Fun Night with the Kids

These past few weeks have been absolutely amazing! Mike and I have caught up on some much needed sleep, we have watched a few movies, we finished up our 7-week basketball league, Audrey and I started our excersize routine AND I started Spanish school! I LOVE SPANISH SCHOOL, besides the fact that it is at 8:00 am and we walk there and have to leave at 7:30. It has really helped me just clarify things and it has challenged me to be bolder in my attempt to speak spanish to the Dominicans.

We are officially leaving Santiago October 26th which gives us about two more months here to get some things done, but that also means we have two months to set up meetings with supporters and future supporters. If you need to meet with Mike and I, please don't hesitate to e-mail us or post a comment so we can put you on our calendar. We are going to be home until the first or second week in January and will be doing a major fund-raising tour, so we are able to go to any church where there is an opportunity for us to speak at. Please let us know if you have any contacts as well.

The pictures above are pictures from Tuesday night. G.O. has a group of 15 men (dominicans from the ministry) in Columbia for a month. So Tuesday, we took all the kids from the families who's dads are gone so that the mom's had a night to themselves. We bought pizza for them and watched Madagascar on the big projector and played games for 3 hours! It was so much fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves. It's amazing how much energy children have! It made me feel old. Three hours with them and I was ready to go to bed at 9:00! But it was a great night of bonding with the other missionaries and bonding with the kids. Several of the families that work for G.O. don't live in our neighborhood so it was great to be able to see the kids from other parts of Santiago.

Well, I suppose that is it for now. I have marked on my calendar to update our blog every Tuesday. Please hold me accountable to that! If something else big goes on in between tuesdays, I will put in an extra update. Thanks to all of you regular blog visitors...it means a lot to Mike and I. We love you, and miss you all and look forward to seeing many of you in November! Dios les Bendiga! Mike and Mandi

thank you.

Thanks to the awesome prayers and support of all of you...Mike and I are staying until the end of October! YAY!!! We havent' raised the rest of our support but there is a team in October that wants to do a soccer clinic so Brook asked if we would stay. YAY!!!! I can't write more right now because we are just finishing up with our last team of the summer. But I should be able to have more frequent updates since we will have a little more time on our hands.

Thank you so much for your prayers!!!! We love you all.

My Trip to Haiti

My trip to Haiti...where do I start. We didn't realize the craziness of the trip until we looked at it in hindsight. What was supposed to begin as about 10 people, including a Haitian interpreter, ended up being Will, me and two guys from the team that was down for the week. Will had never driven there before, and had only been to Haiti once, I had never been there and to top it all off, Spanish or English is not spoken there...only Creole. So communication was minimum. We did make it ok and we ended up having a Haitian be our guide. His name was Arsenio and he was the person that began the orphanage we went to.

It's hard to describe Haiti...just think of one of the most devistating places you could ever imagine, and then multiply it by 10 and that is Haiti. There are barely trees, no grass, only dust, shacks for houses, trash everywhere...and the people have nothing but stoic expressions. It just felt like there was no happiness, and nothing to be happy about. It completely broke my heart.

The kids in the pictures above are kids that live in the area or are part of the orphanage. The picture at the very top is the market where people travel for 20 miles on foot or donkey to go to. And the picture of the big building is the church, school and dormatory that Arsenio started.

This country completely needs our prayers. The people there have no hope.