conversations with a 3 year old

(fyi. conversation below. But first, a little background.)

Due to some position changes in Makarios, I have begun to take on part of the responsibility of "Sponsorship Coordinator." Each of our 80 students has a Sponsor (s). Through this sponsor's donation, the students are able to receive their education, medical care, two meals per day, clean water, school uniform, school materials, and transportation for those who need it. Sponsorship money also goes to our Dominican/Haitian staff salaries, as well as helping out with school maintenance & utilities.  My role in helping with sponsorship coordinating is keeping everyone in the states in touch with what is going on with Makarios. This includes blogging, Facebook-ing, and tweeting. In this new year, I have also been slowly collecting biographies on the families of each student, so that US sponsors can have a full picture of their sponsored student's life. 

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We've been fairly busy at Makarios (with 4 visiting teams over the last 3 months) so we're a bit behind on handing out Christmas gifts from sponsors. Yesterday as I was giving the adorable 3-year-old Katy her Christmas gift from her sponsor, I had the following conversation with her:

Imani: Katy! Look! You have this gift from your sponsor!

Katy: You gave me all these gifts?

Imani: No, it's from your sponsor! Do you know what a sponsor is?

Katy: Yes

Imani: Explain to me what it is.

*Silence. Katy continues to pull out things from her gift bag completely mesmerized by the clothes, markers, stickers, etc.*

Imani: A sponsor is someone who is helping you attend this school! Your sponsor lives in the United States and is praying for you! Every student in the school has a sponsor that is helping them. Look, here are your sponsors in this picture

*Katy continues to pull out her gifts, not really listening to Imani.

Imani:  So Katy, tell me again.. who gave you these gifts?

Katy: YOU!

Imani: Nope

Katy: La doctora?

Imani: Nope, remember what I said before? Every student in this school has a.. what?

Katy: A brother!

Imani: Not quite, Katy. Every student has a sponsor! Do you remember what a sponsor is?

Katy: No

Oh conversations with a 3 year old, gotta love them!

Katy's only in our Pre-K 3 class. As she continues through our school, I'm positive she will one day understand what a sponsor is ;)

Here she is, posing with her presents!

PS- That blog post(s) summarizing the last 3 months.. coming up soon!

He forgives AND cleanses

"I am truly thankful that I serve a God that not only forgives, but cleanses. " 

This is the statement that I almost tweeted/put as my facebook status. But before I clicked the "submit" button, I began to backspace the letters.  I don't know if it's because I've known the Lord since I was a little girl, and have therefore heard countless amounts of "one line"/summary statements in church-- to the point that I often become "numb" to such statements. (Numb as in, I can hear it, but in reality not truly KNOW what means). Or maybe it's  because it seems to have become the trendy thing to show your faith on facebook with these kind of one lined statements (no judgement, because I do the same thing), and today I didn't want to join the trend.  Whatever the reason, I felt the sudden need to explain this sentence I was about to tweet/facebook. Here's the thing, God has been so amazingly & patiently teaching me these basic truths & basic foundations of the faith. And I personally think he knows me well enough (Psalm 139) to know that I sometimes don't learn from reading a simple "one line statement." Instead, he pursues my heart on the subject, speaks to me through various people, has me listen to a particular sermon at JUST the right time, and opens my eyes to his specific areas of his Word so that I can truly understand.
This is why I'm writing this blog, to explain my one liner. Here it goes:

Let's back up a little bit. This morning Sarah & I went on the pursuit of visiting a new church. (I'm still church shopping, and Sarah, even though already feeling at home in a church, graciously accompanied me). When we arrived in Sousa, we quickly found out that the church is actually in Puerto Plata (the complete opposite direction).   It was already 10am (the hour this mystery church began), and if we head to to where it was actually located, we would have been 40 minutes late. So, we collectively decided to head home and separately listen to Sermons online.
I began the Austin Stone's sermon series on Idolatry/Counterfeit Love almost a month ago, and just haven't had the time to listen to the next part of the series. And today, because of of pure location ignorance, I had the time! So I hunkered down (how many times in your life do you get to use that word?) and prepared to listen to this sermon. About an hour and half later*, I find in huge tears as Matt Carter prays to close the sermon and as I journal through all that the Lord taught me. Tears because idolatry is so prevalent in my life, and tears because of these words he specifically prayed: "If the spirit has revealed to you that there is some person, desire, or thing that you have let take the place of God in your heart, don't sit there and think, 'alright I'm going to do better.' You just come to Jesus tonight. That's all you do. You come to him and you just confess it to him, and you ask him, 'Jesus will you change my heart, will you point me to you, will you draw me to yourself, will you show me the folly of going after this stuff. Jesus will you do what you promised you'd do in my life. Will you fulfill the longing that you placed in my heart for eternity, so that I'll be satisfied.'" 

