Hill Country

Here is a picture from the high school group from Hill Country Christian School in Austin. They were with us the first half of the week during spring break, and were a GREAT help in the classroom. Each student came prepared with an activity to do or a book to read. This class made puppets!

sick

So, today was the first day in my 8 months of being here that I didn't go into teach when I was supposed to because I am sick. It's not too bad though- just a constant runny nose and feeling weak. Boo.

It has been raining a whole lot here, and are beautiful filtration system that we have going causes lots of water to enter the house. We have been trying to keep the house dry and to keep it clean. I have also been trying to continually wash my hands and use clean towels/sheets to try to kick this illness. It got me start to thinking about the people living in the bateyes and how much worse their living arrangements are as well as their knowledge of health issues. I am continually understanding why people are always sick here.

When Alexia drove to teach she stopped by to tell Cristina that she didn't need to work today (she has no working phone). Not only did Cristina call me to see how I was doing later in the morning, she and her husband stopped by the house (even though they had never been there before) to check on me! I don't think I was that great of a hostess, but the gesture was wonderful.

We will not be teaching the week leading up to Easter, Semana Santa. (Nor will the rest of the country be working). I am hoping that this will be a good time to rest, which should be really nice. Please pray for healing, particularly though for all those kiddos who are sick because of this crazy weather.

una casa llena

So, a lot has been going on. We had two different groups come down, a high school group from Hill Country and a college group from the Austin Stone. It great was seeing so many familiar faces and also meeting some new ones too. In total we had 73 people in the house, not including staff. That is una casa llena!! Below are pictures that sum up Thursday-Sunday of spring break. Enjoy. I don't have pictures from the first half when HCCS was here, sorry.


Finally some pictures of the classroom. I had half of the kids in each class while part of the group took the other half to the beach. On a normal day picture a lot more kids and a lot less gringos!











Here the kids and group members are acting out a Bible story, group members are helping pass food out for the feeding program, and below, the boys are waiting, getting ready to go to the beach.








Having the groups here was so wonderful, not only for extra hands in the classroom, but also for good community with old friends.

Here I am hugging Damalia after class.













Beach day on Saturday with the group.

I was really excited to play ultimate frisbee!

Michelle was thinking otherwise!







On Sunday, I traveled with the group to Santiago and fed the kids lunch in a village called La Lomita.

Lots of kids here, just like Pancho Mateo and Chichigua, run around naked.










me and Katie at La Lomita.

little katy

an email sent out by Jennie

Hi everyone,

I wanted to send you a quick email asking for your prayers for a little girl named, Katy. Katy is Haitian and lives in the Batey of Pancho Mateo. It's situated on the backside of Montellano, Dominican Republic. Katy is about 6 years old and was recently brought to our attention for the unusually big stomach that she has. It even seemed unusually big for having parasites. So after a series of doctor's visits, tests, cat scans, etc. etc. she was found to have a tumor right up next to her stomach, pancreas and liver. Its difficult to tell if it is cancerous or not until they can operate on her and take it out.

Katy is scheduled to have surgery this coming Tuesday, the 27th of March. Please be praying for her. Her liver and pancreas are not functioning up to their optimum probably due to the tumor. She also has tested positive for Cickle Cell Anemia, which is very common here in the DR. The doctor was honest in saying that she could die during the surgery but if she doesn't have it taken out, then she could still die if the tumor continues to grow. Pray that the blood donors that we have lined up come through with the necessary blood that she needs. I don't know if she or her grandmother are Christians. I have talked to them about the great Physician and about praying to Him on Katy's behalf. We will meet with her and her grandmother the night before her surgery to pray with them.

Katy lives alone with her grandmother who works hard at making a living for them both. They were recently given mattresses to sleep on, but other than that they don't have very many belongings and are very poor. Katy's mother died a month after she was born. Her mother was 22 years old. Her father also died from a fever, and to my knowledge she doesn't have any other brothers or sisters.

Attached is a photo of her and her grandmother in front of their neighbor's house. Thank you so much for your prayers and support!

In His Service,

Jennie

ruben likes fish

we saw whales!

Last weekend the whole Makarios gang headed over to Samana. It is in the northeast corner of the country and that area is supposed the prettiest it can get. Saturday morning we took a boat out into the ocean to go whale watching. I have never seen anything like it before. We saw a single whale swimming in the water near us. It would jump partly out of the water and also swim on its back with its flippers in the air. You know, doing a little back stroke action. It was really cool. Later we saw a group of 4 whales, one female with 3 males trying to be her "escort." It was pretty interesting. Later as we were going back to shore, a large group of dolphins were riding the wake from our boat. I had never been so close to see stuff like this before, it was awesome. Keith got sea sick though, which wasn't pretty. (Sorry Keith).

That night we drove to a beach, secluded in the corners of the island. An old local cooked fish for us and we ate it right there as we watched the sun set. We camped out on the beach and literally had the place to ourselves. There were ten of us total (Jennie, Miguel, Alexia, me, Keith, Ruben, Ana Maria, Wilton, Rosi, and Nini~ Ruben's wife and kids). After playing around some in the morning, we packed up our tents and headed out.

It was a really cool experience. Everything was so relaxed and beautiful, we really were in paradise.