james

Angelo and Carlos

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:56:33 +0100

When we agreed to take two brothers from an orphange in Jarabocoa into our home for two weeks (thanks, Ben), it was really with the mind set that we would be helping them out. I am sure we are helping and we have been having a great time with Angelo and Carlos, but I think they have impacted us just as much, if not more. I have two stories to share:

Angelo - Sunday morning in church we are worshiping, all in Spanish, so Michelle, Ben and I are trying to sing along, which is quite a process. Pronouncing words that we we don't know at a ridiculous pace while trying to figure out what it means and staying in tune is about as hard as it sounds for white people. Four chairs away from me, Angelo was singing at the top of his lungs with a huge smile on his face. He was not laughing at me. It was incredibly beautiful seeing this 14 year old boy singing praises with every fibre of his body, so filled with joy and gratitude. He was almost sold when he was 3, rescued and brought to an orphange but nearly died from malnutrition. He is small for his age and developed asthma as a result, and has lived at the orphanges ever since. That is the part of the story that we know, but there is most likely more. If he can find joy, if he can enter into worship with so much passion and gratitude for what God has given him, shouldn't it be so much easier for the rest if us, for me?

Carlos - He is still really quiet, but we are starting to see more of his personality come out. We went to PriceSmart to get some groceries (it is like a Costco) and he and Ben asked to get the DR brand of fruit loops. Carlos smiled for hours. His athletic ability is unbelievable, especially in soccer, but yesterday afternoon he was tired and just relaxing in a chair listening to some Spanish worship music we had playing. Then he too started singing. It was not with the energy and volume of his brother, but it was still beautiful. For about an hour he sat, relaxed, sang and glorified God and blessed our family as we listened.

Back to Updating

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 02:46:04 +0100

For those that do check out our site obce in a while, sorry for the lack of updates this past week. We were away for 3 days to Puerto Plata for a new staff retreat, then we inherited 2 boys from an orphange for two weeks, we found a new house that we will be moving into by the end of August, and we went horseback riding along the same river and forest that the opening sequence to Jurassic Park was filmed. Needless to say, we have been busy and enjoying it. Here are the links to some photos from some of these adventures:

New Staff Retreat in Puerto Plata

Rancho Baiguate - horseback riding in Jarabacoa

Our Growing Family???

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 23:03:59 +0100

So, we have been in Santiago for two week and 3 days and continue to adjust to so many things. I have been handling the heat pretty well, but the language is for sure the biggest challenge. I suppose the best thing to do is to face the challenges and agree to host two boys from an orphange who speak no English for two weeks. We were in church last Sunday and they announced that they were in need of some homes for some boys to stay for two weeks so that the orphange staff could get some holidays. All of the girls were placed, but they had to find places for 13 boys. Ben looked at Michelle and I with a big smile and started nodding 'YES!" Lo and behold, our family is now 6. We spent the day at the park playing basketball and catching lizards, and trying to communicate in Spanglish. It is awesome. Our two new family members are Angelo and Carlos, they are 14 and 13 year old brothers and we already enjoy having them in our home.

We also went to a baseball ministry on Saturday that our church was hosting. There was not a lot of help needed, so we decided to go to the grocery store to buy some snacks that could be handed to all the community kids that were there, about 110. On the way to the car, we passed a little girl, about 3 years old, who was living in a 5 foot square room with her parents and two younger siblings. It was a previous concession stand at the baseball field and they were allowed to live there if the husband if the husband took care of the grounds. Ben asked if we could pick up some food from the grocery store fhis family as welll. So proud of my son. We picked up a couple bags of groceries for them and Ben made a special delivery.

I have posted some pics of the past two days on the pics and video page.

Top Ten Things I Have Learned in my First Week

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 12:54:42 +0100

We have been in the Dominican Republic for just over 2 weeks, but in our apartment for just over one week now. It has been a great experience so far, but very educational, so I thought I would share the top ten things (in no particular order) of what I have learned.

