Making Friends

Friends are so important in the lives of every person, perhaps even more so when you are a teen or preteen. Leaving all their friends and family in Calgary was probably the hardest thing for our girls to do. Now that we have been here for 3 months and somewhat settled into our lives here God is bringing people into our lives to be friends to our girls here. Pictured here are Rebecca with Debby, they are the same age, also Debby's little cousin (on her lap) and Aroura, a sponsored child from the Lighthouse school. The twins also have, Yomary, the daughter of one of the workers here. It is good to see this happening. The girls really miss their friends at home, but it's nice to have friends everywhere.

It's Moving Day!!

On Friday, September 22nd we began to move into our home that we had been waiting for for almost 2 months. What we thought was a major inconvenience initially became a huge blessing in many ways. God taught us patience and gave us a lesson in Domincan culture, while in the end blessed us with a beautiful new home. It has been a long 2 months in many aspects, with having to live in 2 separate rooms and not have "family time" together except with many other people around in the dining room or to watch a movie huddled on a double bed in one of the rooms. More realistically though, time has flown! We will be in Calgary again before we know it. I am sure the next 10 months, though they seem like a lot will pass just as quickly. There will be difficult times, like Christmas and special days, like our older kids birthdays, but all in all God will be here with us and we will get through. The photo with this post is one of my favorites from last Friday, the rebar was finished about 8 p.m. and as soon as that happened Brent had his flags flying! They symbolize to us the countries that we hold dearest in our hearts and also divide our hearts and lives.

We have new babies!!

On Friday, September 22nd "our" mama cat had 5 little kittens. The girls had been anxiously awaiting the arrival. I thought that they were going to jump out of their skin with excitement!! Of course they are so little yet that we haven't picked them up (except for Reilly, she just informed me that she picked one up), because the mama is pretty much a wild cat. Not one of us has gotten close enough to her to even pet her. Of course you know that the babies will know what human kindness is!! These little ones will never replace Shadow and Daisy, but will do for the time we are here! Oh, by the way the names of the babies are; Nikki, Christy, Sue, Diane and Josie!!

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't....

We spend our evenings right now in the dining hall so we can be together and that is where we can pick up our internet connection. The girls favorite thing to do is "talk" on msn to whomever happens to be online. It might be one of their friends, or a sister, or their brother, etc. Some of our frustrations have been with the connection, especially if the power goes out, things just die. If there is a tropical storm going through or it is raining a lot, msn will cut in and out, very frustrating for us as it must be for the people we talk to as well. When we bought our computer we got a webcam. This little thing makes life for the kids great when it works, because the people we are talking to can see us and if they have one we can see them! The girls also needed a set of voice recognition headphones for school, so sometimes we have the pleasure of hearing someone's voice as well. In the photo Rebecca is talking to Nikki and Mikaela is "talking" on msn to her. It is a great system and it all "just depends" on lots of things to make it work properly. Oh and by the way we are still not in our house, but we are getting closer!!

Things happen on Saturday!!

It is Saturday (Sabado), September 9th! This picture may not look like much is happening, but let me tell you that by the end of the day today this room and the 2 bedrooms had 2 coats of paint on the ceilings!! A huge accomplishment! But let me tell you what else happened. With everyone working all our family and lots of workers, we cleaned the and smoothed the interior walls, the sanding of the outside of the south of the house started, the bathroom in our room has the walls tiled, the cement is poured for the base of the retainer wall that will go around the "veranda" or outside area, the girls bathroom has the top of the walls sanded, and the house is closer than it has ever been to becoming our home!! Valentin worked his butt off, to get today to the point that it is. He is just the greatest. He worked until 7:30 tonight in the dark to finish the last coat of paint on the girls room. Tomorrow is Sunday, our family considers it a day of rest, but with things so close and the same workers there tomorrow as today who knows what will happen. We are going to a larger church tomorrow that are looking forward to the "Canadians" coming and they are serving lunch after, then we absolutely need to go to the market. We go to bed tonight satisfied from a days work that brings us closer to a long awaited goal. May God bless you. Love, Rhea

What a bug!!

Hi everybody!! We have discovered something about each of our children since coming here, but Reilly's has been so weird!! She loves bugs, and most of God's other creatures in the Dominican. She wants to go "tarantula hunting" with a flashlight. She saves tadpoles from certain death in ponds that are starting to dry up, and then frees them to grow after the rains. She is very excited that the mama gato (cat) is expecting, and she loves the pack of dogs that run around the camp. She is enthused with giant caterpillars, interested in the gechos (until they come in the girls room), and has befriended beetles. The one here was crawling around on her shirt first, but loves the feel of them on her hand. She had one once that was about three times the size! Hope you are having a great start to the school year.

House is coming along!!

Hey everybody here is Mikaela in our house looking out the kitchen window and Valentin looking out the window in Brent and Rhea's bathroom. Our house is coming along slowly, but surely. It went with great leaps and bounds for a bit but now it is slower because of the details. Like knocking out holes in the cement for electricity, finishing of the interior walls with fine grind cement (like on the front of the house shown here), and bathrooms. It will be beautiful when it is done, and it is much nicer now than a couple of days ago that the buckets and buckets of dirt and debris is out of the kitchen and our room, but the bathrooms and girls bedrooms are still a mess. With the date they give us of September the 6th fast approaching there is no way we will be in by then. Realistically and hopefully the weekend after is a possibility. This house is being built for the long run of the camp. We just happen to be the first of a hopefully long line of missionaries to live here and help out. Frustrating as it is, we will be blessed when the time comes to move in!