As I write this the housekeeper of the guest house came to the house and started talking to me. It is 11:30pm on Wednesday night and everyone has been asleep for atleast an hour now. So I am sitting here at the dining room table doing my photos and writing my blog. Lus the housekeeper comes in and asks me if I speak some Spanish. I tell her yes. She smiles and then goes off into long, fast sentences of Spanish. Anyways I kinda of understand her, however I messed up one word. She said something and I went up to the mens bedroom about to ask if there were keys (Llave) were in the mens bathroom. I realized I may be wrong so I came back downstairs to makes sure I knew what was going on. I then realized I was completely wrong. She was trying to tell me how she thought it was raining (llueve) in the mens bathroom and could I see if any man is up so they can go check it out. What I thought she said was totally different. Llave & Llueve sound very similar in the Dominican accent. Anyways the story ends well as Lus wakes up the man of the house, Doug, and he goes and finds out that the mens toilet was running. If it wasn't fixed tonight the whole house would have been out of water tomorrow morning. How it works here is the city fills up cisterns for each house, but it is not predictable when you get more water. So if we did use up all of our water on a running toilet tonight we would be empty and we would have no clue when the cistern would get filled up next. Praise the lord it got figured out.
Before I got into the photos I must also tell you the short version of my other language blunder today. When we are working there is no bathroom, so we all use the bathroom in the pastors house right next door. I went to go use the bathroom and after I got out the pastors wife was there. She asked me If I wanted any "sopa". I had just gotten out of the bathroom and wasn't thinking clearly. So I said "yes, very much so." Because I thought she said soap, because I needed to wash my hands. Anyways "sopa" does not mean soap. It means soup. Now I was obligated to try some of this soup and I know it was a big deal for her to ask me if i wanted some. Anyways I asked her what kind of soup it was and she said, "Fish, with potatoes and noodles." I don't like fish at all but I figured I could push though the taste to make her happy.
I went downstairs to ask one of the missionaries if it was okay to eat it and she unfortunately told me the soup was not only fish soup, but fish head soup. So here I am, not liking fish, but seriously not liking fish heads and I was stuck eating the soup. It was actually pretty good for not being a fish fan, but next time I decided I will think before I say yes to something I am not sure.
So that brings me to lesson of the day:
1) SLOW DOWN AND THINK. If you don't understand what someone is thinking, trying to figure it out before you answer is always a good idea.
2) That the Dominicans down here listen to some of the same music, and in English none the less.
3) That cementing a roof is a lot harder than it seems.
Now onto the photo time. I have been having a great time hearing everyones compliments about the blog. I am so grateful to my God for giving me this awesome talent of photography and computers.
This was the first photo of the day. Everyone was just sitting around waiting to get into the current church so we could put our bags in a safe place. I love how excited everyone looks... and may I add, clean!
This is what we saw at the start of day 3. The only thing left to do was the last row on the right hand side and then the entrance. It is so exciting to see this start to look like a usable building. We are so lucky to be here for such a great transformation.
Shawn started to really get into the cement mixer. You turn the wheel on the side and it tilts the mixer so it can unload into the wheelbarrows.
This is our group... still in the middle of the street.
This is Liz trying to have a conversation with the pastor's son, Gerson. He is 21 yrs old and is in college studying computer technology and/or information science. He has been helping us out in the morning. He has school from 3-10pm every night. He doesnt know much English, but between the Spanish I know and the English he knows we can have a pretty good conversation. This is our friend Louis sitting down. I think he was taking a photo of us strange Americans on his cell phone.
It wasn't even an hour into the day and Brandon ripped through his gloves. Maybe next time he should buy better gloves.
This is a photo of me and the pastor of the church we are working on. He is such a kind man. I enjoy talking with him and his church members. His church may be small but they have so much heart. I cannot wait to see what God has for them in the future. This new church building will allow them to expand and reach more people. He is also the president of the Dominican national church (I think so at least). It has been so great to work besides him and see how he is so involved in the process.
Here is Pastor Wade. What a hard worker. Him and Bill have been the two cement runners. I want to say each full barrow weighs 100+ pounds easily.
This is the church once the floor was complete. It needs to dry overnight but tomorrow we will be able to walk on it and paint! How exciting. The pastor said they will meet in the church this Sunday. I wish we were going to be here to see the first service in their new church. I know a bunch of us want to come back and see the finished product.
Shawn brought his guitar so during lunch time we could worship. It was a great time to break from the hard work and just praise God for all of his creations. We even got out a local instrument that looks like a cheese grater and is played with bicicyle spokes. I will take a photo of it for tomorrow.
A few from above. This is our work site. This is our work site with a car driving through it. What an interesting place.
This is the view from the roof of the new church. This is a typical skyline with no more than 5 floors on each building. After we finished pouring the floor of the first floor we moved up to the roof. It sure is hot up in that son.
This is how we got the concrete up to the roof. We mixed the cement, then put it in the wheelbarrow, then shoveled that into buckets, then attached the buckets to this pulley system and lastly hoisted the 40lb bucket up the the roof.
This was a brother and sister walking through our work site. They were on their way to school. Like I mentioned in an earlier post they have multiple time slots for school since there are so many people in the city. Every student,whether private or public school, has to wear a uniform. I think it is a great idea, because everyone looks the same no matter how much money you have. Just from watching the neighbors we can tell that the Dominican men, or boys in this case, really watch out for their ladies. It is sweet.
These kids were watching us crazy Americans. The girl standing up has become my little buddy. She has been hanging around us since we arrived at the site, but today she finally talked to me. A breakthrough! I was so excited to have gained her trust. The boys had made homemade kites out of saran wrap and garbage bags. They actually worked better than any kite I have used in the states.
I hope you have had a chance to read the post below this as I have posted them the same night. God is great and he is really showing me things while I am here. Since Isaac and I got together I have had a love for missions, but this trip has really cemented the call to do some sort of missions work. I have no clue what it will be, or when it will happen, but I am so excited to see what God has for me, and for the rest of my team.
Tonight we had two missionary couples come over for dinner. They were so funny. They went around the table talking about language "blunders", like when they were preaching or leading a group and they said the wrong word, which ended up being a bad word, just because they didn't know Spanish perfect.
We also exchanged ideas about how they could use my photography skills. They had many ideas for me. In additon to my actual photography services one missionary mentioned how I could offer photography classes and photoshop classes that the missionary's could hold and then use that as an outreach for the Dominicans. I dont care how God uses me, I just want him to!
We have only a few more nights here. I miss my husband a lot, but I am sad to leave. I feel at peace here, like this is what I am supposed to do. Anyways thank you so much for reading this. Please let me know what you think at Jenna@KainsPhotography.com
Dios te Bendiga
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