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Truthful Thursday

Biblical Vision for Parenting: (Shepherding a Child's Heart - Tripp)

Involves being a kind authority, shepherding your child to understand himself in God's world, and keeping the gospel in clear view so that my child can internalize the good news and someday live in mutuality with me as people under God.

The purpose for my authority in the lives of my children is not to hold them under my power, but to empower them to be self-controlled poeple living freely under the authority of God.

The sheperding process helps a child to understand himself and the world in which he lives...to assess himself and his responses...to understand himself as a creature made by and for God...and to help shepherd his thoughts to learn discernment and wisdom.

God's Plan vs My Plan

My plan for today...
1. take Adeline to school
2. pay internet bill
3. transfer money at the bank
4. take Ana's cousin Romana to a friends' house for a job opportunity
5. take Darton & Sarah to park for a mid-morning play
5. play date with Darton in the afternoon

God's plan for the day...
1. take A to school
2. buy a freshly sqeezed orange juice from the juice guy on his bicycle (this decision is important for later)
3. transfer funds
4. pay bill
5. get Romana, Darton, and Sarah and head to friends' house around the corner
6. HAVE A CAR WRECK!!

Directly outside of my friend's apartment a guy hit me hard enough to make each of his front tires bow out and to twist my axle enough that when I'm driving straight my steering wheel is at a 20degree turn to the right. No one was hurt...gloria a Dios...just shaken up. I spent from 10a-2:30ish filing the claim with the police and insurance (this is why the OJ from earlier was important to have had). We are now waiting for the insurance to approve the repairs. Maybe I'll take a picture tomorrow to show the damage...
My Barrick girlfriends have extended both arms in support and Rosalyn came over for support tonight. Denny came to the scene of the accident so that I'd have a familiar face and Cynthia brought Adeline home from school so that I didn't have to postpone the police report. Barrick's safety man was there within 15minutes and did all of the leg work for me. My Christian girlfriend, April, whose apartment we were going to "knew" that when she heard the crash it was me. She took Darton home for me, brought us cold water to drink, had an English speaking Dominican friend in the apartment complex come and aid me, and took pictures of the accident. Wow, I really do have a family here in the DR! I learned today that I CAN NOT speak or understand Spanish when in a crisis situation. It was quite helpless feeling.

You've Been in the DR too long if....

Over the last couple of weeks, I've had a couple of incidents happen that are proof we've been here long enough to integrate.

You've been in the Dominican Long Enough If...

1. You have a conversation about how your house has a watchiman and razor wire on top of the 12ft fence w/out realizing it sounds strange. Razor wire here is to keep people out, not people in.

2. You meet a man named Joe and while sitting beside him in the restaurant you ask, "Quiere agua, Joe" (pronounced "hoe"- the j is pronouned like the English h)

3. When asked by your 3yr old "What are you making" while you are making meringue for a coconut pie, you respond that you are making "merengue" (it's a Dominican style of music/dance pronounced mer-ain-gay).

Truthful Thursday

Unforgiveness is like drinking poison

and hoping the other person dies.

- Author Unknown

Is that Really a Man Lying in the Road?

Yes, that really was a man lying in the road less than a block up from my apartment when Adeline & I were returning from ballet class this afternoon. But why was no one helping him?

I parked the car in my garage apartment, put Adeline on my hip, and started yelling our guardman's name while I was walking to see what was wrong. It's really hard to approach these kinds of situations b/c really, what can I do or who can I call?

I made enough commotion by being a gringo with a gringo child on my hip that near-by onlookers started approaching the man too. He was having minor cunvulsions and his eyes were closed. He was so skinny that I couldn't tell if his legs had already been run over by a car. I didn't know if he had been beaten up or if he was sick and had fallen while trying to cross the street.

Usually Dominicans are running to an accident scene, so I knew something was different about this guy. No one seemed to care if he died there. I began to direct traffic away from him (this is a very normal Dominican thing to do).

One onlooker suggested water, so I commanded (I know that sounds harsh) my guardman to fetch some. The man's eyes opened soon after and I asked him if he could move. He motioned for help, so I told another onlooker to do so. My guardman came back and began to pour water on the man's neck and I headed to my apartment for cold water for him to drink. On my way, a man stopped in his car and told me the guy was on drugs. He didn't wait for a response from me before driving on. I'm thinking he was the dealer!

I came back down shortly and gave the bottle of water to my guardman to give to the guy. I thought it was the safest to not approach him again. I watched from my apartment as the man was given water and then walked away. I kept Adeline and I out of his view so that he wouldn't know where we lived. I asked Ana to look at him and take a guess if he was on drugs...she assumed so. Drugs or not...he is one of God's creations.

