tonight

Tonight was a beautiful night. There was laughter. There was food. There was praying. There was joking. There was care. There was dessert. There was English. There was Spanish. There was Jesus.

My friends, Leah and Amanda, hosted a dinner with more of my other friends that I have made while here at Doulos. It was such a good time to be with them and enjoy life together.

My time here has been more than a blessing. It has been complete and full. These past four months will always be apart of who I am and who I become. The people I worked with everyday are apart of that. God knew. He orchestrated. He provided. He Loved.

I lay my head down tonight content. I hope and believe that God is honored by that.

How Beautiful!

It's been a slow day and exactly what I needed.

The past couple days have been full of hanging out with people I get to see every day at work. Amanda mention the other day how funny it was that we even spend Spring Break together. What a testimony to friendships that are made in Christ. Spring Break wasn't a week for us to get away from each other but a week to grow closer and do more than just work together. Do life together. I think it is beautiful and pleasing to God.

Tomorrow we begin work again, and I must say I am ready for the routine of it. I am ready for a few more days there. But it will not be long before I am returning home. I am ready and thankful that the Lord blessed me with a desire of my heart.

He is a good and fun God.

La playa Fronton

This is where I spent spring break! You would have thought that I was straight out of a travel magazine or something!
We camped on the beach from Sunday to Wednesday. It was the perfect amount of time. There was a lot of resting, eating, reading, sunscreen, laying in hammocks, talking, and admiring the beauty God created. For most of my life I have always done something non-traditional for Spring Break. This was first (or maybe second) spring break that I went to the beach. Definitely a great one to end on and worth waiting for.

I still have a few more days off work and then before I know it, I will be on a plane back home. Bittersweet.

Happy viewing!...I will write again soon.

Today

hallelujah grace like rain
falls down on me
hallelujah!
all my stains are washed
ARE WASHED AWAY

when we've been there
10 thousand years
bright shining as the sun
we've no less day
to sing your praise
then when we first begun

Hallelujah!!!

Today I sit a small room on the island if the Dominican Republic. I sit with windows open to the warm breeze and noise of the neighbors beside me. I sit forgiven. I sit not worthy. I sit beloved. and I sit restored.

You know those days where you just feel different. You can't pinpoint why today more than any other but your heart, your spirit is radiating from you and you can feel the difference. You can feel peace swelling in every muscle of your body. You feel rest. You feel right. You feel God. You remember Christ on the cross. You remember your sin. And you are content. You remember where you have come from, the stupid things you have done, the shameful things you have thought, and the people you have hurt. You remember the resurrection. And you feel life.

Today I feel that. Nothing in particular has occurred, but I can feel it. I am confident that the Lord brought me here. To the Dominican Republic for Himself. Not for Doulos. Not for me. Not to graduate college. But for Him. I feel that this afternoon and I am content. I am able to just be.

With every new experience, adventure, journey, peak, and valley the Lord brings me I feel like I have only scratched the surface of it all. There is so much more. He is so much more. HOW COOL!! it NEVER ends! Forever and EVER we get to feel, experience, know, learn, and be more.

God wants me. My doubts, my questions, my emotions, my thoughts, my actions, my rest, my discipline, my wardrobe, my friends, my future husband, my family, my life. Everything that is apart of me, He wants. Not to fix. But to be with me. To take me farther, deeper, stronger, weaker, harder and softer.
How exciting! How scary! How Beautiful is our God.

Today I am in the DR. In two weeks I will be in the United States. In three weeks I will be a college graduate. In six months I will be a wife. Forever I will be adopted by God through His only Son, Jesus, who died on a cross for me and then woke from His tomb and presented to me living water. It tastes so good.

sleepy time

So I feel like most of the time that I have blogged about my time here it has been positive and exciting. Which my time here has been but there are also some annoying things that make me so excited and thankful

Sleeping here can be one of the most frustrating things. Especially when you are someone like me who makes sleep a priority :) Here is why:

The mosquitoes here have superpowers and find there way to any human possible. In the states I was already a Hot commodity with the mosquitoes and therefore here I might as well draw my blood and hang it outside for their convenience and make the whole process easier.

Therefore at night when I am trying to sleep I will wake up at some odd hour of the night and have 5 or 6 mosquito bites burning and itching on any exposed skin to the air (most commonly my arms). Last night this occurred. It requires me to get up, grab my bug spray, go out of the room (as to not wake up Stef), and spray myself down. However this does not dampens the intense itching that is holding on strong.
By this point in the night the rest of the Dominicans have actually gone to sleep which means I can take out my ear plugs. (If you go to bed before 12 or 1 noise will keep you up if you are someone who can't sleep through it). So I get the freedom of taking out my ear plugs (they kinda hurts after a while) but at just the right time when I am drifting back into sleep and I have forgotten about the itching, one of these precious super-powered little creatures (the mosquitoes) will think it's fun to circle directly above my ear playing it's beloved mosquito anthem of "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz". It is enough to wake you up and keep you up. (Matt is a witness from his visit here).

