstruck this weekend when we got to hang out with a real, live, pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Scott and his family live in the capital, and he runs a hospital for CURE International. CURE specializes in curing children with crippling spinal or orthopedic conditions.

Scott and Marni have 2 boys, who are big fans of TJ's kids album. They were thrilled to discover that we live in the Dominican. We were blown away by the good work that this family is doing - here, and in Haiti.

They're a cool family who genuinely enjoys being together - we love to see that. They live downtown in an old 16th century colonial house, their kids go to the neighborhood Dominican school, they've adopted 2 Dominican street dogs, and they're all life-long vegetarians. Very laid-back, unpretentious.

It is great to know them, to see how God is leading faithful believers on a journey so similar, and yet so different, from our own.

Font Junky

We had a fabulous time in Santo Domingo, and made some fabulous friends. More on that later.

But for now, where can I get my hands on these fonts?! My love affair with fonts began many years ago at ACU when my roommate, Rachel, introduced me to fontface.com. (Don't go there.) But do check out dafont.com.



TJ took these pictures for me, in the hopes that I'd be able to match the fonts online. Let me know if you find anything! (And I don't want to hear Papyrus, people. Or see it. Ever again.)

Penance.

I thought about promising a blog a day for the next two weeks to make up for our two-week absence.

However, we're headed to the capital tomorrow for a quick weekend getaway. We'll take in the sights of the Zona Colonial, mostly built by Colombus and his men. We'll roam about the mall and MAYBE eat at Outback Steakhouse.

So, we'll do our best to fulfill a post-a-day penance for two weeks. Today, enjoy a fun and fab video of the raging good time that was the first annual Princesas, Pescadores & Otter Creek Photo Scavenger Hunt.

Four years ago, we walked out of that chapel and into the rest of our lives.

Today, Alfredo and Niño helped me make surprise blueberry-cheesecake anniversary muffins for TJ.



It's a miracle, really, this marriage thing. I am blessed beyond measure by my sweet husband, who loves me still.

Reluctant Pied Pipers

We have so many good things to share. We are overwhelmed with the kindness, generosity, and the staggering interest a visit from the Otter Creek team generated. By the end of their week here, we joked that we weren't going to be able to beat kids away with a stick. 4 days later, we're not joking. We are overrun and overwhelmed, mostly in a good way.

Osvaldo is 26, Dominican; our friend, guide, and indispensable partner in ministry. We spent this afternoon planning, searching out how we can better reach the youth of RioSanJuan.

Ours is a small town, and there's not a lot to do, so wherever we go, we tend to attract a horde of chattering ragamuffins. The "Pied Pipers" of RSJ, if you will. Osvaldo told us this story in passing, and while it illustrates how God plants these kids in our lives, we also just can't stop laughing about it.

Several boys bopped over to Osvaldo as he was running errands one evening. They immediately asked him what he was doing, and started discussing among themselves that they were going to accompany him.

Osvaldo simply turns to them and says:
"OK. I go do something now. Don't follow me."

Maybe that's not funny to you, but it made us laugh for hours today.

"OK. I go do something now. Don't follow me." Classic.