Let me tell you why the tears flowed, because in this prayer, in this sermon, in many other things leading up to this particular day in my life.. the Lord is showing me that the only thing I can do is come to him BROKEN, ask him to forgive me, and then ask him to heal me. Sounds simple, right? If you knew the amount of times I have subconsciously (and consciously) tried to heal myself, it all of a sudden wouldn't sound so simple. I am beyond broken and I need the Lord's forgiveness and healing. In that prayer I realized that is exactly what Jesus has promised to do. "You come to him and just confess it to him and ask him to change your heart." I prayed, journaled, cried and opened my laptop to begin a day of going through my to do list. Before I started the list, I opened up BibleGateway.com to read a quick psalm before I began. Before I was even able to type in the Psalm I saw that their verse of the day was this:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

Simple, right? This is the gospel, this is what I've known since I was 8. 

Not exactly. Yes I know this, but how often do I INTERNALIZE it? That not only is the Lord going to forgive me of my sin, but he is going to CLEANSE me from it. He's going to gradually remove it from my life,  and I need only to come to him broken, and follow his spirit on the journey of the cleansing. 

So, my "one liner" for the day is this- I am thankful that I serve a God that not only forgives my sin, but also cleanses. Just like the Lord has been teaching me through various and just like the Lord showed me through today's sermon. 

How I was able to truly come to this one liner, was a much longer, deeper process, then reading a website's verse of the day. Thank you Lord for being patient enough to continually teach me your amazing truths. 

Okay dokes, I'm off to make a spinach-pineapple-parsley smoothie, play some inspiring music to finish to do list and enjoy the rest of this day that the Lord has made. Adios!

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*Sidenote- sermons are definitely not this long. The speck of journalism in me obsessively tries to transcribe word for word when I listen to anything of importance. Gracias a Dios for the ability to rewind. 
PS- For those of you wondering:  "Is she ever going to write on her blog what has been going on the last 3 months in the DR?" I'm working on a blog post (s) to hopefully summarize it all, and will sometime post this week!

"blessed are the poor in spirit"

This past weekend was our staff retreat, and we were blessed to have a couple (Robin & Heather) that helped led our mission training program come to the DR & encourage our team. They shared an amazing bible study from Matthew 5 when Jesus is preaching the beatitudes. For those of you who don't know Makarios means blessed in Greek, so their whole intent behind this bible study was to challenge us to see if we are living up to our name: Makarios. 

The entire bible study was extremely convicting and motivating.. but I want to share this specific part with you:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"- Matthew 5:3

-Blessed (MAKARIOS) is the poor in spirit who realizes their utter helplessness without God. They humbly realize that they have nothing at all, that knowledge, training, skills and experience means nothing and God means everything. They realize their help and strength is found only in God, they have learned there is no other way but to trust and obey God.

This is me.  I am blessed because of my utter helplessness & therefore great reliance on the Lord. And the process that the Lord is bringing me through to realize this is incredibly hard, yet amazingly beautiful. 

I know I'm two months behind on blogging. A lot has happened in these two months.. therefore, I promise to write more soon!

December Newsletter!

So I technically never wrote my last blog post for my "blog everyday for a week, to make up for all the times I should have been blogging in the last two months" series thing.
So here it is! A copy of my December Newsletter I sent out to my supporters! Enjoy!

Christmas Rice & Beans!

I wrote this blog today for the Makarios website and I thought I'd share it on my personal blog as well!
One more day of the "blogging everyday for a week to make up for all the times I should have been blogging over the past 2 months" series. Hope you've enjoyed!
To see this actual post on the Makarios website click here, or just continue reading below. 


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Makarios was blessed once again this years with donors who are willing to help our children and families eat over Christmas Break! With the donations we were able  to buy  7 pounds of rice and beans for each student! Rice and beans is an essential staple in a Dominican & Haitian’s diet.  We’re so excited to help our students and family eat over the holiday break.

The students were so excited that  they pushed in line to receive their bag of rice and beans. We had to have several teachers act as “crowd control”

Pat giving our students from Chichigua their rice and beans for they left.	Profe Bella helping Pat hand out the bags to the children
Erickson	Aldiani realized how heavy her bag of rice and beans were as soon as she picked it up

The students showed their excitement in many ways: smiling for a photo, chanting “arroz, arroz, arroz” (rice, rice, rice), and by balancing beans on their head.

