Hot Rocks....

Piedras, piedras y mas piedras!  (Rocks, rocks and more rocks!) This is Peter again.  Yesterday we cleared the playground of perhaps 4 tons of small rocks (Don Burt’s estimate).  Today we used Don’s engineering design skills  to design a drainage system for the playground, which has a decent slope to it.  We constructed a “French drain” according to Don, using all indigenous materials.  We dug a ditch about a food wide and 18 inches deep using pickaxes and shovels, in rocky soil - tough work in tropical heat!  I was wishing that my 18-year-old son, Zach, and some of his strong friends would have been here with us.  But we had a good crew - Courtney and Elin and Don from St. Aidan’s, and Hannah, Kelly, Ben, Clara, Kris and myself from St. Ambrose.  And we were joined by quite a few of the Dominican children again, mostly ages 8 to around 18.  Although one of my highlights of the afternoon was when a 2-year-old boy, Henry, joined us.  The shovel was taller than he was, but he was helping me shovel small rocks into the wheelbarrow, when we started to fill the ditch with various sizes of rocks to line it.  Henry really liked it when I gave him rides in the wheelbarrow, after we filled it with rocks.

Our group is really working hard, and we are getting a lot done.  We have “the three P” teams - plumbing, painting and playground.  The plumbing team, the smallest, has been repairing toilets and sinks.  The painting team has painted the school library and its contents (bookcases), and also and outside iron fence in lots of bright colors.  The playground team also removed a metal seesaw today that was sunk into two big chunks of concrete.  The church women are preparing wonderful meals for us at lunch, where we are probably getting our best sampling of Dominican foods - lots of dishes with plantain prepared in different ways.

We also had a nice visit after getting back from work today from two American missionaries who have been in the D.R. for 13 years.  Bob and Ellen are from Nebraska.  Bob has been a deacon for almost 24 years and is the Canon to the Ordinary here.  Ellen is the one who organizes all the mission groups who come to the D.R. (like ours).  They clearly had a strong calling to do this work and really enjoy it (their children are grown and in the U.S.).  They shared some beautiful stories about how the church here is growing (from 23 to 65 churches since they’ve come, and from 7 schools to 24).

For those of you who are parents, your children are doing really well - working hard and having a good time.  My daughter, Hannah, just went to bed at 8:30, so we are wearing them out!  

I always go on too long.  Time for someone else - we love you all so much and miss you, but this is a great thing for our two churches.  Hi Julia and Zach, and hi to all of you at St. Ambrose. We’re going to have great stories to share with all of you.

Grace and Peace, Peter

Work today was grueling!  The heat was amazing.  It had been sort of overcast the last couple days but today the sun was out in full force.  We all had a bit of a rough time working out the cramps and tight muscles from yesterday’s work.  When we had shown up in the morning there was a giant pile of dirt waiting for us to be moved to the playground...then 20 min later another load came and added to it.  But our lunch was great as always and the Dominicans always keep us smiling and laughing.  We got back to our rooms, quickly showered and met Bob and Ellen Snow.  They are two amazing missionaries who have amazing stories.  They are two of the most faithful people I have ever met.  We had evening prayer afterward and they stayed to worship with us.  I am very proud to say I was in charge of the music portion of evening prayer as well and I brought Taize to the Dominican!  Taize is a style of worship, mostly through song, that is practiced by monks in France.  Many of us at St Aidans enjoy this style of worship and I taught our group a couple Taize songs!  

We are taking so many pictures (along with the kids who love to take our cameras and go on picture taking escapades)!  I hope Heather can upload some so we can show you what we’ve been doing.  Somehow I don’t think the amount of rock translates as well in words.  We also love eating the mangos here!  They are really delicious and every night we have Jugo de Chinola (Passion fruit juice).   We are crazy about that Chinola!  And I have never tasted such good ice cream as we had tonight.  Granted it was Baskin Robbins but I think it was amazing because it is so hot here.  We all have been having a great time but it seems as the sun begins to go down we get more and more tired each night.

Right now Peter, Elizabeth, Heather, Kris and I are sitting in the rocking chairs on the patio and chatting.  After all the experiences during the day we always return to talking about the people we love once we get so tired and almost ready for bed.  A dog is barking in the distance, beneath us we can hear Dominican music blasting from a stereo and the cars passing by make a great soundtrack for this conversation.  I am exhausted and should go to bed soon, but it seems like we are trying to cherish all the time we have together here, even if it means being quite tired in the morning.  Dominican coffee is not only tasty but essential to mission work.  I look forward to tomorrow but for now sitting with my friends gossiping is a great time.  I wish you all a peaceful and restful night.  Please pray for us, you are in our hearts.

Your sister in Christ, Courtney