La Iglesia de Andre

I don't think I've blogged about this, yet, but those who get my newsletters would know that Andre left SI in September to pastor the church that he is planting in Los Higos full time. He had felt for quite a while that the Lord was leading him to focus more and more on the church, and SI tried to put him in contact with some people and churches that might support him so that he coud make that transition.

Andre continues to work with the kids' club, but it is now considered to be a ministry of the church. The above picture shows Andre meeting with the club. The club now only meets twice a week, Thursdays and Sundays, which gives Andre more time to focus on other parts of his ministry as pastor. When SI has teams in the summer, they will continue to partner with Andre by sending students to work with the club. The students will be able to hold club every day and give classes, such as English or music classes, as they have done in the past through SI.

The church continues to grow in numbers and maturity. Last Saturday three more people were baptized, including Hector Luis (who is in the picture below in the red shirt) and Negro/ Peña/ Jose Antonio Delgado (he has a lot of names). Robin wasn't able to go on Saturday, but was planning to be baptized on Monday. The church continues to meet on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Thursday nights is a 'meeting', not a church service, and is ran totally by church members (i.e. Andre doesn't lead anything that night), and it's always fun to hear different church members take turns preaching (which is what Hector Luis and Guelo are doing in the picture below). Saturday and Sunday services are considered to be official church services, and often features different members preaching.

megafono

A couple months ago I got a megaphone! It was donated by a guy who came down on a two week mission trip this summer.

Here in the DR, it's really common for truck buying or selling something to drive around with a small megaphone attached to the roof, announcing whatever their business happens to be. For example, "plantains, bananas, yucaaaaaaaa... all types of root crops, all for three pesos, only threeeeiiii pesooooos." It's pretty funny to hear some of the things they'll announce, but I've found that it's quite effective. When the truck that buys scrap metal drives through town, people run to collect their scraps and out to the road to catch the truck and make a few pesos.

So, as silly as it feels to walk around town talking into a megaphone, it seems to work. I've mostly been using it to announce when the trash truck is going to come (SI brings up the dump truck about once a month to help with trash collection and removal). The picture above show a couple of our semester students announcing that the truck is coming. We always announce it a day ahead of time and pass out trash bags, and people literally come running out of their houses to meet us on the road and receive bags.

The youth group in Andre's church have also used the megaphone to announce meetings and events and I imagine that as word gets around that I have a megaphone we'll find many other uses for it.

bultos

Our sewing class continues to happen, although it's not as organized as I would like and we only have two faithful attenders (Sara and Vianelli, pictured above). We got some wild, blue cheetah-print cordoroy fabric in the mail last week. I expected to just stick it in the drawer, but when the girls saw it, they wanted to make book bags.

What has been neat about this project is seeing how motivated the girls have been. I think that their drive comes from the fact that the bags are for them and they really do need them. We've done other sewing projects, but those were with the intent of selling things. It seems, though, that the girls aren't as interesting in making money as they are in just making things for themselves.

I have really come to appreciate Sara and Vianelli as I've seen their presistence in coming to the classes. They really push to keep the class going. I'm praying that Jesus might use this simple class to open doors to bigger opportunities for these girls and that the girls would be ministered to in deep ways as we interact with one another around fabric, needles, and threads.

brazo roto

Chipo ("Cheap-O) broke his arm on Monday. He fell out of a cereza tree and broke it right above the elbow. I know that most people who have visited Los Higos will remember Chipo, and probably share my opinion that I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier.

Rain

A lot of people have asked if we've received any damage from all the recent hurricanes- Fay, Gustavo, Hanna, Ike...

Basically we've had about a month of off-and-on rain. Most days it is sunny and hot in the morning, but we usually get a thunder storm in the afternoon and then some more rain in the evening. Usually this time of year is dry, but it's feeling a lot like how typical rainy season would feel, except that it's hotter.

The picture above shows some girls playing in a ditch in Los Higos. They were trying to form little dams out of clay, but I saw that they were washed out by the next day.

And my garden is out of control with weeds, but it's too muddy to do much about it.

Casa de Elvis

Elvis' family's house is basically finished and has been for a while. It just took me a few weeks to finally walk up to take the picture. The floor is red concrete. They still don't have the interior divided into seperate rooms, so the house feels really big inside. And, I guess, they still need some other type of window covering.

maiz

Since coming to the DR, I've tried to grow corn three times. The first time I was so disappointed. Having grown up with hybrids and chemical fertilizer, I'm used to stunning corn. The open polllinated stuff here just doesn't measure up. But this third harvest looked somewhat like what I'm used to (thanks to some granular fertilizer and timely rains). So, we shelled the corn out today, and I harvested a total of 35 pounds, grown on about 1/20 of an acre (I'm guessing). that adds up to 12.5 bushels/ acre. So, although I felt more proud of this corn (and everyone told me it was beautiful), my yield was still quite embarassing. I guess I could account for the fact that I know some of the corn was stolen out of the field before it dented (people here eat field corn), and I didn't shell the 10 biggest ears, because I am going to save that back as seed. However, even with that in account my yield wasn't too impressive.

I sold the 35 pounds for 200 pesos (about $US 5.80). So that comes out to $US 9.28/ bushel. I know that any farmer back home would be thrilled to get that price. (Actually, imported American corn is actually selling for more than that here). However, even with that price, I don't know if a farmer could make much money, because yields are so low. I'm learning how tough it would be for a Dominican farmer to make enough money to live.