I am a better driver in the Dominican Republic than in Canada. This surprises me, but my family stares at me in awe! Stay with the flow, the bigger car wins, watch out for manholes with no covers....all else are suggestions (red lights, lanes, stop signs, signalling...). It seems chaotic, but it is HIGHLY effective.
The Dominican people are wonderful. In the entire world they are ranked #2 in Contentment and Satisfaction (Norway is #1). It is hard not to be positive when you are surrounded by the second most positive people on the globe.
I love my family. The amount of family time that we have had has been awesome - great conversations with my wife, group IKEA furniture building sessions, playing catch, water fights, EPIC Halo battles, walking to the park - God has indeed blessed me with a great wife and 2 wonderful kids.
A 20 minutes task in Canada will take one hour, unless the person you are dealing with likes you, then it will take really, really long, but you will have made a good friend. This applies to buying groceries, setting up a bank account, buying a fan, adding minutes to a cell phone - relationships are more important than time.
I have a love/hate relationship with IKEA. My new furniture is very comfortable, but if I see one more picture book of instructions, a wooden dowel or an allan wrench any time soon, their may be carnage!!
Spanish is the coolest language....ever. I am learning slowly, Michelle is picking it up much quicker, but we start lessons next week. It is amazing how much can be communicated through sign language and broken English (charades), but I look forward to being able to "hablar mejor Espanol" (speak better Spanish).
Cold showers are AMAZING. In Calgary, when one refers to cold showers a different meaning comes to mind. Grown men sympathize with each other, nod, and groan the absence of certain necessities. In the DR, a cold shower means something totally different - "I am a white guy who has been sweating all day in wickedly hot weather, who smells really bad and needs to cool off before bed."
Fruit tastes so much better when it is picked, sold and eaten within 24 hours, rather than picked, prepared for shipping on a pier, transported by boat, trucked to the grocery store and then eaten 10 days later. Who knew??
Go with the flow should be everyone's motto. No electricity today, oh well. No running water, no worries. Cows blocking traffic, enjoy the rest. Life is not and never will be perfect and too often we expect it to be just the way we want it, resulting in stress/frustration. Relax, manana es un nuevo dias (tomorrow is a new day).
Tim Horton's is not as good as all Canadians think it is. In the spectrum of Dominican coffee there are varying levels of quality. Santo Domingo is top quality and Lider is a very low quality coffee. On this scale, Tim Horton's would be significantly lower than Lider, but just slightly higher than drinking a cup of mud with two creams and one sugar!

God is Good!

Our first church service in the DR

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 17:27:57 +0100

It was awesome - great worship, good message (we had to wear head sets to hear the English translation) and great people. Mateo (Matthew) went to the children's service and made several new friends, including Maurice, see the picture below. Michelle was able to meet with Joy Reyes, the founder of New-Hope Girls, and Matthew was able to meet his teacher. So cool.

Day 3

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 01:33:19 +0100

Michelle and I spent the morning enjoying some AMAZING DR coffee and looking through the IKEA website to make some final decisions. The boys enjoyed a relaxing morning of Lego and video games, although Ben seems to be addicted to his e-mail. We ventured out to a mall and braved the traffic once more with great success and decided to have lunch there. The boys were treated to Burger King, which will be an extremely rare occasion and Michelle and I had a Dominican lunch - WOW! We were a little bit worried because the whole process was confusing, it was a mall food court and we were seated and served what we had asked for, but no idea on the price. The bill does not come until the end, which is weird in a food court. So, I called for some advice - which was sort of helpful - "you should have asked for the price first, just pay whatever they ask and do it different next time, and don't forget to tip." Hmmmm..... Well, it was very cheap and our incredible meal which left Michelle and I full and Ben had a good portion as well, it actually cost less than the Burger King did.

In the afternoon we needed some reprieve from the 36 degree weather, not including humidity, so we went down to our court yard with some buckets and a nerf football. We played some water games and just had a good time - I love my family!

Weird...we are in the DR and not coming back!

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:27:00 +0100

This all still seems very surreal! We left on Friday, July 6 after some weather delays at the Calgary airport and enjoyed a great week in Sosua. The beach was awesome, the food was not bad, the sun was hot and our second room had working air conditioning. We had several highlights of the week, but the two that stand out the most are seeing wild dolphins swimming by our boat and spending time with a new "amigo" named Jason. He is a local boy, eleven years old with cerebral palsy. His father has passed away but his mom is still around. He would hang out with us on the beach and swim and he loved to be taken out snorkelling so he could see "mucho pescado" (many fish). We loved him and were tempted to take him with us, but he has a good home and the whole town seems to watch out for him.