Ideally we would have a fan that ran all night which is the trick for people who don't have mosquito nets (the strength of the wind is too strong for the mosquitoes). But naturally ours broke about 2 or 3 weeks ago right as it was getting warmer and these little beast were coming back out to play (more than they already had been).

This is definitely a part of my time here that I am looking forward to coming to an end.

I hate to say, I hate those pesky mosquitoes in every way!
I hate them buzzing around especially near my ears!
I hate them biting on me whenever they have chances!
I hate them leaving red marks on my fair skin and make me so itchy!
Unfortunately I’m like a mosquito magnet. Mosquitoes just love me so much.
I must have pretty tasty blood! :grrr:
I hate mosquitoes, do you?

http://monkeywong.com/2008/07/17/i-hate-mosquitoes-do-you/

I couldn't have said it better.

goose bumps

It is Saturday (the day that I usually put up a blog post). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share this time. i have not received them from the friend that had the waterproof camera on my last adventure.

This morning I got to talk to my daddy! It was so good to talk to him about life here and life here. As I have said a number of times. I am glad I have three weeks left here but I am glad I only have three weeks left here all at the same time. I miss my family and friends at home. I was talking to my dad about food that I miss and I think it has made me hungry for the entire day. I keep wanting things I can't get.

I did laundry this morning but could only do one load because we lost water and haven't had it since. No telling when it will be back on. Maybe any minute maybe tomorrow. I remember when a pipe broke in the house I lived in at Georgia College. We didn't have water for 48 hours and you would have thought that we might die. Ok maybe not that extreme but I remember being way more inconvenienced by it then than I feel here and not. Here it is just a part of life and it is not worth getting worked up or worried about. It was a blessing to get one load done though! Luckily it happened to be the "essentials" load :)

The rest of this day has been slow and magnificent. I love slow mornings that transition into chill afternoons. It is so good for my soul. I finished reading the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia today (The Last Battle). The ending gave me goose bumps! it was so good. I feels so good to get to read for pleasure. In college I always knew that I should be reading for class and had a hard time allowing myself to spend time reading when I knew that the same activity could be "productive." I worry too much about being productive. I am trying to get better at it.

All in all, I am sitting in my room here in the DR and just being. It is such a good place to be and I love it more and more I allow myself to be taken by it.

sneak peak

Yesterday, a couple friends and I went to "27 waterfalls" here in the DR. It was so much fun. Basically you hike up past 27 waterfalls and then on the way back down you either jump off or go down a natural rock slide at ALL 27. It was so so so much fun and not to mention beautiful. Also it only cost around 12 bucks. Something like this would have cost 30 or 40 dollars easy in the states.

One of the friends that went had a waterproof camera so she was able to take lots of pictures but I don't have them yet so I will post again some time this week with those.

Until then here is a pic of what we saw on our drive to Santiago yesterday morning!! So Dominican. So crazy. And so great!!

one of those days

Today was one of those days that I got A LOT done. That is always a good feeling. I had a goal of getting two grades done and I ended up getting four. I got double the amount of what my goal was!

While I have been here I have been trying to do a job of setting reasonable and flexible goals for myself every day. Goals that are probable to get done but will require focus and effort. It is usually my tendency to have the goal of getting as much as possible done and that is setting myself up to fail. As a result that is how I felt after many days of work, like a failure. As I have tried to set more realistic goals it has proven to be helpful, healthy and productive. So when a day like today happens, it makes it that much better!

She is here!!

Abilene is now here and my new niece!!

Abilene

Exciting News!!!

My sister is currently in labor as I type and she should have a beautiful baby girl by the end of the evening (hopefully earlier)! I am going to have a niece!! Her name is Abilene :)

I was so excited when I received the email this morning that I squealed!

typical Saturday

this week was quite the busy week. preparation for my presentation kept getting distracted by other priorities but it all got prepared and was completed on Thursday after school at the staff meeting. It was a lot of fun to talk to the staff about how cultural adjustment affects their health.

here i am!


It is nice to have that part of my internship completed.

Today I have been able to have a "typical" Saturday. A typical Saturday means that i clean, do laundry, and catch up on the emails and such as best I can. These days also include slow mornings (my favorite part) and reading! I have never enjoyed reading as much as I have in the past months I have been here. It is probably because I get to read what I want to without feeling like I have a class that I SHOULD be reading for instead. I just got done with another Narnia book and am starting on The Silver Chair.


