Family

Family

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Happy Birthday Delayna!

16 years ago today, God gave us our firstborn! I can't believe how fast she has grown up! Happy 16th Birthday Delayna!!!


Friday, June 14, 2013

Busted!

Please keep us in your prayers! Besides the whole driving situation, :), we have had many things "go wrong".  We feel that we are under attack right now. Some of the things have been "big deals" and others have been small irritants! Just when we think it's over, something else happens. Last night while my husband was out visiting, someone busted out the back window of our jeep. I don't know if they were trying to rob us or just being mean! I was just thankful that he wasn't in it at the time. It was a minor thing, compared to other things, but it is getting discouraging.
Over the next few months, I am going to try to post some pictures of our life. It probably won't be every day, but I will try to do it often. If you want to see a specific picture of some aspect of our life or ministry, just let me know! Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

One reason we need your prayers!


A friend of mine just posted an article from the Washington Post that I found very interesting! Just one of the many reasons your prayers are so important to us. :) 
I've copied part of it below, to read the whole article you can go to... 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/07/a-map-of-the-countries-with-the-most-dangerous-roads/

Lots of people think that their home town has the worst traffic, the most aggressive drivers, the craziest cabbies. Sometimes they have strong anecdotal evidence. Russian drivers often employ dashboard cameras to record seemingly inevitable collisions with reckless motorists. In the United Arab Emirates city of Abu Dhabi, a three-day Blackberry phone outage coincided with a 40 percent drop in traffic accidents. When I visited Cairo, where just crossing the street is a sort of art form in itself, I presumed no roads could be more dangerous until a friend who had just returned from Indonesia assured me that Jakarta’s are far worse.
So who has the world’s most dangerous roads? It turns out, based on a comprehensive World Health Organization report that measures road safety by the number of motor vehicle-related deaths per 100,000 people, the answer is the Dominican Republic.
The Caribbean island nation (it shares the island of Hispanolia with Haiti) reports a staggering 41.7 driving deaths per 100,000 people per year. That means that, in any given year, a Dominican person has a one in 2,398 chance of being killed by a car. That’s not so bad until you extrapolate out by 70 years and find that, over a lifetime, a Dominican’s odds of dying in a car-related accident are one in 480. The WHO report notes that the Dominican Republic has weak helmet and speed laws and even weaker drunk driving laws. More than half of driving related deaths, 58 percent, are of occupants or drivers of two- or three-wheeled vehicles. In other words, motorcycles.

Monday, June 10, 2013

A new kind of Hockey

Most of you know that my husband grew up in Canada so therefore grew up playing hockey.  Well, since we have ben here in the DR, he doesn't get to play much hockey.  He keeps his stick handy in case the opportunity arises. Yesterday morning that opportunity came. I went down to the kitchen to get him some more Sprite, we have both been sick the last several days, and when I walked in the kitchen, something moved on top of my stove. You guessed it, another rat! I called for Stu to come down to help me and the first thing he asked for was his hockey stick. After several minutes of trying to get the rat to come out from behind the stove, it finally did. Stu started practicing his slapshots.  He smacked that rat against the door over and over until it stopped moving. I was laughing so hard and wishing I had a video camera. When it was all over, I told the girls that they better marry a man who knows how to use a hockey stick. :)

Saturday, June 1, 2013

May is gone already!?!

Is it really June already??? May seemed to fly by. It probably helped that my sister and her family were here. We sure enjoyed getting to know my niece. She turned 1 year old while she was here. The poor thing got smothered by all of us wanting to hug and kiss her!
May 26th was Mother's Day here. On the Friday night before, the men put on a Mother/Daughter banquet for us. They did a really good job. On the way home that night it was me, Joy, my girls, her daughter and my sister. There were lots of police out (they have upped the patrols due to more violence) and as we passed through a road block they stopped us. They looked in the van and said "oh, a van full of beautiful women. You must not be Dominican, you are too pretty." then they let us go. :)  We were glad not to have nay problems.
It has been raining a lot here the past couple of weeks, which has been nice! After it rains here a bunch of flying ants come out. We don't notice them as much when we are at home because we have screens, but at the church they can be a bother! One Wednesday night it had rained quite a bit and as Josh started preaching the flying ants started coming out. As they would fly under a ceiling fan it would push them down onto the people. There were so many of them that we were being swarmed with them. People started swinging and swatting, waving and picking them out of other peoples hair. It was very distracting! Then one flew into my sisters mouth and she started gagging. At that point, Stu was chuckling and I was having a hard time holding it together but I was doing ok. Then one flew into Josh's eye and we all lost it. The whole church was laughing. After Josh saying it was a good thing they were ants and not roaches we got back to business. After the services there were so many dead ants all over the floor, you could tell it had been bad.
We have had a special evangelistic campaign going on since Thursday. The devil has really been fighting, there have been so many complications. On Thursday morning we were informed we could not use the building that we had secured several months in advance because the Catholics were going to use it. We ended up having the meeting outside on a basketball court. In the middle of the service, between the two preachers, while they were singing, it started pouring! Everyone started running. Joy spread herself over the keyboard until someone came to help her, she was drenched by then! Then last night in the kids service, Stu was about to pass out a few prizes to some of the kids who had won and a riot broke out. As soon as the first kid held up their prize everyone rushed forward. They broke the sound system, trampled people and then started throwing rocks and eggs. Because the sound system wouldn't work, they had a hard time getting it back under control. Needless to say, some of them were nervous about what would happen tonight! I do know they have had a good attendance and at least 18 saved so far.
Seth and Jesse are done with school for the year (YAY!) and the girls are getting close. We are working extra hard to try to finish on time. We are looking forward to summer break this year, especially me! So, if you don't hear from me this summer it will be because I am laying out back in the pool trying to stay cool and enjoying my break. :) Not really! I am going to be taking two Spanish classes a week through the summer. I am nervous and excited all at once. Please pray that my Spanish will improve greatly during this time.