Help for Haiti

Students from Kindergarten to 6th grade were asked earlier this week to donate money to help out an orphanage in Haiti that was affected by the earthquake. The response was overwhelming. Over $2,000 US Dollars were raised by these students who can't be more than 275 in number. As I walked around the classroom collecting the money from my students, one student stopped me to tell me the origin of his donation. It was all the money he had received from losing his front tooth. I was amazed at this 7 year old's generosity.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

About a month before we first flew into Santiago, we were told that our apartment would be completely furnished when we arrived. There was one condition though: we would lose everything sometime in December. This was an answer to prayer, though, since it allowed us to put off purchasing furniture until we were more familiar with the area stores and our budget while we slowly accumulated our own furniture. Days passed, weeks passed, and months passed until the calendar finally stopped in December. We still had not purchased any furniture of our own for our apartment. Then the fateful day came when after a long day, we came home to an empty living room. As we slowly came in, our voices echoed off the empty walls. We talked about what we could do until we finally decided to drag the mattress from an extra twin size bed to the living room, converting it to a couch with no legs and no back. Trying to remain optimistic, I told Becki of all the memories we were making. Of how we could look back on this time with such fondness years from now. Of how a twin size mattress really isn't that bad, we could have nothing. Those attempts at optimism bounced off the empty walls, bouncing around in my consciousness but never sinking in, because in all honesty, coming home to an empty living room is not all that inviting.

Several days before break, a friend asked me if I had any prayer requests as I returned to the DR. I told him, "Yeah, it's small, but please pray that we would find some good furniture for our apartment." His reply seemed funny at the time, "Well, I'll pray that you find some furniture that has your name on it." "I wonder what that would look like?" I thought to myself.

The first day back at school, I was stopped by the head maintenance man at the school. He said that he had found a couch and a t.v. that he was going to give us. I was shocked. I immediately went to find Becki to tell her of the good news. Later that same day, we heard from someone else who didn't need one of their couches anymore. They wanted us to have it. I was shocked. It truly was an answer to prayers, furniture that had my name on it.

I Feel Sick!

It was Tuesday afternoon. Jon and I had just gotten home from school. I was getting dinner ready. Jon was sitting on the couch grading papers. Here are our stories:

Becki: "I was standing at the sink peeling carrots for Jon to eat. He loves his carrots for dinner and I try as often as possible to have some for him, although it is such a hassle here and I hate doing it. Well, I had been standing there for quite a while concentrating quite hard on not hurting myself, when the carrot in my hand starting looking blurry and my body was swaying a little bit. (You know when you have been staring at the computer for a long time concentrating on reading what's on the screen and it starts looking a little blurry. So you have to refocus yourself by shutting your eyes for a moment.) Well, I felt the same way. So I stopped what I was doing, shook my head a little bit, repositioned my feet, and continued what I was doing--peeling carrots. Only this time when I started peeling the carrots, it felt worse. I thought, 'man I must really be feeling sick or something.' Finally, I stopped what I was doing and looked around. Then I looked at Jon. We made eye contact and I could tell that we were thinking the same thing."

Jon: "I was sitting slouched on the couch grading writing papers from the days activities. As I graded papers it felt as if everything around me was rocking front and back. I set my papers down and placed my hands on the couch to steady myself. The rocking continued, so I figured that I must really be sick. It was so bad I crawled to the ground and laid on my back in hopes of settling my stomach and curing this sickness that I was feeling. The feeling did not go away, however. In fact it just got worse. Something just did not feel right. I heard Becki's footsteps and looked up towards her. She said exactly what was running through my mind."

At approximately 5:45 in the afternoon on Tuesday evening January 12, 2009, Jon and I experienced our very first earthquake. The epicenter was located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (approximately 124 miles from our apartment in Santiago, Dominican Republic) and measured a 7.0 on the Richter scale.

Please pray from all the people in Haiti who have suffered this horrific tragedy.

Things That I Thought This Christmas Part 1

Becki comes from a family of storytellers. The stories range from the time her grandpa stood next to Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban Dictator who was overthrown by Castro, to the time her dad was stopped at a gas station by an avid fan of his singing group that last performed in the mid 1980's ,or the time Becki sent her dad to the hospital with an errant golf swing. But there's one story I've thought a lot about this Christmas Break. It involves Sarah (Becki's sister), her father, Dale Hollow Lake, and a fishing boat.

Sarah and Becki's father were going across Dale Hollow Lake in the family fishing boat. Sarah was at the steering wheel, confidently guiding the small boat through the choppy waves of Dale Hollow Lake. Through the heart of the lake, angling the boat to avoid the brunt force of the waves and watching the shoreline to make sure she was in the channel, Sarah was in charge. She looked to the back of the boat to check her surroundings and became enraged. There was her dad, using the trolling motor to steer the boat. Suddenly, her confidence was shattered. She had never been in control. It was just an illusion with her dad guiding them all along.

It was late July when we first came to the Dominican Repulblic. Shortly after, I looked to the back of my own boat and realized that to my own disgust, I was never in control of my own boat. It took little things like sitting in a taxi cab not knowing where I was headed and standing in my classroom wondering how I would teach 21 students to realize I was not the captain of my ship. I had to learn to trust that God had a plan and was in total control.

I stood silently in the house. I looked out the kitchen window not saying a word, only thinking of everything that could be happening. I waited for the next phone call from my sister telling me how my dad was. I knew that I was not in control and I had to keep reminding myself that God had a plan. Then, I began to think of those times sitting scared to death in taxi cabs and humiliated in classrooms that first made me realize I was not in control. These were the same things that prepared me to handle this moment.