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.