different blog

We decided to move the blog to wordpress because there is a little more freedom with posting pictures and such

Follow our journey here

http://poorsinthedominican.wordpress.com/

Trip to the dominican part 2

Our Bus to Sosua

Our Cute Hotel: Hotel Tropix

Coconut Tree ( we were enamored with all the fruit trees)

More of our hotel

Mango Tree

One of the funny named gift shop

Walking down the road in Sosua

Our Beach Chairs

Beautiful Beach

Guy with a gun and Mariners T-shirt

Our favorite Bank security guard with  huge gun

Entrance to our hotel

So first off lets talk about Dominican spanish. My spanish has gotten a little rusty over the past few years I will admit but for the most part I can understand when Spanish is spoken around me. This is not the case with Dominican spanish. Dominican's leave out the "S" and a few more letters so that a sentence sounds like one really long word. Randy kept asking me, "What are they saying?" and I kept having to answer, "I have no idea." I thought I was going crazy until I started talking to other people from the states that whole heartedly agreed with me that the spanish in the Dominican is very difficult to understand. That was quite the relief for my pride. Now on to our trip to Sosua. Sosua is a small beach town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. We took a bus ride out there, that seemed to never end. We finally arrived and were met by the motoconches (motorcycle taxis). Randy and I had already discussed that we were going to take one to the area around our hotel. As I stepped off the bus I was immediately greeted by several men pulling my backpack in different directions trying to get me to get on their motorcycle. Thankfully I had Randy there and I was able to communicate with them where we wanted to go. The arranged price was 50 pesos each (1.25). Our hotel was a small hotel and the manager of the hotel had already told me that most motorcycle drivers were not going to know where it was but he had told me that it was near the "Playera Supermercado" and then had given me directions from there. So our motorcycle taxis drove us down the hill to the "Playera Supermercado". I thought I was going to fall off and die the entire time but Randy thought it was fun. It was completely dark by the time that we arrived in Sosua and when we got off the taxi I did not see anything that represented the directions that our hotel had given us. Randy and I started walking to get our bearings. Our taxi drivers were still swarming us asking if we needed another ride because they could tell that we were a little lost. They kept telling us they could take us where we needed to go. Finally, one told me that there was another playera supermercado closer to the beach. So we figured we were at the wrong one and they said that they would take us. So we hop back on the bikes and they take us to the other playera supermercado which was a much shorter ride than the first one and then they tell us it is going to cost 100 pesos each. We precede to have an argument with our taxi driver telling him that there is no way we are forking over another 100 pesos each. Which was really Randy telling them no way and me translating back and forth. Translating an argument over money is not my favorite thing to do by the way. After they guy finally got the clue that we were only given them another 50 pesos each we continued trying to find our hotel. No one knew where it was and we were still very lost. We decided just to walk and hope that eventually we would find it, we knew it was up a hill somewhere. So we walked about 100 ft and what do we find, the first playera supermercado. So basically our motorcycle drivers took us around the block the long way and then wanted to charge us 2.50 each. Randy was a little frustrated to say the least. Anyways, after this point and no more mortorcyclists harssing us we were able to find our hotel. Now I wish I could say our adventure for the day ended here... By the time we got to our hotel it was about 8:30 and we were starving. Unfortunately, the hotel manager wasn't in that night so all we had was a letter from him with our key. We asked one of the other people staying at the hotel what was good and she told us that basically anything was good. So we set off down the road to find food. We got to the main street with the restaurants, took a right, and settled into the first one we saw ( like I said we were really really hungry). We ordered our food and drinks and then began to take in the surroundings. There were a lot of fat, old, men at the bar and we noticed that next to each one of them was a young, 20ish, pretty dominican girl sitting next to them in pretty skimpy clothes. That's when it hit us that we were in a restaurant filled with hookers! We finished up pretty quickly and decided to call it a night. We learned later that if we had turned left instead of right we would of had a much better time finding a decent restaurant. But that first night we were exposed to a huge problem in the beach towns of the Dominican, referred to as sex tourism. Men come down for the express purpose of hooking up with these girls. Thankfully our hotel doesn't allow it to go on in their hotel so that was a blessing. However, the poor hotel we stayed in (that was a fantastic hotel) is barely making it because they have taken a stand against it. The manager, a super nice guy named Carl, said they would be full every night if they allowed it. Our heart was very burdened as we saw these girls and I am not sure what the Lord has in store for us in this arena but it is a huge area of need that we saw in the Dominican. The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful, a lot of laying on the beach and swimming on the ocean. It was so relaxing and Randy and I so enjoyed being together, it was a little second honeymoon and I am so thankful for the time we had. --