By the end of the week, we were all ready to get to our apartment and unpack, the excitment of living out of our suitcases for almost 3 weeks had worn off. Paul Gibbs picked us up and we arrived in the apartment, I was very relieved when Michelle said she like the apartment. We also received the keys to our Toyota Forerunner. We did some light unpacking and then had our first grocery shopping lesson. Trying to convert Pesos to dollars in your head is a challenge and will take some serious getting used to. I also had my first Dominican driving lesson - the lesson was pretty simple - don't crash and stay with the flow of traffic. It is bizarre to be driving in a system with no rules, just suggestions, but that is also highly effective. It still makes me nervous though.

Spent most of the day on Friday finishing the unpacking and then we attempted a second shopping trip to get some more supplies and food. Michelle was very excited to see a gluten-free section at Nacional! Michelle got to drive home and she enjjoyed way to much, I am pretty sure she is part Dominican based on her driving skills. The boys and I went for a walk to a local park and threw a ball around for a while, there was a baseball and basketball game being played, but we drew most of the attention. White people playing baseball in a park in Santiago - WHAT?!

Today is IKEA shopping day and they offer free delivery to Santiago from the Capitol, Santo Domingo. Trying to translate the spanish website to find the right furniture is challenging (thank goodness for Google Translate).
Anyways, some pics are posted as well.

We are still in a bit of shock with all of this but very thankful and in awe of how God has worked. Two days before we left our house (with multiple offers) was sold and we were free of the truck. Everything came together - God is good!

Continue to pray for us as we transition as it is overwhelming and exciting all at the same time.

55 Days to go...

Sun, 13 May 2012 23:04:00 +0100

Wow, we leave for the Domincan Republic in 55 days. This has been quite a hectic transition already, but I think we are are almost ready to go. Our house is cleared out of 90% of everything we used to own. We sold a lot of stuff in our garage sale, donated a bunch and made several trips to the dump. The house is listed on the market and the two vehicles are for sale. So far, we have not had any serious interest, but we are praying that all will sell on time and that we would not be anxious about it. You can see on the pictures page some pics of our house and vehicles. Also, the stack of bins that is there is our entire lives contained into 9 totes that we are shipping to the DR.

God continues to be faithful through all of this and we are leaning on His strength and ask for your prayers on the following items:
1. Sorting out the details and costs of shipping our personal belongings to Santiago
2. Sorting out the business visa process
3. Selling our house and vehicles

Faithfully Following....

Our Trailer Story

Sun, 13 May 2012 18:45:58 +0100

Several weeks ago I listed our trailer on Kijiji for $1500 and had many responses in the first hour. I responded to the first person and made an appointment for 45 minutes later for them to come and look at the trailer. About 45 minutes later there was a knock at the door and the gentleman at the door stated he was here to see the trailer. Without looking at it, he offered me $1200 and told me that was all he had. I replied by saying that the price was $1500 firm and that I was confident that someone would be willing to pay that as it was a fair price and there was lots of interest. He asked to talk to Michelle and she told him the same thing, but he kept pressing.

Then, a knock on the door and a couple was standing there and they said they had been e-mailing with me and they were the ones here to look at the trailer. I looked at the other gentleman and asked how he found our house and he replied that it was listed in the advertisement. It certainly was not! This guy had stalked us somehow and tried to scoop the trailer. He then began offering the asking price, plus more and pulled out more money. I told him that the other people had an appointment and I would give them first chance. He stormed away quite upset...

So, the other couple loved the trailer and wanted to buy it. They were a really nice couple, John and Marianne, with three daughters and they attend the alliance church in Okotoks. When John went to get the money he came back empty handed with a distraught look on his face. The enevelope with the money was missing, it was not in the truck and his daughters could not find it at home. Marianne simply states, "Oh well, it's only money." They left for home and we told them that we would pray that they find it and we would wait until tomorrow before contacting anyone else.

45 minutes later we received a call that they found the money and were on their way back. We spent some time talking and thanking God and John handed me $1500. Right away, Marianne looked at Michelle and said that they were meant to lose the money, becasue God wanted them to talk on the way home. She handed Michelle $500 and said that the Lord had directed them to give us this money to support the missions work that we will be doing. Michelle and I started crying as we were overwhelmed by this gift. We enjoyed the rest of the evening talking, having tea and sharing how God is working in each of our lives.

POWERFUL!!