Counting Our Blessings

Today after church service our teammates and the community had a special send off for us. It was truly a blessing. Vicki Graham put together a booklet of photos, scriptures and notes from everyone, we will cherish it always. Thank you for everyone who helped organize and execute, it was a very special morning for us.

In the evening the community got together to have a service for us at the house where we drilled our first well. Many gave kind words of thanks, blessings and some tears. We are emotional as we leave but, are so thankfully that our time in the DR will always be remembered as a highlight in our lives. Dios les bendiga!

Magi Project

Fairfax Group

Everyone listening to the story of Jesus' birth.

Everyone enjoying the Christmas party.

Cristo Daniel overindulging.

Pigs roasting on an open fire.

This week a group from Fairfax was here to help with the Magi Project. Every year Manna gives out over 1,000 gift boxes to the kids in the DR. Churches from all over the US help put together the boxes and this week we got to hand them out! Saturday we also had a party for the kids in the Children's Home and all the Manna employees. We had a great week! Thanks to everyone that participated in Magi this year. Feliz Navidad!

Precious Moments

As our time in the DR wraps up we are trying to slow down on our "desk jobs" and really spend time with the people in our community. I've mentioned JB's family in many blogs, they are incredibly dear to us. Saturday we took JB and the girls out for a day at the beach. Rich and JB grilled hot dogs while the girls and I played in the surf. It was a beautiful day in God's creation.

Fafa, Wilmide and I went for a walk hand in hand down the beach. We sang songs from the movie Mary Poppins which, they had just seen for the first time that week. The didn't believe me when I told them it was an old movie. Let me tell you it is extremely difficult to sing Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in Spanish.

JB and Rich played in the waves until it made them sick. We all made efforts to build sandcastles. In Bible class the next day Ashley was asked if the beach was "rich" and she responded "no, it was salty." We love this family so much and will miss them terribly. What a great day of wonderful memories!

Difficult Decisions

MannaDR is under a new organization structure which is now called Manna Global Ministries. These organizational changes mean that many things in our work have changed. After many conversations with Manna and our supporting church we have decided that now is a good time to transition out of the program. This decision has been made with much prayer, thought, counsel, study and tears. To say that the decision has been difficult and complicated is an understatement.

Most of you understand how many things don’t turn out as planned. We have faith that God is in control and we continue to pray for His guidance. We are thankful for the peace and clarity He has given us while suffering through this decision. Though the past year and a half has been a roller-coaster ride ending sooner than we anticipated, we are thankful for every moment. We truly believe that God will bless Manna, the Dominican people and us in this decision.

We don’t have many plans yet. We will return to the USA on December 15. We plan to be in Little Rock, Arkansas with our supporting congregation for about a month to rest, recuperate and debrief. After that, only God knows for sure.

We ask for your prayers of peace, comfort and wisdom for us as we transition back into American culture. We also ask prayers for Manna as they continue to seek God’s face and direction in the work to preach the Good News to the lost in the Dominican Republic and all over the world.

We are so thankful for the time we’ve spent here in the DR, the Good Works the Lord allowed us to accomplish and the things that we learned. We’re grateful that God gave us water in two wells that we drilled. We’ll forever treasure the close bonds we’ve made with the community where we lived and our teammates. We are appreciative for the involvement that we had with summer groups and interns. And we hope that we have blessed this place as much as it has blessed us.

To the Dominican people: thank you for your acceptance, patience, love and friendship. It will be hard to say goodbye. To our Manna teammates: thank you for your understanding, compassion and companionship. We love you and we will miss you. To our wonderful support system from back home: thank you for sharing this journey with us, giving Godly counsel and reassurance all the way. We love all of you dearly!

Updates....

We are finished drilling in Bobita. The well isn't recovering water as fast as we had hoped but, we are in the dry season so hopefully it will only get better with time. We are waiting on a part for the rig and then we'll be able to drop the pump. Everyone in Bobita is very excited to have clean water!

We have our plane tickets for Christmas! Only 33 days until we leave, we can't wait to see all of you! Our tentative plan is to fly into Minneapolis, MN December 15, drive to Little Rock, AR and stay in the area December 20-29, then back to Minnesota until January 12. We want to see as many of you as we can so please let us know if you are available.

Rich and I are off to Haiti tomorrow. We plan to be in Haiti November 13-17. We are going to meet Brian Wallace over there and look at Manna's camp while getting to know the people of Haiti. Rich has been before and is looking forward to another adventure. This will be my first time to Haiti and I must admit that I'm a bundle of mixed emotions, excited and nervous. Please pray for our safety as we travel. Also that we would be protected spiritually, voodoo is the national religion there so, you can imagine how dark a place Haiti can be. I'm going to journal while we are there so we can share some of our experiences with you. We won't be able to be contacted in those five days so, assume no news is good news. Thanks everyone!

Cavamos!

We are drilling again! Note how shiny and bright the rig is! After a long process of getting the rig fixed and painted we started drilling Wednesday in Bobita. There was an existing well there but, it was only 50 feet deep and wasn't producing enough water for the village. Rich had a large audience and when I was out visiting in Bobita yesterday so many people were thankful that we should be able to fix the problem.

Hopefully in a week or so the people in Bobita will have a clean source for water. All this depends of course on how the rig holds up, what kind of mud we run into and how deep the water table is. Thanks for your prayers everyone!

Where there is no Salon...

Before Daniel's First Haircut

After! Looking good!

You may have been able to guess that there aren't many beauty salons in our neighborhood. I've cut Rich's hair since before we were married but now, he is cutting mine! I had to help a little but, all in all it turned out pretty well.

We had our teammates, the Cordobas, over the other night and the whole family got their hair cut. Word got out in the neighborhood that I can cut hair and I now have a two o'clock appointment this afternoon. We'll see, maybe I just stumbled on a new career!