Exiting news! While Matt was here visiting a friend of mine, Leah, who teaches 3rd grade at Doulos took pictures of us! They are so great! It was such a blessing to even have any taken because they are very expense. Leah is a natural and do hope that one day she is paid more adequately than cheez-its and chewy bars in the future (Matt brought those two things from the States as a "thank you" because she can't get them here). But Leah is more than the person that took pictures of Matt and I. She is becoming a close friend whom I love and cherish. I will miss her greatly when my time here is over.

if you want to take a look at the pictures you can find them on my Facebook as well as Matt's. Be sure to give Leah the credit for taking such beautiful pictures. and making Matt and I look like models!!

time is precious

**written on Sunday

I am sitting in the house of Whitney Scarborough. I have been staying at her house this past week while her husband, Tim is away at an Expeditionary Learning conference in the States. Whitney is a beautiful and gentle woman. It has been more than a joy to be here and live life with her for the past week.

It has been a slow and restful weekend. It is so funny how spending time at another American’s house for the week and weekend is like a vacation here. It is such a privilege to eat familiar food and converse easily. And yet at the same time, I do miss my host family. I do miss the challenge of practicing my Spanish and using energy to even understand what time dinner is going to be at. I miss the constant growth that living in the depths of another culture requires of the human soul. Especially on one what is saved by God.

The Dominican people are one that all Americans and Christians could learn from. They are one of the most loving groups of people I have ever encountered (even within the body of Christ). It is beautiful the way that they love and the way that they share.

I only have about 6 more weeks here in the Dominican and at this moment, at the kitchen table of Whitney’s house, with the tropical wind blowing in through the window, I feel like that is not enough time. Not enough time to learn all that I can learn from this place. As much as I yearn to be around my family, my friends, and my fiancé back home, I know that this time is precious. My time here is unlike anything I have experienced before and no experience in the future will ever be the same. I do not say that meaning nothing will be better or that something could be better. It is just is that there seems to be so much to learn here and a semester is only scratching the surface.

But the weekend is now over and the work week will begin in when the sun rises again. Another week will go by before I know it and time will pass too fast. In the mean time, I will do my best to just be. To stay present where I am. To be honest with the Lord no matter how much it scares me. And to live free.

I give the second half of my presentation requirement for my internship on Thursday at the staff meeting so my week will be quite busy preparing. I will put it on my to-do list to post a blog about how it went this coming weekend, if you don’t hear from me before that.

Bed & Breakfast

Today is Wednesday and I never have appreciated Wednesday as much in my life as I do now. Wednesday means that you are half way though the week. Wednesday means that there is a two day break on the horizon where I can breath and rest until I get to try again on Monday.
Don't get me wrong nothing awful has happened this week or anything but things have been busy and the weekend is so attractive right now. Sleeping in till 8 is so attractive right now.

This week I am staying at a staff member's house while she is in need of care and her husband is gone to a conference in the states for the week. I am getting the pleasure of making her dinner and setting her up for breakfast and lunch while I am gone at work. I have found that I really enjoy this opportunity. It is fun for me to host. Let me clarify, it is fun for me to host small groups of people.

This past Sunday I made dinner for my friend, Sara and her two friends that were visiting. They had gone to the beach for the weekend and came back on Sunday. Nobody likes to figure out what they are going to eat for dinner the night they come back from a trip so I volunteer to make dinner. It was a joy and fun to get to know them while cooking and eating.

So this morning I had this crazy, random thought. What if I worked at a Bed and Breakfast? and even crazier: What if I opened one some day?? You and I both have to understand that this was my thought at 6:15 this morning when I was putting together breakfast and lunch ideas out for Whitney. Who knows how rationale my thoughts are that early in the morning yet on the other hand, I am my best in the morning...

just thought I would share.

Happy Wednesday!

frogs are sweet!

Wow, it has been quite a while since I have posted. And so much has happened in the time I have been away.

First off, my original computer is on its way to Atlanta as I type and will go to the Harold, the computer doctor for one last diagnosis and attempt at treatment. Luckily we got all of the files off of my hard drive so I didn't lose anything!!! that was big: the day we were trying to get my files was the same day that I had a presentation to give to the staff. Literally 5 minutes before the presentation our IT guy, Greibys comes quickly walking through the doors with a big grin on his face. He had did it. Not only retrieved all my files but also the one that I needed right then.
the presentation went great and I have another one to complete my requirement on March 24th.


