Left Guatemala at 430 am Mountain time, spend 5 hours in Miami and finally made it into Jarabacoa at 9 pm on Saturday night. Was picked up by a few of the 2 year missionaries in Jarabacoa which was great, and then had some pizza at the Trautweins. The Trautweins are a family who I met on a trip after my senior year of HS through College Church. We have remained in contact and they are a huge reason I am with Kids Alive now.
Trautwein's (stolen from facebook, sorry!)
That Sunday I was able to go to to a church service that they have at the "Ark" the last sunday of every month. It is a cool time when relatives of the kids are invited to come to the service and I actually got to hear the house-parent of the house that our family has sponsored for years. I have a great relationship with the boys in this house and it was an absolute blast to spend time with them and for it to be a complete surprise for me to show up.
After the service, I tagged along with a team of dentists from California as they went to a "barrio" in a very poor part of Jarabacoa. It was a good experience for me to start using my spanish and communicating with the people who live there. My spanish was further along than I expected which was very encouraging..but still a ways to go!
Great story from Sunday Afternoon. One of the cool things about MTI (missionary training school in Colorado that I attended early summer) is that you meet people from all over the country who are going off to all parts of the world! I connected very well with a few families and one of those families was the Lanier's who not only were headed to Jarabacoa, but they were also from 20 minutes away in Schaumburg! So one of my goals was to come hang out with them a bit while I was in Jarabacoa, but unfortunately I wasn't able to connect with them and was only in Jarabacoa for a short time...so after me and John Breul (missionary in Jarabacoa) dropped the team off at the team house, he had me try out driving one of the vans from the team house to the Trautweins, to test my stick-driving abilities. Anyways I was driving through a back-way to get to the Trautweins and there were a bunch of kids out in the street playing soccer, and a dog ran in front of me and I had to stop. All of a sudden I hear 2 girls yelling "Great-Grandpa! Great-Grandpa!" (which was my nickname at MTI apparently because of my terribly old age and grey beard...) I somehow had stumbled into their neighborhood which was within walking distance of the Trautweins house! I talked for a bit, then dropped John off and walked back and spent some time with them in the afternoon. Such a God thing and I was so happy that I was able to see them!
Me with Anna and Sarah Lanier and their neighbors.
I forgot how much I love Dominicans
That afternoon I helped the dentist team set up for their week-long dental clinic and then spent the night with the Trautweins and the team at dinner/the house. Monday was a day spent at ANIJA (the school) where I received some valuable traning/orientation through Kids Alive. I was also able to spend over an hour with "Chu" the P.E. teacher at the school and help him with classes before my orientation stuff. So fun to play with the kids at the school, especially the ones from the Ark that I already had a good relationship with. It was a lot easier to say bye when I could tell them that I only live 2 hours away now.
My time with the Trautweins and the rest of the KAI staff in Jarabacoa was amazing, I am so thankful for families like the Trautweins who have been so instrumental in getting me to Constanza and preparing me for it.
Ok this was wayyyy too much detail and I am assuming only the diehard readers (family...) will be interested. I will post my post Jarabacoa update as soon as I recover from writing this one!
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