What You May Find When Doing Laundry...

So I woke up early to do laundry this morning and look what I found...

This was seriously the biggest cockroach I had ever seen.

I'm so glad it didn't put up much of a fight.

Hanging Out with the Kids

I've been wanting to hang out with some of our kids apart from doing home visits so today Jessica and I went to visit a few of our Haitian kids. The house has 4 or 5 rooms and each room has 6-10 people living in it. In their room, there's a bench like bed that four kids sleep on with their parents bed right next to it. It was fun hanging out, coloring, and sharing jelly belly's with them!

Squatting in their little room to take a picture.

Coloring! (this is all the floor space in the room)

Picture time!

They love taking pictures :)

Their little 'kitchen' (in the bedroom).

A Relaxing Week

This week was pretty relaxing in between all the craziness of work teams and visitors. I caught up on sleep, enjoyed hanging out with the work team (but not being in charge of them), went to cheer on the Anija soccer team in Santiago, had Bible study, went running with Jessica, and attended my first Quinceanera! I think one thing that could have improved my week was if I talked or skyped with family and friends more. I'm hoping to connect this weekend and skype some, let me know if you want to chat or shoot me an email :)

Happy birthday! Nehemias receiving a gift sent by one of his sponsors.

Anija boys soccer team playing in the Coca Copa Cola tournament.

Goofing around during the game

This was after Anija scored their second point to win the game!

(Although they won this day, they lost the next game and were eliminated from the tournament)

Caridad (left) and Marlenys (right)

The cake.

Michel, Caridad and I

(PS- I got to wear another one of my bridesmaid dresses for the second time!)

This is Ashlei who is here with the work team. Over the week we discovered that not only are we both from Tempe, Arizona but we lived on the same street and went to the same Elementary School! We also competed against each other in gymnastics, what a small world!

More New Library Books!

Here's a picture of the rest of the library books I ordered online using a donation I was given for the library. The kids now know I have some new books and I've shown them a couple so now they ask me every day when they can start reading them. Hopefully sometime next week they will be ready to put on the shelves!

Easter Projects Are Finished!

The Easter Projects for Anija are finally finished! The work team did a great job keeping everything in order and waiting patiently as all the videos downloaded. Each CD has a video of the sponsor's child at their home, a tour of Anija, the kids singing the Dominican National Anthem in the morning, and a video of the child and their classmates in their classroom. Now we just need to get them to the States alright, shipped to the Kids Alive home office and put in the mail to sponsors.

Working away on the computers. I was so grateful that my parents where still here for the first day with the work team. There were several "glitches" my mom helped work out.

Focusing on writing all the child/sponsor info onto the CD's.

The finished product=almost 300 CD's ready to be sent and seen by our kids' sponsors!

Everyone who helped pull off the final steps of this years Easter project (minus a couple people who weren't there today when taking the picture).

Ivenson's House

A quick look inside Ivenson's house (I know, I need to work on my filming skills- the first 'room' is the kitchen and the second is the one bedroom with one bed-six people live in this little house). Ivenson is in our Kinder/ABC (preschool for our Haitian kiddos) class in the afternoon at Anija. We usually hold off on officially entering the new Haitian kids in our sponsorship program until the second semester as we want to see if they are sticking around for a while. So, in the next week or so Ivenson will officially need 3 sponsors! (Let me know if you or any family or friends are interested)

Visiting Guesline, who we found playing outside as her house was locked because her parents were gone working. (Guesline is the child whose appendix burst back in September. Doesn't she look happy and healthy?!)

Here are a couple neighborhood friends along with Guesline's little sister. From what I understood, the lady in the back was looking out for a lot of the kids while their parents were out working.

This poor kid needed a bath!

We also visited three other students who attend Anija.

There are a total of eleven people living in this house, of which two of the children are related and living there because their parents died. The family was very kind and sent the kids looking for chairs for all thirteen of us to sit in.

It's quite a difference seeing these kids in there houses and then at Anija. God is really blessing these families with the opportunity for their kids to be educated.

My Parents Have Come and Gone

Hello everyone! I have had a wonderful week with my parents. They spent some time at Anija with me for a couple days, my mom helping me in the library and my dad helping in the computer lab. After work one evening, we went to eat at a restaurant called "Jamaca de Dios," which is up on a mountain and overlooks all of Jarabacoa. We also had dinner at the house of a couple of my good friends that work at Anija with me, Loida and Rebeca. They made a typical Dominican meal called sancocho. Yeraudy, the child my parents sponsor, gave my parents lots of hugs during the week and enjoyed seeing them. One of the highlights of the visit was spending the weekend at the beach. We took a taxi (that was quite a ride) up to the beach early Friday morning and stayed in a neighborhood of beautiful homes. The house we stayed in was just the right size, had a private pool, and an ocean view! A couple of my close friends came up for the weekend as well and we all enjoyed beautiful weather the whole time, Praise God for that blessing! It was just so great to have family around to love on me, help me, and to be a part of the ministries I'm involved with here.

On another, not so happy note, my 'new' (a year old) computer stopped working about 3 weeks ago. I'm not sure what happened but I figured there's no one better than my parents to take a look at it. They did and unfortunately, I had to officially said goodbye to it. Please pray that they can get my documents and pictures (from the WHOLE LAST YEAR in the DR) off of the hard drive which also includes several sponsorship documents! I'm very thankful that I have my old computer that works, although it's so slow that about half of the time the page slowly folds down when I close the browser. I use my computer A LOT not only for sponsorship work but also to communicate with family and friends (and to do workout videos of course). Please pray that my old computer (the one I'm currently using) won't die on me, that my parents can get my documents and pictures off of my 'new' computer, and ultimately, that I will trust that God will provide for me.

I'm hoping to get some pictures up soon but I'm trying not to save anything on my old computer as it barely has any space left, so check back soon!

Video of Park Care Center in Caraballo

Here's the video I was promising from my time in Caraballo!

Pictures from the Week

Here are a few pictures to capture some happenings from the week.

The first of several new books I ordered online for the library! The kids are ALWAYS asking for new books. They love Disney, riddles, cooking, princesses, songs, mysteries, novels, and the most popular is illustrated Bibles (all in Spanish)!

Wednesday afternoons I only have one library class, so I like to open the door for the younger kids to color or 'read' as they wait for class to start.

Another letter that Dahianna wrote to her (future) sponsor. Yes, she still needs sponsors!

Although the 2 girls that attend Anija that live here weren't there, a couple siblings and a neighborhood friend were. The girl in the sponge bob shirt actually goes to tutoring with several older Haitians that one of our teachers holds later in the afternoon at Anija.

He was asking me for everything I had on me (watch, keys, pesos, bracelets, phone, etc), haha.

Delivering a birthday present from a sponsor while doing a home visit. She had just told us that her favorite thing to do with her free time is to play with kitchen toys.

Sightings of the lizard and some new animal friends

My faithful friend guarding the computers.

This day, my friend thought he'd get a little closer to the kids...

Our new neighbors cat trying to stay away from our dog Feliz.

Baby chicks at one of our kids' houses.

A beautiful view while on a short motorcycle ride this afternoon.

Jessica and I smiling even though we took our first spill 5 minutes earlier (due to going over a crack in the road while turning left onto a dirt/rocky road). Glad we were wearing helmets and pants and only ended up with a few scratches and bruises!