February 2014 – poorsinthedominican

This is the first time in my life that I am around poor people all the time. I see on a daily basis the great need that is around us everywhere and the need is real. When a beggar comes to my door asking for money, I give them food and they are thankful. I have to get out of the perspective that people begging for food are trying to take advantage of me in some way, because the one arm guy who comes to my door once a week really can’t work, and there are no social services to help him.

I also have to fight against my perception of poor people. I have to remind myself that the cute little kids in our school that I have fallen in love with are not just poor kids who need a rich American’s help. They are not just pictures opportunities to take and write home about. These are really living and breathing children who have real needs. What I am now beginning to realize is that it is true that these children have real and valid physical needs that I believe we would be disobedient if we did not try and help, but physical help without the gospel is nothing. Anyone and anything without the gospel is nothing. Which at the end of the day puts us all in the same boat.

This brings me back to Ephesians 2 again:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience am-among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses,made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved”

We were once all the same; sinners in need of a savior. But, God saved us by his grace. The only thing that separates us is those covered by Christ’s blood and those who aren’t. So, we will work even harder to proclaim the gospel and equip others to do the same. We will work hard to fulfill the great commission by making disciples, and pouring into the lives of other believers that we meet. We will thank God daily for his grace that makes all these things possible.

I feel that I have a zillion things to write about but not enough time to get it all out. I get asked a lot about what my typical day so I thought I would just write about a typical day in the Poor Household from my perspective.

This is my typical Monday:

6:00: Rise and Shine. Monday and Wednesday Randy has to be at school by 7 which means Claire and Autry have to be up and ready even though school doesn’t start for them until 7:45

6:55 Randy, Autry, and Claire leave for school. I read my bible and workout

8:30: I start getting ready to go out to the Haitian school

9:00 I get Gibson and Addie ready

9:20 I talk to our housekeeper about what she can make for lunch (I know, I know, I have a house keeper but I really couldn’t do all that I am doing without her)

9:30 Addie, Gibson, and I leave for Haitian School

10:15 The 3 of us arrive at Haitian School

10:30 I teach the Older Students

11:10 I teach younger Students

11:30 We leave Haitian School to take students home, this normally takes 40-50 minutes

12:40 Addie, Gibson, and I run by home to pick up lunch and bring it to Randy and the kid’s school to eat as a family.

12:50 We arrive at the Christian school for lunch

1:30 I leave the school with all the kids. Randy teaches at the school in the afternoon English program so he stays for a couple more hours.

2:15 I put the kids down for a nap and it is now time for a little down time for me

4:00 Autry, Claire, and I do a little Homeschool and Homework

6:30 Dinner Time! We have conformed to the Dominican way of eating. We eat a really big dinner like meal for lunch and then eat something like sandwiches or quesadillas for dinner.

7:00 I head over my friends house to teacher her English

10:30ish Bedtime

These are my days in a nutshell. Tuesdays and Thursdays I don’t have Haitian School but I use the extra hours to work on our Haitian School Sponsorship, the Haitian School finances, buying food for the Haitian School, updates, blogs, and keeping in contact with people back home.

Randy’s days are filled with teaching at the Christian school. He loves teaching his afternoon English class and is making sure these kids know the gospel backwards, forwards, and sideways. He has gone through Ephesians and all of Genesis with the kids. We are now praying the the Holy Spirit will work in their lives and they will accept the gospel message. Our nights during the week are filled with people coming over for English lessons, Creole lessons, and Spanish lessons. We are finding out what a powerful tool language lessons can be for both discipleship and evangelism.

The last couple of months have been crazy around here. That is the reason why there has been an extreme lack of blog posts from me. To sum it all up my sister, brother-in-law, and nephews were here and then my parents. We had a few days of fairly normal, then Randy was sick for a week, the Seahawks won the Superbowl, and then I was sick for a week. We then had 2 weeks of me playing catch up and trying to get things done, and then Randy’s Mom and sister came. We have had a lot of fun but this has left little to no time to get things like blog posts done.

While Sarah and Andy (sister and brother-in-law) were here I started taking all the kids home. This has led to several adventures as we have gone down some pretty crazy roads. At one point I drove into a ditch but thankfully several Dominicans came out of their houses and helped lift the truck out the ditch. We at times have had 28 people in our little truck.

During these last few months we have also started feeding all the children in the school a full meal every day. It is a huge relief to us knowing that every day the children are in school they are eating. Every Wednesday I receive my list of things to buy and Thursdays have becoming my grocery shopping day.

All this to say it has been a crazy crazy couple of months. We don’t have anything big on the horizon so I am looking forward to a regular for a sustained amount of time. I have lots of thoughts about ministry but I will save that for the next post since this was more of an update to all you faithful blog readers that I have completely neglected the last 2 months.

Here are some Random pictures of the last few months