On our way!!

Well we just paid a toll and are on the last leg of the van ride to O Hare! A big thank you to our fantastic driver, Troy Coblentz!  :) Our team has a trailer full of luggage and lots of excitement that we are taking along with us. We ask for prayers for open hearts, a willingness to let God break our hearts, good health, and blessings for all of the kids, families, missionaries, etc that we come in contact with. Here is a list of team members so that you can all pray for us by name!

Tracey Coblentz
April Clark
Chris Bennett
Chris Wert
Rachel Russell
Chris Russell
Kim Borden
Jill Roberts
Tyler Hager
Riley Martin
Rose Yoder
Phyllis Pierson



Thank you in advance for your prayers. Please leave comments on the blog and I will make sure the right team member sees them! Stay tuned for more updates - they will come as often as we have Internet!

Saturday - Fun at the Beach!

Saturday morning we packed up our bags, hopped on a bus and headed 2 1/2 hours away to the city of Sosua to enjoy a day in a beach resort. While I must say that a lot of our team had a hard time reconciling all the poverty we had been living among with staying a resort, we all enjoyed some time to unwind and relax after a busy, emotional week. The beach had clean sand, amazingly blue water and a stunning view of the mountains. It was one of the most beautiful sites we have ever seen!

This photo doesn't even do justice to the beauty of this beach!

We shopped (and got irritated by the very pushy vendors), ate, swam in the Atlantic Ocean, fell asleep on the beach and then ate again. After dinner we took beach towels and candles down to the beach and sat in a circle sharing stories about what we learned about ourselves and what we learned about God on this trip. Jan, the director of Palo Blanco was able to be with us at the resort and we were able to pray for her and her ministry and then sang a praise chorus together by candlelight with the sound of waves crashing in the ocean. We learned this week that God feels very close to you when surrounded by poverty and nature!



Sharing stories by candlelight on the beach.

 After our sharing time we spent a little more time relaxing and then went to bed to prepare for an early morning and a long day of traveling. It was a nice way to unwind from the week!

Friday

The five members of our team that were in the Dominican Republic last February requested to the Kid's Alive staff that we get to visit a small little community called Hipolito that we worked in a lot last year. So our first stop on Friday morning was a quick visit to Hipolito where we were quickly surrounded by the children that we spent time with last year. It was great to see the basketball hoops that some of our team constructed last year being put to good use! We also visited with the gentleman whose house we helped build last year. The house looks good but we were sad to see that the gentleman had broken his hip and is now in a wheelchair. 



Chris Bennett and our little buddy, Roberto and we spent a lot of time with last year. He has gotten so big!



Chris Wert and Onlady, the little girl who followed us around everywhere last year!



Two boys playing on with the basketball hoops constructed by our team last year!

Rachel and Yomairy, one of our little friends from last year.

After leaving Hipolito our crew headed over to ANIJA school to play with our sponsored kids and pass our gifts. We got to hear three testimonies of people who had either been sponsored to go to school at ANIJA just like the kids we now sponsor, or who had a kid that was currently being sponsored. All of them were now either working at the school, had given their lives to Christ and one young man was even studying at a university to become a doctor. What a blessing to hear some of the success stories!

The Neil Boston fan club at ANIJA!

The kids didn't know that they were going to be getting gifts and their eyes got huge when they realized that is what was happening! It was so much fun to see them sharing and playing with each other and not once did we hear any complaints that they didn't like what they had received or hadn't gotten enough!

Yerry, sponsored by Jerry and Donna Riley showing off his drawing.

After ANIJA we got to have one last visit playing with the kids at the Ark Orphanage. We played in the sand, played soccer, basketball, played on the swings and monkey bars and just had fun being silly together. It was very hard to say goodbye at the end of the visit and many tears were shed. There is no doubt that those kids each carry around a piece of our hearts that we left behind! We are so thankful to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that those kids are loved and taken care of every day by amazing house parents and staff!

Karen found herself a baby! He really belongs to one of the Ark house parents.

Chris Bennett and Chris Wert with their sponsored kiddos Indiana, Teresa, and Willy.