Francesca, Rachel, and Ruth with their beans	Carlos Alfredo & Pat
Carlos Alfredo and his teacher: Johan	Raidi
Profe Johan and Raidi

Blani (one of our Pre-K 3 students) was all smiles as she opened her bag. Check out the slideshow below:

And finally.. our Dominican and Haitian staff were surprised and blessed to receive their own bags of rice and beans!!

Profe Narolin celebrating with her bag of rice and beans

Profe Bella celebrating as well!

Rice and beans to all, and to all a good night!

Llegó Navidad en la Republica Dominicana (Christmas has arrived in the DR)

To tell you the truth, Christmas arrived in the DR about 2 months ago in our favorite grocery store: La Sirena... but we decided to hold off a bit in our actual lives.

First Sarah and I found our Christmas tree, literally on the side of the road in Santiago. It was across the bus station the day we were going to see Breaking Dawn. We spoke with the guy and asked him if he would be open later (we didn't think it would be the best idea to drag the tree into the movie theater with us). So we picked it up after the movie and took it on the bus with us. He (being the tree) sat next to me in his very own seat!
 The following week we invited Miranda over, and the 3 of us decorated the apartment.

The finished product-- I know very Charlie Brown Christmas Story like-- and that's why I'm in love with it!

The following Friday we had our Fiesta de Navidad at the school --complete with dressing up, a pizza party for each class, and performances for the children's parents. Here a few pictures from the "dressing up" part of our day:

Isn't Estaci BEAUTIFUL?

One of my favorite pictures of the day. 

Warner!

Ricardo & Antony are best friends. I was able to capture Ricardo telling Antony a secret before all the students started singing.

I always envision these two boys.. years and years from now, still best friends and hopefully doing great things for the Lord!

Blaini all dressed up!

Alturo

 Profe Nicole & Andy

Manuela and Profe Sarah.

Finally we had our Makarios staff Christmas party, where all of the families of our Dominican and Haitian staff members were also invited! It was a GREAT time. So great in fact, that I didn't have time to take as many pictures as I wanted. Here are a few from my point and shoot camera (which for w/e reason the resolution/tone is suddenly awful on).

This is Lismery. She is one of Yomo's (Yosmery is her full name) daughters. And Yomo is one of the Makarios staff members. I wish this photo wasn't blurry!

Surprise cake for the December birthday girls.-- Sarah, Yomo and Narolin.

And the night ended with Kelvin pretending to be Clark Kent.

I love my staff.

Thanksgiving Week in the DR

Day 3 of blogging everyday this week!

Thanksgiving for us in the DR started the Saturday before. We had a large family style dinner with all of our American, Haitian and Dominican staff members. Even though I'm not the hugest fan of typical Thanksgiving food.. it was really nice to have a turkey, mash potatoes, gravy, etc. etc.

Here's a few photos from the night:

Writing down what we're grateful for

Group shot.

(taken with Pat's camera)

Thanksgiving continued with our relaxing mini vacation to Lifestyles resort. After our half-day on Wednesday, Sarah and I headed to Playa Cofresi to begin our stay at the all inclusive resort (that we got practically for FREE through cheapcarribbean.com). Miranda, her sister Jamie (who was visiting from the States), Janelle, and her coworker Tracy joined us on Thursday.

Now, I wouldn't exactly put Lifestyles in the 5 star category.. but coming from our small town Montellano, it was just what we needed and more! My favorite parts included hot showers that you didn't need a hot water heater, relaxing on the beach side canopy beds, food being prepared for us, spending time with the girls, watching part of the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade, watching cable TV in general,  having time to read for pleasure ( ie discover my new love for "The Hunger Games") and being able to leave my cafe con leche on the counter without ants devouring it. 
It's the small things, ya know?

Here are some pictures from our long weekend:

The balcony of our hotel room

The inside of our room

She's pretending..

Bathroom

The beachside canopy beds!

Our Thanksgiving Day Dinner, at the Mexican Restaurant. 

Rainbow above the ocean.

Group shot.

AND Sarah and I ended our weekend by taking a quick trip to Santiago to see BREAKING DAWN! (which premiered a few days before Thanksgiving here in the DR).

If you're wondering.. it was amazing, and I'm ready to see it again (and again, and again).

That was our DR Thanksgiving: A relaxing/amazing time spent with friends. Grateful that God brought me to this country to live and serve him for the next two years!

Come back tomorrow for another post!
Imani