Well to move on to more exciting events, like I mentioned in the last post my fiance Matt came to visit. He got here on March 4 and left this morning. We had so much fun together and it was such a blessing to have him come and see my life here. I am comfortable that I have about 7 more weeks here but I also can't wait to be back home and only 40 minutes away from him. Here are some pictures from the two waterfalls we went to.

The first one was the Upper Jimenoa. Rumor has it that this is the waterfall that in in the movie Jarasic (sp?) Park.




We found a frog and I got Matt to catch it for me!!



The second waterfall that we went is one that I have been to from coming to the YL camp here Pico Esconido on work teams the past two years. It is quite a fun hike because you have to hike through the river leading up to the water fall. There is a small waterfall first then you keep going and eventually get to the BIG one **sorry for the ones that aren't turned the right way...I get get them to work







And we found more frogs :) My dad gave me a flip for my birthday and send it with Matt so that I could use it while we were going on our adventures. So here are the frogs :0




I hope that worked. Welp there are some glimpse into the parts of the week I captured. I will try to put a full album of pictures up on Facebook sooner than later.

Death of the Dell

sorry readers for the delay in an update. This weeks has been busy with preparing a presentation that I gave to the staff yesterday.

further yesterday my computer stopped working and so for now I am without a computer and am using other teacher's computers when they are in class. SO i might continue to have a delay in writing an update post but I wanted to let everyone know what was going on really quick (I need to get back to work so I am making this short).

today my fiance Matt is coming to visit for a week. We have a couple fun adventures planned so I will be sure to take pictures and share when i get the time.

Thanks for all the prayers and support from everyone!

blog worthy

Last night I went to friends house for dinner. We had hamburgers and french fries. It was awesome!

Refinement vs Lies

Today was a hard day in the DR. Coming here I knew that there would be hard days. But I didn't know that they would come at me like a Mack truck. I feel like here it has been joyful or difficult. no in between. Often I feel like when I was in the states I would have periods of difficulty and then periods of joy. Here it changes on a day to day basis.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I am in the DR. It has everything to do with what God is doing in my life. God is doing great things. I don't mean great as in something you can see or something that I will be able to take a picture of and show you when I get home. He is doing something great in me. It is great because it is less of me and more of Him. But MAN does that hurt sometimes. And on top of being burned by the fire of refinement, Satan is pissed that I am in the fire and wants to throw in lies and accusations into the mix to have me running for my safety. Running back to the safety of what is familiar and comfortable.

So right now there is a war going on in my life and I am in the middle. Sometimes I am strong enough to fight alongside of Jesus but some days I am not and I can do nothing but lay on the ground and trust. Trust that I will come out of the fire refined and transformed and not charred to a crisp.

Today was another day of lies and refinement but as I am typing I am realizing that at least for this battle, refinement won!

"What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" Romans 8:31

Santo Domingo

Last weekend we went to Santo Domingo, the capital of the DR. It was quite the experience. We took a bus to get there which takes about 2 or 3 hours. There were some Dominicans behind me playing guitar and singing in Spanish. They were pretty good....if only I understood the lyrics.

Once we got there we got to tour the city. We met up with Rosario's daughter and her husband who speaks English well. He described to us what all the significance of a lot of the building were. Half of the tour we just rode around in his truck and looked around but then half of it we would stop and walk around.

Here are some pics!!

this is the house of Columbus' brother who lived and ruled in Santo Domingo....I think. It's historic, that for sure



Selling hats to tourists, Stef tried to convince me to buy one.



Old weapons! The gun was as big as me!!! and the sward is SWEET!!





Around lunch time we hung out at around this courtyard that had tons of birds hanging out. You could buy food to feed them or just fun in the pack of them to make them all fly up for a few seconds...this is what most of the kids did. It was fun to watch them play and get scared all at the same time!






Last one!!
Dominican White House...except that the President doesn't live there.



Well folks there are some more glimpse of my life. Happy viewing!

cheap produce

I just remembered that I still need to post up an entry from our trip to Santo Domingo. It was a lot of fun and I will put that on my list of things to do.

Things have been going well done here. It is so nice to feel healthy again and people able to get up in the morning, have some coffee, journal, and read my bible. I am not getting up as early as I was before I got sick because I still want to ease my body back into my schedule.

yesterday I went to the vegetable market. Vegetables are so cheap here...sure you have to make sure you clean them right so you don't get sick but it is so incredible to be able to get produce for so cheap. I can get a couple peppers, a cucumber, and a carrot for like 70 pesos. That is less than three dollars!! Any vegetarians...you should move here.
Yesterday I got 4 bananas and a whole pineapple for 60 pesos! really!!

If you know how to clean things right and you know the right places to go eating health here can be really cheap and accessible....unfortunately the Dominicans have not figured that out yet.