Thursday

Today we were able to celebrate Valentine’s Day with the children of Palo Blanco. We held ten parties throughout the day with over 200 kids attending. All of the kids had a blast making Valentine’s crafts, decorating cookies and rolling marshmallows in different colors of jello. Chris R did a Bible study lesson with the kids about how God looks at the heart and not your physical appearance. Let’s just say that Chris looks very good in a long blonde curly wig!

(Rose with one of the older classes showing off their art project. Neil, our resident art teacher gave them an art lesson.)

Needless to say after partying with over 200 kids our team was pretty wiped out! 

When we left Palo Blanco yesterday it was sad to realize we weren’t returning. We didn’t know that the teachers and children of Palo Blanco had been working on a surprise for our team and all of the people in our church that sponser Palo kiddos.

(The kids of Palo Blanco and the sign they made for their sponsors. The handprints are each of the kids that our church sponsors and in the middle of the heart, in Spanish, the sign says “thank you for being a part of my life”. ) Yes, we brought the banner home so if you sponsor a kiddo from Palo Blanco you can find your kiddos handprint!

After leaving Palo Blanco we went back to the team house to get ready for a party with the Ark Orphanage kids. We got to go over to Jeff Vandermolen’s house (the director over Haiti, DR, Guatemala and Peru) and jump on the trampoline, play volleyball, eat pizza, decorate cookies, and give gifts. The kids from the Ark have stolen our hearts. I think it is safe to say that the majority of our team feels like we are more blessed to be a part of these kid’s lives than we could possibly be blessing them. We joke that it is a good thing there is a weight limit on our luggage or we may be packing a few stowaways to bring home!

(Coralma, sponsored by Chris and Rachel Russell, eating her Valentine’s cookie that she decorated.)

Friday morning we are going to have another busy day. We will spend our morning at Hipolito, the little community that last year’s team helped build in a home in. This community is one of the areas of extreme poverty and really opens your eyes to the daily life of many of the Dominican people. We will leave from there and spend time giving gifts to the kids at ANIJA and then hope to spend more time with the Ark kiddos. Please continue to pray for these beautiful children and the people that work with and love them everyday!

Home, Bittersweet, Home.....

Our team in front of the team house, where we stayed for the week,  on our last day in Jarabacoa.

We all made it home safe and sound late last night. While it was great to hug our families and pets, take a nice hot shower and sleep in our own beds, there is still something bittersweet about being home again. Every single one of us were changed in some way by this trip and we all fell in love with so many people that we left behind in the Dominican Republic. As I sit looking through pictures today I find my heart feeling overwhelmed at how quickly you can deeply love a person that doesn't even speak the same language. All of you following this blog, I challenge you to take some time to listen to the personal stories of someone on the team. Learn the stories behind the faces in the pictures and try to open your eyes and heart to the vastness of the world that is past our own communities. In turn, our team will try to share carefully and lovingly, as many of us have realized that our priorties need to be completely rearranged. We realize that it is hard to grasp the understanding of what we have felt, seen, heard, smelled, hugged and kissed without actually being a part of the trip. Each of us is praying about what our "next step" will be now that we are home so that this trip doesn't become just 9 days out of our lives that we look back on and say "remember when...". We want this trip to change how we love and serve and pray and as we ease back into our comfortable lives we will have to be intentional to not let our broken hearts mend completely. We ask for continued prayers as we process everything and get back to our regular routines.

Since the internet connection didn't allow for as many blog posts as I would have liked I am going to go back and create a blog for the rest of the days so that all of you can still see some pictures and stories of our trip. Thank you all for all of your prayers and support. It means so much!

Behind on the Blog

Well, as usual internet here isn't the greatest. I am trying to get up the post of our Thursday's activities but I am having trouble loading the pictures. I only have about 35 minutes left of free internet access at the hotel we are spending our last night at. We ask that you pray for safe travels for our team as we return tomorrow. We also ask that you pray specifically that each member of our team will be able to discern what to do with all we've seen and learned during our time here. I will get more blog posts up about how our week went as I am able. I will continue to try with the time I have left tonight to get some pictures loaded!

no internet

we have very limited internet today so I dont know if I will get a post up. I will try. we are all doing well! Getting ready to go visit some kiddos homes!