Jehová Jiré

That's a sign you'll see on many business here and it literally means "Jehovah provides". This statement is fact, maybe not for the businesses, but for his servants, with out a doubt. Today, Kurt, Corbin, and I finally get a break from struggling with trying to conjugate verbs and figure out subjunctive conditional pronouns or whatever ya wanna call 'em and do some ASL. We take the guagua(bus) from our accommodations in Sajoma to Santiago.  The public transportation system is really effective and you can use it to go pretty far, as long as you don't mind gettin close with strangers.  We get off the bus and take a series of public cars i guess you'd call ém.  Most of these cars are early 1990's Toyota Carollas that normally carry 6 passengers and the driver. And no, they aren't any bigger than the Carollas we have in the States.  We all got to know each other very well here. 

  Service with the Santiago ASL congregation was spectacular! It was Thurs, a meeting day so the group wasnt overwhelmingly large, but still more people than I am accustomed to.  Kurt and I got put in a group with Ricardo and his wife, who have been in ASL for over 8 years and are special pioneers here.  The first deaf brother to be appointed an elder serves in this cong, but he thoughtlessly ate about 10 mangos the day before so he wasnt feeling so good so we visited him and then went on some studies.  One student Ricardo has is a 12 year old boy that in addition to his deafness, has some physical disability, but wow! he is super smart.  We went over a few points and then reviewed and he passed with flying colors!

  Unfornately, many deaf are left uneducated making communication and Bible education difficult, but nothing Jehovah can't overcome.

   The meeting in ASL was so refreshing, being able to understand the meeting felt like a breath of fresh air for Kurt, Corbin, and I, who are still trying ti figure out spanish basics.

  After the meeting a brother drops us off at the home we are staying at, which is in close proximity to another Kingdom hall.  Outside this Hall we run into a couple who moved to DR to help out from the US.  Their story was encouraging and they had a lot of good advice and, yeah, they were cool, they even gave us the hookup with a tour of the Santiago assembly hall and we got to eat lunch having and interchange of encouragement with the current class of  Bible School for Single Brothers in Criole.  super awesome.

   In addition, friday in service I got to work Theresa Smith, a missionary here for over 29 years.  One of her students is a deaf-blind girl maybe 10 years old or so with no education at all.  We spent about an hour going over concepts of heaven, earth, rock, angel, Jehovah, and tree using props and samples.  It was soooo cool.  I hope she makes lots of progress.

Jehovah indeed provides.

"Yeah, we eat here almost every week and we get sick almost every week too"

This statement was uttered by Daniel, a need greater in the San Jose de las Matas(aka Sajoma), moments after we place our order at the only restaurant in the small town of El Rubio. I don't remember exactly what I was thinking but I'm pretty sure my face went slightly pale and my eyes widened.
Anywho... Our existence has been much more nomadic than I had anticipated. This small town of El Rubio is in the Sajoma congregations territory and is about 45 min drive on a dirt road. The growth and receptiveness of the people is fantastic. With over 80 in attendance for the memorial but no publisher that live in the area, it is exciting to see what will happen. In the 3 hours we preached in the morning I think I only made it to maybe 4 houses. Everyone invites you in, everyone wants to talk, and you can teach something to everyone.
We met a deaf woman in her mid 30s purely by incident, but she was extremely shy and didn't know any sign language and we couldnt really exchange conversation too much.
A while later, we stopped to ask a young boy for directions and he kind just smiled and waved, another deaf! Right in the middle of the street! Why doesnt this happen at home?
Working with the brothers in service here I realize I have a lot of work to do to improve my ministry. It feels like I just don't get much practice talking to people, but I really want to improve on teaching something at every door, give them something to think about. I guess when you can easily spend 45 min at every door, you better have got something to say lol.
Theres some spots here in El Rubio that they can't get to for months for lack of time and man power, even though they have a watchtower study every other Saturday At the Hall shown below.
The harvest is enormous and the workers all live almost an hour away by car and 90% don't have a car... Que se puede hacer?