Zoo Trip

We went to the zoo today with friends who are very new to the DR and friends who are old to the DR. We enjoyed 3 very hot and humid hours. I told Hannah she can call her friends and tell them she is eating watermelon in October!Stacey and her beautiful children, Hayden & HannahMaking conversation. The Dominican girls were practicing their English. Hannah told them she lives in Viginia and is on vacation....we couldn't hold back the laughter since her dad has signed a 3 year contract with their company here! I turned my back for a second and when I turned back around......

He actually made it 2 more steps higher!The DR isn't made for those with disabilities OR strollers. We had jsut finished 2 flights of stairs below and had another 4 or 5 to go. This picture is for Stacey's husband!Dana is the other lady in the picture. Her family is with the IMB doing mission work and have been here for 4yrs. I met her in the allergist office back in February...I love God's soveriegnty. Her youngest son, Christopher age 10, went with us. Her oldest babysits for us. The kids never cry when we leave them with Tyler!

Truthful Thursday

Agghhh is the end of the day and I didn't do my Truthful Thursday!

Godly discipline is obedience to God and love for my children. It is focused on the long-term goal of maturity and not the short-term goal to make life easier for me. - Nancy Wilson Praise Her in the Gates

Mr. Personality

"Hello world, I'm 18 months!"

House or No House?

This weekend we are making the decision to move into a house in a different neighborhood. The house is a pretty sweet deal for the money, but when you live in a house in Sto Dmngo, you have to think about the following:

guardman (watchiman)

alarm system

generator (planta) maintenance (too many power outages to not have a generator)

grounds keeper (Scott's schedule won't allow time for this)

bars on windows & doors

screens on windows (this isn't a normal thing here, allow with the mosquitos it should be)

cleaning out your water cisterns

and I'm sure there's more that I haven't thought of

Moving to another neighborhood will be hard. We will be 15-30minutes from our old neighborhood where Adeline goes to schoola nd takes dance. Not to mention a good portion of our friends live within 5minutes of us right now! Our current neighborhood is too expensive for 4bdrms and a green yardHere are pics of the house we are thinking about...sorry folks the bright yellow house didn't work out ;)

Flu Vaccine

If you're wanting the other side of the flu vaccine story, here's a page with 18 reasons NOT to get the flu vaccine.

Truthful Thursday

Age brings experince and knowledge of how far sin ripples. Youth tend to have head knowledge of Scripture but not a heart knowledge.
Read John 8:1-12 and see who where the first to leave the crowd(v9).

Thank you Karen for this insight.

Darton's New Groove

Whoa Nelly...It's October!

Where's the cool weather that comes with October? NOT IN THE DR! We booked out tickets to TX for the month of November and look forward to getting to wear long-sleeved shirts.

I had to go and look at the pics on the camera to remember what we did this week. The days are just zipping by. This was the first week that Adeline didn't cry when I dropped her off at school! I have found that the trick is to not expect her to be a "big girl" but rather hold her and make sure she feels secure before we walk out the door. After we dropped A off at school on Monday D had some coloring time. He loves his time without his sister! We got to play with Hartleigh a couple of times this week. The girls are playing dress-up. H's outfit was mine when I was a young ballerina.

Darton spent every morning this week without diapers. He is the CUTEST THING. He tells you "tt" and if he has had an accident he will come and get me and take me to it. he tells you when he's "all done" on the potty and then waves and says "bye bye" when we are flushing. I know TMI...but it is sooo precious to see my almost 1 1/2yr old growing up.

A real boy can wear his sister's panties and ride a horse ;) I seriously must get him some underwear.

Here the kids are welcoming Daddy home from work. It's always a sweet moment when Daddy comes through the door.

We overdid the hosting this weekend, but don't regret it. I told Scott that I wouldn't do it to hime again. He really likes to have one afternoon to get a nap in order to catch up on any lost sleep from the week. Anastasia came over for about 4hours on Friday and then we had 2 couples over for dinner Friday night. We took dinner to a girlfriend who just had her 3rd baby and then went to the Short Story Date Night that I started up in September. We had a couple over for lunch today and are now just relaxing without having to get the house ready for someone else. I'm having mommy's over tomorrow afternoon, but I have Ana to help me get the house ready for them. I love having people over and aspire to have my home to be a home like Judy Cox's. A home where people can put their feet up and enjoy other's company. A home where people are comfortable enough to fix their own glass of tea. :) I'm going to try to get videos uploaded to YouTube tonight of the kids.