A typical house (or room) that a Haitian/Dominican lives in here in Caraballo. This particular house is only for one man but others have an entire family sharing this size space.
Me with some of the kids from the school that my team will be teaching. Yesterday a missions team that came down to help with a construction project for the school had water day for them. I helped with the beach ball station. It was chaotic but very fun. The kids line up in una fila (line) very well but when they're playing, they're everywhere!
This is a picture of a typical room in a Kids Alive residential home looks like. This room is at el Arca, a site in Jarabacoa. It is a boys room that has three bunkbeds and three dressers. The clothes and shoes they have are given to them from Kids Alive. They live with native Dominican parents. The girls have one room and the boys have one room and then the parents have one room.


This is a picture of my team and our host missionary, Emily, who is a Wheaton grad. From left, me, Charity, Katie, Grace, and Emily.

On Thursday I have arrived in Caraballo area where I will be for the next four weeks or so. I am staying in a village called Ascension where about 1,500 Dominicans and Haitians live. There are only about 250 houses though. Most are Haitians who used to work in the local sugar cane factory but since it closed down, they are out of work and cannot go anywhere. They have no papers so they cannot return to Haiti and the Dominican government does not even recognize them as people. It is very awful. My team and I are staying in a missions house that is owned by Crossroads, another mission organization in the town. It is a two story house that is painted bright blue and has an awesome view of a soccer field and a basketball court where kids play almost constantly. We live on the second floor. Breakfast and lunch is cooked for us every day and then we are on our own for lunch. We take military showers and the electricity goes on and off periodically. Starting Monday I will be helping teach second and fifth grade geography. Our summer curriculum is going to focus on teaching the armor of God and Europe. There will be bible class, art class, geography and math. In math, they will be reviewing resta (subtraction).

fun fact: malaria pills that we bought do not work here. that kind of malaria is resistent. o well. good news is that malaria is not present in the D.R.

Please continue to lift us up in your prayers. Pray that we don't get dehydrated which is very easy to do since it's so humid.