Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and are reminded of all the wonderful blessings God has given you!!!!!

Madre a Madre

I am BEYOND excited about the group of ladies in this photo. Several of them are women I cook with up in the kitchen and several of them are women I have met through other staff members and their relationship with them. God had given me a vision of starting a group just for moms. Since being a mother is such a huge part of the Dominican culture I thought that it might be a huge opportunity to involve more women than just with a women's bible study which is already up and running through our church in Hoya del Caimito.

My vision was to get a core group of women that would meet once a week to talk about mom things (husbands, time management, cooking, cleaning, personal spiritual life, health and beauty, etc.). Not necessarily a bible study, although we base our topics on things that can be supported biblically. I wanted it eventually to be a community outreach. Involve women that don't currently attend church but would like the opportunity to learn from "seasoned" mothers. I wanted to talk to Cherry (another staff member) who is the mother of four and also is fluent in Spanish. God knew what he was doing.

Little did I know, Cherry had a key role in a group called "Mom to Mom" when she lived in the States. She knew how to run a group like this and would be able to support the vision that God gave me. We began planning and had our first mom's meeting on November 2nd. We met again November 9th and Cherry and I's dream came true. Two of the ladies brought a family member who is not a Christian, but a mother, and was really interested in being in the group. We weren't prepared for a group this size, in fact we thought 5 was the magic number, but God had other plans. So here they are, the first Mom to Mom (or Madre a Madre) group. I can't wait to get back in January to get started up again!

Never too old for Sleepovers!

One thing that I did a lot of with the girls I used to coach was have sleepovers. I haven't felt too old to have them yet and until that day, I will always love having girls sleepover at my house.

So I decided to reward the girls in my bible study with a night of girl fun! All of them memorized SEVEN verses from the bible and I was so impressed that I knew just what I needed to do for them. We ordered pizzas, rented movies, played games and did crafts. It was so much fun to connect with these girls on more of a "friend" level.

Below are pics of our night together!



The nice, calm group of well-behaved girls at our sleepover...hehe


Our make-shift basketball hoop made out of a garbage can and duct tape...who needs a rim and a net???


My little athletes excited after a basket made...


The girls working on tissue paper they found laying around...how creative are young minds, I mean really?


The REAL group photo. A better example of the group of girls we really are.

Discovery Church

The last team of the year. Although Mike and I missed the rush of summer teams this year because of Landon being born, it was so great to be able to facilitate a couple teams this fall. Discovery Church is such a fun and energetic group and they were incredibly flexible due to some unforseen issues.

As most of you know, Tropical Storm Noel ripped through the Dominican Republic and Haiti. We had three straight days of rain and lots of flooding. Mike and I have several leaks in our roof which caused quite a bit of water to come into our house, but we couldn't stop thinking about all the people who literally had their homes washed away.

Discovery was supposed to do construction all week but that was obviously post-poned. They were able to help organize the sports room as well as help us get some painting done since they were both inside activities. And eventually we were all able to get out to Hato del Yaque and work on the church. They had great attitudes and were hard workers. It was awesome to see God working even in situations that didn't go as planned.