my last few weeks

In the past few weeks, the Kids Alive DR team has mostly reconveined. I now have some other english speakers living with me at the Ark, which is really nice. I spent the past weekend in Santo Domingo attending a Dominican culture workshop. I learned a lot about how a Dominican thinks and the reason those thoughts are there. We had a session discussing the driving rules, both written and unwritten. Also, I gained a better understanding of how the Dominican family structure works, this is really beneficial as I work with kids who are in these families. We capped off the weekend with a merengue dancing session. My entrancing dance moves were making the girls come after me in record numbers (that's a joke).

Let's see, what else has happened recently?
-I had my first mini-accident on the motorcycle, but thankfully no harm was done. Shortly thereafter, however, my brake pad broke, not just broke, it actually split in half. Thankfully I was on a flat road when this happened, so again, no harm done, just 11 bucks for some new brakes.
-I visited the coolest waterfall on the planet, if anyone comes to visit, I'll be sure to take them there.
-I found the biggest spider in history in my room. It actually looked more like a crab.

As school has started again, I am enjoying building closer relationships with the children. About 200 christmas cards came in that have needed to be recorded and translated, so that's been keeping me busy. It's super fun when I get to give the cards to the kids and then have them write thankyou cards to their sponsors. It's my favorite part of the job.

I'm headed tomorrow to Caraballo, our newest ministry site, to work on getting the sponsorship program up and running. Things with sponsorship there are sort of a mess right now, so I've got my work cut out for me.

Life here is good, the work going on here is good, God's grace is good.

Jon