Joel just gotta ride anotha man's horse

Mucho rain

With mucho rain, roads go under water

I made pastelón!

How to get to paradise... in a car...

Driving through the long twisting roads that basically have no rules is an experience akin to riding a roller coaster without a safety restraint, but it's well worth it. Open your Bible Teach book to the pictures of paradise on page 147 or 35 and that is pretty much how the town of Monabao looks and feels. A family from the local congregation happened to be out of town so we were able to commandeer their house for three nights. I was quite impressed that a troupe of 7 or 8 guys cooking and cleaning and almost making the service meeting on time. Ok, maybe not that outstanding, but considering what we were working with... you'd understand.
The territory in this area is loco. The first day we are literally following tiny paths down the mountain visiting the homes along the way. Then we come to a cow pasture that still descends at a fairly steep angle, but there's a path leading into in, so we decide to check it out. Oh yeah, its the rainy season so that whole pasture is muck and cow caca. After weaving through a hundred yards or so, trying to soil our shoes and pants as little as possible, we duck under a barb-wire fence find our muddy selves staring this tattered and crooked swing bridge staring us in the face. Back down now? Inconceivable! After saying our private prayers we make our way across and meet a man working on the other side and have quite a conversation. At this point the view of the mountains is the most spectacular I have seen in at least 10 mins. Now we gotta make our way back to the road.
The second day in Monabao is awesome as well, the poverty of some here proves that this isn't paradise yet and we still need the new system.
That evening we mount up and make the harrowing drive to playa grande near rio San Juan and literally spend the night on the beach with a fire. It was slightly uncomfortable but exceedingly spectacular... Falling asleep typing again so hopefully I can ketchup on the happenings most recently soon.

Oh, the first photo is the kingdom hall in Monabao of roughly 37 publishers. No, no walls. None.

Nothing words can do to add anything to this.

Ok, so.... Oh, yeah!

So, Bethel was amazing! Thursday we toured bethel and got to peek in the workings how things go down here. Lunch with the bethel family was amazing, the six of us plus the table head sat down and then Eber, a rather short brother who has recently appeared in some watchtower ASL DVDs, sat at our table and we got to know him and some other brothers as well. The neat thing about transport here is we were able to call the bus and it picked us up right at the front door of bethel. It took about 4 hours or so to get from the capital to San Jose de las Matas. We were able to squeeze in an hour's rest before walking a mile or two to the Spanish meeting
My goodness, the teety-tiny part of my brain the stores the little bit Spanish that I know hasn't seen enough action in a while and it was so difficult to try to get anything out of the meeting. There were many young ones in the hall that are ovboisly reaching out to make progress in a hall with about 70 publishers and a memorial attendance of over 300.

Most places close a lot earlier than the states so finding a market that was open after the meeting took a lot of walking all over town but eventually we met up with success and she was very nice. The next day we will head to Monabao.

Here we are!

It feels like weeks since we left Palm Bay, but it's been less than 48 hours. I'm so tired it's hard to think and put words down, but I'll try nonetheless. The flight was rather uneventful, with the exception that we all tried to start our preaching trip out right. Joel had a great conversation on the plane with the person sitting next to him, and Christian was able to do the same. I tried steering the conversation I was having with a fellow passenger to the Bible but was unsuccessful so I left some mags in the seat back. Kurt pulled out his Bible Teach book and the woman sitting next to him was actually a sister from Curaçao, so he wasn't able to count any time, poor guy lol. We stayed Wednesday night at the house of Joel's cousin and this morning je dropped us off at the Dominican Bethel brach (as pictured below). So much happened there I'll have to go into it later. Anywho, I'm about to fall asleep so long story short, we took a 4 or 5 hour bus ride from bethel to San Jose de las Matas where we will spend the majority of the visit, after we spend around 5 days in a tiny town called Manabao, which we leave for tomorrow. More to come in tue near future!