Our trip to the Dominican Republic

The Group of Hatians that we shared the van with

A view from the Balcony at La Vega Christian School

A 4th grade class at La Vega Christian School

A street View of La Vega

another view of La Vega Christian School from the balcony

Our trip was amazing. There are so many thoughts going through my mind as I think about our trip that I needed to get it out on paper. The trip certainly fulfilled its purpose. We were really able to see the Dominican Republic, and many different facets of Dominican Life.
In Santiago (the biggest northern city) we were able to walk around and see what the city was like. Randy also interviewed at the Christian School there. The first morning that we were there Randy and I just walked around the city for three hours. We stumbled upon a baseball field while we were walking and saw kids practicing baseball. There was a sign in front of the field that said, "Baseball El Ensueno" This means Baseball the Dream/Fantasy.  For me this made my heart go out to the Dominican children. There is so much striving for this far off goal of making money playing baseball. Randy and I so want to reach out to these kids and show them how Jesus' is far better than anything else. The dream of baseball can still be there but there is so much more to life.
In the afternoon we went over to Santiago Christian School (SCS) to interview. The school was great and we can see ourselves easily fitting in there. The student population is the top 1% of the Dominican population, the rich kids. The school is the best school in northern Dominican republic. There are also about 150 students who are MK's or their parents teach at the school.  The school is also taught in English so our kids would be able to attend no problem.
After leaving SCS we took a bus to La Vega. La Vega is a small town about 25 minutes out of Santiago. Here we stayed with a wonderful missionary couple named Mitch and Debbie Martinez. We had an amazing time in La Vega. We were able to meet and see some of the Hatian ministry that they do. The Hatians are the poorest of the poor in the DR and they estimate there are about 2,000,000 Hatians living in the DR but only about one million of them are legal. This is a huge area of ministry in the DR. We had a great time of piling 17 adults, 3 kids, and a whole bunch of music and sound equipment into a van (by the way this was not a 15 passenger van. We would maybe consider it about an 8 passenger van in the US) They Hatian Church was doing an outdoor Evangelism service and we were driving them there.  As we were all in the van the Hatians started singing their hearts out, it was amazing and beautiful to say the least.
We spent the evening hanging out with some of the other missionaries that live in La Vega and learning lots about Dominican Culture and the needs of the people who live in the country. We also learned that in La Vega only 1% of the population are Evangelicals in the entire Northern part of the Dominican Republic only 2% of the population are evangelicals. To say there is need there is an understatement.
In the morning we went to school with Debbie.  We were able to spend the entire day at La Vega Christian school helping out in the classes. It was great for us to see exactly how the school worked. The students at La Vega Christian School are much different than those in Santiago Christian School. There are some wealthier kids who attend the school but many of the children are there on scholarship. The Martinezes have said up a fund for the poorer kids to be able to go to school. Many of the kids have a half scholarship but several of them have a scholarship that covers tuition, uniforms, and food while they are at school. The kids at La Vega Christian school are substantially poorer than those at Santiago Christian School.
We had hoped that after visiting schools we would have a clear cut decision. Unfortunately we really don't. The hard thing is that the schools are vastly different. I mean besides being schools that exist to teach kids about Jesus  you really can't even put them in the same category.
You have Santiago Christian School where rich kids go, would pay significantly more, and our kids would go to school there. La Vega Christian School where much poorer kids attend, pays $300 (a good Dominican salary) a month, has more of a need for teachers, and I would more than likely have to do some homeschooling for my kids.
One of the hard things is that Randy and I feel passionate that whatever school we want to be doing other ministries. We don't plan on making the school our bubble of influence and fellowship.  So while the school we end up at is important it is not going to be our only ministry. With that in mind we have to decide whether we want to be primarily located in La Vega or Santiago. They arn't that far part. Anyways... needless to say we have a lot to think about and consider. We would covet your prayers as we make our decision. We hope to start raising support the first of the year so the goal is to make our decision in the next couple weeks.
On a personal note Randy and I both fell in love with the Dominican Republic. As I rode back on the plane I was excited for our family to be together again but I felt such a sadness about leaving the country knowing that it would be at least seven months before we returned. I felt a connection and burden for the people there. I also felt such a peace knowing that God has planted such strong desire to minister to the people in the DR. I was afraid that going there I would hate it and decide that we didn't want to be there but the opposite happened.  I more than ever know that God has laid the Dominican people on our hearts and that we cannot wait to return.
I will write more later about our time at the beach because that is a whole different story but this is all I have time for now.