Tropical Storm Emily

We just said goodbye to what was Tropical Storm Emily. It was not as threatening as it originally sounded. We received heavy rain today, but had no wind where we are.

At one point when it was raining very hard, I let the children go out and play in it. After they were done, they came in and got baths, and we had a "rainy day treat" of hot chocolate, coffee, and homeade cinnamon buns! It's not often we have "cool" days here, but with the rain system, today was one of them! It was in the 70's! The thermometer in our bedroom read 75 degrees and that felt cool.

Thank God for His guidance in this storm and that it wasn't as bad as it was predicted. We hope our friends on the other islands fare well also.

I hope I can post more soon. There never seems to be time to get everything done.

Neighbor's fire and baptism

One night around 10:30 p.m, Doug and I were working in our office after the children had gone to bed. We heard yelling and bottles being broken in the streets. We looked out and it appeared there was a fight. We went into the children's bedroom to look out where we could better see what was going on. Soon we looked over to the house beside us and saw that it was on fire! The son had been so angry that he set a room on fire and then left. We soon heard pounding on our door. It was the neighbor lady telling us to get out. Although it was unlikely the fire would reach our house because the houses are made of concrete, she was concerned about gas tanks exploding etc., and possibly putting us in danger. We woke the children up and she took us to her house where we waited for the fire trucks to come. We waited and waited and finally some of the people went around the community and got the fire extinguishers and went in to put out the fire. Doug also helped by hooking up our hose and shooting water into the room on fire. The fire trucks arrived about 30 minutes later - after the fire was put out. :-) And when they came, they didn't have any water! It's good we didn't wait on them!

Thankfully, no one was hurt in the fire, but the neighbors lost everything in that room, plus the whole entire second floor of their house was coated with black soot. They had a royal mess on their hands!

This was the room that was burned. The picture was taken from our boys' bedroom window - about 12 feet away.

The truck of soot and ashes that they hauled away.
Doug (scrubbing wall behind neighbor man in picture below) offered to help them wash down the walls with our pressure washer. You can see the difference it is making in taking the scum of soot off.


Baptism pictures - A wonderful milestone for the church was when we baptized 12 people! Both B. & R. chose to be baptized as well. R. wrote her testimony and Doug translated it to the people. I am so sorry - I did not get any shots of B. I was focusing on getting a video shot and missed the photo shot. Below are photos of some of the ones who were baptized.

Baptism

Algenis thanking God for saving him.

Watching Guarionex walk with Christ has been a real inspiration to us.
"Papa" is around 80 years old. It's never too late to serve Christ!!

Negrito is a man who people said was "crazy". He does not talk plain and previously he just roamed the streets muttering. He came to church about a year ago and said he got "saved". He comes with a bright smile, says a lot of "Hallelujahs" in the service, and is beginning to speak clearer. He must have understood enough to know what it means to give his heart to Jesus, for he is a changed man. With God there are no limits!

He was not very fond of the water. :-) He did not want to be immersed, and tried to escape. He finally dunked his head on his own. :-)

On the way home from baptism.

April pictures

I have downloaded lots of pictures from April. I only have a few more minutes, so I will not get them all done tonight, but here are some of the shots from April. This is a cultural sight that is very common. No heavy load or overweight limits here. :-)

D. challenged the kids to a chess puzzle. He'll have to tell you what it is because I sure don't know. :-) Ryan was the first to achieve it so Daddy awarded him $1.50 as his reward. (50 pesos) B. & R. also figured it out so they got 50 pesos also.
On my birthday, we invited one of the families from our church over to spend the day with us. Someone gave us this soccer game and the children had fun playing it with the guys.

They enjoyed learning to play Dutch Blitz.

R. enjoyed holding baby Samuel.

Wendy's

For supper, we went to Wendy's. Algenis (pictured below with wife and baby) lives in Boston and works at Wendy's. He likes to take his family to Wendy's here so they can taste and see where he works. He invited us to go along and we decided we would go on my birthday to celebrate.

It was Easter weekend. Everything about Easter here revolves around pools and beach so this was Wendy's decor for Easter. The whole crew at Wendy's minus B - who is taking the picture and not sure where J. is.

Our children enjoying Wendy's food.

Jan. pictures

After the busy Christmas season, we took a family day and went to a special activity that was sponsored by one of the big grocery stores in the city. If you bought so many pesos worth of certain products, you would get a free ticket into this area. They were all products we normally use, so we each got a free ticket. So we got a free family day! They had a special "ice skating" rink set up - not made of ice, for it would melt. It was made of something similar to plexiglass. The skates really did work on it - if they were sharp enough. So D. and the kids had a blast "ice skating" with no winter coats. :-)

D. racing against another guy.

We skated in front of a big Christmas tree.

The boys got to go rock climbing.

Jan. pictures 3

J. enjoyed the jumping castle.....

......and the big slide. A little boy standing in line came up and hugged J.

The Christmas tree all lit up at night.

My mom and brother came for a visit. This is me with my mom.

January pictures last batch

My brother helped to make fresh squeezed orange juice.

A beautiful view of the ocean. Another beautiful view of the ocean. At this spot the water looks turquoise.

The church asked Sidney Grant to come and preach for a weekend revival in January.

His wife spoke to the ladies and gave them each a dishtowel.

Photos coming

Has it really been Dec. since I last posted? I can hardly believe it! Well, the good news is that D. finally loaded all of the pictures from the camera onto the computer last week. So, that means, that in the near future I hope to download some to catch up some of the happenings from the past few months. Right now - it's family night and the children want to play a game. Their needs come before this blog - one reason I haven't blogged in a while. I will try to get back soon.

More Christmas pictures

R. with a sweet lady from our church - Antonia. She lives across from the church. On R.'s birthday this year, Antonia said, "10 years - and I have seen them all." It's true. She has watched our children grow up year by year.

For Christmas, D. let each of the children make their own wooden train car for their wooden train tracks.
The wooden train car that D. made (unpainted) beside the Thomas train cars.

R. is trying to decide how she wants to build hers.

J. is at least having fun experiementing with the pieces. :-)

The train cars are turning out really neat! Two of them are done. I'll have to post pictures of them when they're all finished.

Christmas pictures 1

This should have gone with the pictures from Christmas day. I missed it when I posted those. The boys all got camo hats, special glasses for the dark, canteens, water guns, and and fake animal skins. Now they're ready to hunt!

This is our stairway decorated for Christmas.
Our house decorated for Christmas.

Our house in the dark.

Our Christmas tree at night.

Christmas day pictures

One thing I love about this country is they are big on manger scenes - largely due to the Catholic background and emphasis on Mary. This is the manger scene put up at the front of our community.

Christmas morning - R. was happy with the legos he got!
J. also got legos!

J. got books!

The 3 older children all got Bibles. R. wanted a little one to take to church.

Christmas day cont.

B. with his Bible

R. with his Bible
After we opened gifts, we had our favorite brunch - vegetable fritatta - a one dish meal (except for the meat). I would have had sausage links with it, but I could not find them at the store. A neighbor brought us some kind of deep fried fish croquettes or something - so that was our meat. :-) They were tasty.

Another neighbor brought us this on Christmas day. A cake that was delicious and a plate of "pastelitos" (deep fried dough filled with chicken, onion, carrot mixture), and quipes. My neighbor makes the best pastelitos and I think they are my favorite Dominican food.

For our Christmas supper (just our family) we had ham, (pictured left and going around clockwise) pastelito from my neighbor, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, the special Christmas telera bread, Christmas jello, and pork - leftover from what we had with the Domincan family on Christmas Eve. It was a wonderful American meal that delighted our taste buds!!