Creative Fridays

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Hi everyone! It's been a while, but things have been crazy busy here in Nagua. Between all the usual day to day craziness, we've had our assemblies (English, Spanish and ASL) almost back to back, the ASL language class in in full swing and we've had a couple of new people, some visitors and some coming to stay, to help out. So time has been tight.

But that's not what I want to talk about today. Today, I'm going to share one of the highlights of my week. This is Oliver.


Oliver is the son of one of the more progressive Bible students in Nagua and he's 5 years old. Denise (my ASL preaching partner) has been studying with him for a while but now, he's invited his friends over. Now, Denise and I regularly study with 3-5 children a week and we've really been trying to amp up the studies to make them really memorable for the kids. Denise usually studies a lesson with the kids, and while she goes and studies with Oliver's mom, I think up a cool related activity to do with them.
I've gotten a lot of my ideas and activities from the awesome children's section on jw.org. I really did not know what amazing resources we had available for the kiddies, until I started exploring it for these kids. Since the youngest in my family is 13, the only time we ever venture into the children's section is when a new Caleb video comes out (no age is too old for Caleb and Sophia cuteness). So, I'm thinking I'm going to try and share the things we do each week, since I've also gotten a lot of my ideas from what other friends do with their children on family worship night, so maybe these ideas be passed along or serve as inspiration.

Two weeks ago, we decided to a lesson on sharing. We planned to watch the Caleb video and then cut out the car printables on jw.org, but when we got to Oliver's house, instead of the 3 kids we had studied with the week before, we now had 6. But we only had 3 car cut-outs, so we made a quick trip to the colmado (small general store) and bought some pieces of computer of paper, pasted them together, got some crayons out and let the kids make a track for the cars to run on, just like Caleb and Sophia in the video. The kids had a blast and they even had a little hand-on practice with sharing, since there were only a limited amount of art supplies.





With their finished work! 


Guaconejos- El Factor {Picture Post}

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What do we do for fun in Nagua? We like climb mountains and sweat a lot. 


We're pretty wild here in Nagua. Because only a crazy people would choose to climb a mountain on a hot tropical-island-summer day and that's what we did. There is a nature reserve called Loma Guaconejos in El Factor, a campo about half an hour away from Nagua. It's small-ish mountain with hiking trails and many rivers where you can swim and wade around in.


We decided to go on Sunday (it was the 20th) and conveniently, it was ridiculously hot and humid that day. The first hour was hiking steeply uphill and my legs were getting dangerously close to snapping off. I am in amazingly bad shape for all the walking I do in service and I always seem forget that key fact until it's too late and I'm climbing a mountain.

It started to rain halfway up which raised the humidity level to 1000, and made everything muddy and slippery. We would take one step upwards and slide eight steps down. As frustrating as that sounds, it was a hilarious sight. We all were waiting to see who would be the first to fall (I, thankfully, did not get that honor) and by the time we scrambled up to the top, we were sweaty,
sticky and mud-streaked.

      

You can see how happy we were to get to the top! That's me in the Star Trek shirt, by the way.

Now going down the mountain was the fun part. Now that the uphill torture was over, we could enjoy the lush green woods, which were absolutely beautiful and so was the river we followed all the way down. It was really the perfect place to admire God's creation and I'm afraid I got a little shutter-happy again.





 

We finally got to where we were going to take a dip and have a picnic lunch. It was a lovely spot, with a small waterfall and a rock island, where we ate. The water was freezing cold, but after the long, sweaty trek, we all but jumped in. Doesn't it look nice?







:) 




Memorial Campaign {Picture Post}

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Two posts in a day!

Today, we were off to a campo (rural territory) giving out the invitations for the Memorial. It was a photogenic little place, not to far off from the town and close to the beach, and it was filled with a bunch of things that scream "Dominican Republic Campo" so I just wanted to share some of the pictures I got to take. 


I wasn't planning on taking any pictures today, but when I saw this darling house, I couldn't help it. Especially when Kirsy (my friend from the Rainy Days post), who was my preaching partner for day, was color coordinated with it. This is one thing I definitely love about the houses in DR, they are so colorful! They can range from Pepto-Bismol pink to blues to really any color, as long as it's bright! I think I heard it has something to do with the sun fading the colors or something uninterestingly practical like that, but I don't care, they're adorable! 

Another thing I couldn't resist the temptation of taking a picture of was clotheslines, haha. Yep, clotheslines. It was so sunny and hot (HOT!) that everyone was doing the washing today, I had to control myself to not take boring pictures of clotheslines. I'm telling you, this place was crazy photogenic (or maybe I was just shutter happy) that even the clotheslines looked amazing!



Here we are tract-flashing. First is David, an elder from the congregation and me and the second is from left to right, is Alba, Gisella, a special pioneer from Puerto Rico and Kirsy.


You wouldn't think anyone lived here but most of the time an unfinished house is the perfect choice for Haitian immigrants. Too bad there were no Creole invites to give them but soon there will be! The Creole class is set up to start in one to two months. 

Oh yeah, we also found a well! I don't think I had ever seen a real life well before but here it was. It would have been very biblical feeling if it wasn't for the bucket and the rusty tin cover but oh well...  



I almost forgot to introduce our new visitor in the congregation. Everyone meet Aric. He's from Washington State and is about two weeks in his two month stay. :)


Bright houses again! There's Aric and Cesar, our other special pioneer and Gisella's husband.




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