El Gusto Es Mio

Papa Seals, Chris’ dad, flew down to Santiago to spend a week with us before continuing on his business travels. What a great blessing that was! He was a huge help with all of the activities, and having someone from home share in our experience was very encouraging to us and the local church members. In addition to helping with the work that needed to be done, he also treated us and the de Leon family to a couple of dinners and a night in the local Marriot (thank God for reward points!). This was just as important for the de Leon family, if not more important, than the work he did for the church. Being a pastor or members of a pastor’s family often times leaves little or no time for leisure, so it was a much NEEDED treat for Nati, Jacquelin, Estiven, and Yanalin. They enjoyed and appreciated it greatly!

Construction
The Viga has been poured! You know… that thing that joins the top layer of cinderblock to the columns and serves as the top border of the window holes. We’ve been talking about it all this time and now you have some pictures to see what it is! Half of it has been poured, and construction will continue today and tomorrow until the viga is finished. Also, refill material has been bought (i.e. dirt) and the guys are raising the floor level approximately 2 feet, which is a big task. Papa Seals and Chris had the opportunity to help with filling wheel barrels in that process.

Ladies’ Tea
Wednesday afternoon, Katie coordinated a Ladies’ Tea complete with fancy finger foods, games, and prizes. Along with Katie, Chris and Papa Seals helped make the Iced Tea (hot tea would be ridiculous in the 90 degree + humidity weather), sandwiches, appetizers, and dessert. The majority of the women in the community are stuck in the house all day, cooking and cleaning up after everyone, so, an activity that honored THEM and pampered THEM was a big treat. The ladies started their time socializing and eating the appetizers (veggies and olives with dip and peanut butter) beautifully prepared by Katie. Then they were served cucumber & cream cheese, tomato, green olive & cheese, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. PB & J is not a common dish here, so it was a delicacy for them. Then after playing a number of bible quiz, word puzzles, and leg-crossing games, they enjoyed bananas and Nilla Wafers dipped in chocolate. Altogether it was a wonderful time!

Youth Activities
Saturday night youth service started with a high energy crazy time. Given thirty seconds, youth (and a few adults) were blind folded and told to collect cotton balls on the floor with a spoon, and deposit them into a bowl, with no assistance from their other hand. The team who collected the most cotton balls wins. You can imagine the difficulty in attempting that. Afterwards, Chris demonstrated his cottonball-gathering expertise (acquired by playing the game before) and related that to how young people can learn a lot from those who have previous experience. We then moved into a time of answering more questions from the question box about lying. Next Saturday we are going to take the youth to the new location of Teen Challenge where they will soon launch their ministry for women who are trapped in a life of prostitution and drugs in order to show them the freedom they have in Christ. This will be a great opportunity for the youth to learn a lot from people with a lot of life experience.
Also, a great answer to prayer is that three church members have committed to working in leadership over the youth group. Gregory (a recently baptized member in his early twenties), Yelis (a young woman fresh out of her teen years), and Nancy (a mother of one of the youth who has much previous youth ministry experience) are going to take over the current Sunday School curriculum and Saturday night services and hopefully add much more.

All in all, our early 2008 trip is starting to wind down. For the rest of our time here we’re going to continue working on tying up loose ends and finalizing some things for the ministries here before heading back to the U.S. We’re still working on finalizing a date for our return to the Dominican Republic and we’ll keep you all posted as those details develop.