Surf's Up

Another successful week has passed during my life in the Dominican Republic..let me fill you in:

Last Sunday night I had the opportunity to attend a church that works with the GO Ministries missionaries. This is the church and organization my friends from Pathway Community Church (in Fort Wayne, IN) went to stay this past summer for a mission trip. My friends connected me with some people they met who have been living here and it was nice to FINALLY be able to meet those people in person. The service was nice and the people were friendly. I enjoyed meeting some of the other American's too. In fact, one of the couples I met was from Indiana and prior to moving here three years ago he was the assistant basketball coach at Indiana Weslyan University. Now he is doing work with the sports ministry missions.

Wednesday we had our Young Life club as always, but, it was different because this week I was leading it. I was nervous and a little worked up about it at the beginning of the week, but it went well. The theme of the night was "Battle of the Sexes". It was a night full of girl’s vs. guys activities such as timing to see how many kids can cram into a car, duct taping someone to a wall to see who would stick the longest (we discovered duct tape is $8 per small roll in the DR, but money well spent) spelling out words with bodies as a team, and gender trivia. The night went great and the students had fun, at the end one of the other leaders shared his testimony. It's a joy to minister to these students.

My class at school has been wearing me out lately. They never run out of energy or get tired of talking! Pray for me as I continue to have patience with the students. Friday night I had plans to go see the school drama, but I got home from school late and was wiped out that I never made it back out for the evening!

Saturday I left early in the morning for the beach. I went with a few of my friends to celebrate someone's birthday. We got someone to drive us so we didn't have to take the bus. YES! It was a tight squeeze for 10 people in one vehicle, but we made it there in one piece. We stayed at a nice hotel that had a penthouse to sleep 7 of us. It was nice and the bedrooms had air-conditioning (FINALLY!) We went out for a nice dinner on the beach Saturday night and had a great time. Then, we went back to our hotel and sat in the hot tub which was overlooking the Ocean (yeah it was pretty amazing).

This morning we woke up and walked to a cute German bakery for breakfast and spent some quality time at the pool. In the afternoon, I had the opportunity to learn a new sport..SURFING!

It was amazing, my friend’s friend, Victor, who happens to be the 2nd best surfer in the Dominican Republic and competes in California and Florida was bored and called us up and wanted to know what we were doing. He invited us out to his place and he gave us private surf lessons for quite the deal! It was awesome, only four of us actually did it but I loved it. He spent about 3 hours working with me and teaching me how to surf. He's my age and he taught himself to surf when he was 14. He spoke great English but his friends that were helping spoke Spanish so I learned some Spanish surfing words in the process! It was incredible when we left he said he'd help us out again if we come back and he's around.

I had a lot of fun but now I'm tired, burnt, and full of gallons of salt water..but it was WELL worth it :)I told mom and dad, I'm done with teaching; my new dream in life is to become a professional surfer! Haha- just kidding but it is awesome!

Keep in touch!