Wednesday - January 31, 2007

I have now been back in the DR for nearly three weeks, and my English Ministry has officially begun! On Tuesday, January 16, I taught my first class in Hoya del Bartola (the area commonly referred to as the “Hole”) to 20 students. The class runs from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. every Tuesday, and the majority of the students are between the ages of 12 and 14. Three of them are women in their twenties who work with our ministry in Bartola, helping feed the nearly 100 children who come to the church six days a week for a hot meal as a part of our feeding center. The picture to the left is of some of my students. We meet in the new church that G. O. is in the process of building there. Teaching here is much different than in the states - a mouse was part of our class the other day - but the students are ready and excited to learn English!

I was nervous before the first class, but the students were attentive, and I truly enjoyed teaching again! The pastor, Felix, takes me down to the church, stays through the class, and then brings me back to my house every Tuesday. Felix understands some English, as does his wife Jenny who works at our school, but he wants to learn more, so that is part of why he stays with me. Our drives back and forth also turn into mini-Spanish lessons for me! However, he also stays because Bartola can be a dangerous area due to the drug and alcohol problems of many people who live there, which are some of the horrible side effects that come with the extreme poverty and hopelessness that Felix’s church and G.O. Ministries are trying to help the people in the Hole overcome.

My other English class started the following Saturday, January 20, in Hoya del Caimito, which is the area where I live. On Thursday, January 18, two G.O. staff members and I, along with four members of the church, went door to door in the neighborhood letting people know about the English class for adults that I would be teaching on Saturdays at the church. We split up into three groups, with a staff member and church member in each, so that we could visit as many houses as possible, handing out fliers and inviting people to the class. Everyone we talked to was excited about the class, and at a few colmados (small neighborhood corner stores) and at one hair salon, the owners put the flier up to let others in the community know about the class!

As a result, 22 students came that first Saturday, and since then, another 10 have signed up and started coming! What is most exciting for me with this class is that I only know 10 of the students in the class from the church and our school. The rest of them are not church members, and there are a few whom I know are not Christians, but I have shared with them in each class that I am here not only to teach them English, but also to share with them the love of Christ and let them know how important they are to Him and how important it is to God that they know Him!

Having never taught adults before, I was also nervous before the first class, but my roommates helped me with registration, and my Dominican assistant, Wendy, was also a wonderful help for me in translating some concepts more clearly to the students and in giving me feedback once the class was over. I teach the classes in a mixture of English and Spanish, and with each week, I will be using more and more English. This has led to a few funny moments. For example, I used pictures to teach vowel and consonant sounds, and did not know the Spanish work for “ox” which is one example I was using for the short “o” sound, so I said “vaca hombre” which is “male cow.” This caused more than a few giggles, but they did understand, and I learned that the word in Spanish is "toro" (which being a Hemingway fan, I should know already). Moments like these always lighten a class, and it helps students trust you more when they see that you are not afraid to admit you do not have all the answers. I did blush a little though!

At both classes, we start and end each class with prayer, and part of the homework is to find and write out Bible verses that speak of God’s love and who He is. Since my first lessons have to do with the verb “to be,” I included Bible verses where God says, “I am.” The first six were all from the book of John. Homework for the first week included John 14:6 and John 15:5, the second week’s included John 8:12 and John 11:25, and this week’s homework includes John 15: 12 and 14. We not only translate the verses, but we also talk a bit about what they mean and why they are important.

On Thursday, January 25, I also held the teacher training I have been planning, and it went very well! The training was on classroom management and lesson planning, and I essentially presented Harry Wong’s book The First Days of School, which was a significant help to me when I started teaching, and as the lessons in the book are designed for both new and veteran teachers, I thought it was an excellent way to introduce these concepts to the teachers. I presented most of the information in Spanish, which was everything I had prepared beforehand, but I am one who likes to add stories and side notes as they occur to me, and I had a translator who helped me with those! Above is a picture of the schedule and the small gift of red pencils I was able to give the teachers, thanks to my roommate Jennifer who brought them back with her from the states.

We started the meeting with prayer and the Administrator and Director introducing me and talking a little about my new role with the school, which is as the School Coordinator. This means I will be the liaison between the school and G.O., and I will also be observing and doing formal evaluations of each of the teachers during the semester. The purpose of the evaluations is to encourage the teachers in what they are already doing that is working well and to provide on-going training to help them be more effective in their classrooms. The first part of the training was solely focused on classroom management – defining the term, explaining what a well-managed class looks like, and giving strategies for how to effectively manage a class. This is one of my strengths as a teacher, and while I never imagined I would one day be conducting a training on the topic, God apparently had this in mind, and the way He weaves the events of our lives together to fulfill His purposes will never cease to amaze me!

After the classroom management section, we took a short break, and then introduced a new school-wide discipline plan, which includes demerits and detentions as well as rewards for good behavior. I wrote this with the input of the school Director and Administrator, and the Director presented it to the teachers. It is a completely new concept for these teachers, students, administrators, and parents, but it was received well by the teachers. Please pray that it will also be received well by the parents and students, and that the teachers follow through with all aspects of the plan when it is implemented in February!

The training ended with a section on lesson planning where I presented ways to include more interactive teaching methods that would help students be more engaged in the lessons, which is also another form of effective classroom management because if students are engaged, they are less likely to misbehave. I also discussed the importance of using Bloom’s Taxonomy for writing objectives, which will lead to more effective student assessment. However, of the group of 25, only one teacher had even heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which was a surprise to me. While that might mean nothing to non-teacher types, Bloom’s Taxonomy is essentially the guide for writing lesson plans. I did share the Taxonomy with them, but I will also do a future training session on lesson planning to elaborate on these ideas.

Today I put a schedule together for my observations at the school, and between those and my English and Drama classes, and the teams we have scheduled for this spring, the next few months will be very busy! The Drama Ministry will begin in two weeks, partially for my own sanity as I am beginning several new things at once, and partially to work in conjunction with the art classes Jennifer is teaching on Saturday afternoons for the next two weeks to the same age group. After praying about when to begin, I felt it would be best to continue their “arts education” as opposed to overlapping the ministries.

Please pray that as my work here continues to grow that I will not get caught up in what “I” can do and that I keep my focus on what God wants me to do, and that I will follow His leading each step of the way. I can have the tendency to get caught up in my work and miss out on the lessons God is trying to teach me, and I pray that I will keep the mindset that one of my students from Louisville has – each time she writes me, she signs off “always a student.” What I am finding more and more as I am here longer, is that there is much I still need to learn about God, about teaching, about living here, and about how to daily submit my life to His will and the utmost importance of praying “without ceasing,” as we are instructed to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

One last thing - I have added a few links to this page, and if you are interested in learning more about the area where we work called La Mosca, which I have written of before, check out the short video to which the "La Mosca Video" link directs you. It was made by our staff - Will Partin, our Sports Ministry Director, narrates the video, and the text was written by Jeff Rogers who is our Director of Ongoing Education and is currently working in the Louisville office but has recently lived and worked here. His insightful descriptions and thought-provoking statements of the situation in La Mosca clearly articulate the need for the work Pastor Jonas and G.O. are doing there.

Thank you for your support of my ministry!

Con amor de Jesucristo,
Catherine

It was wonderful to be home for the holidays, and I had some incredible times with my friends and family, and I will cherish the memories we made! My first weekend in Virginia, one of the deacons at my family’s church asked if I would be willing to speak to his young adult Sunday school class in December because he believed that my decision to go into missions was a living example of the book they would be finishing at the end of the month, which was Bruce Wilkinson’s The Dream Giver. I gladly accepted and read the book while I was in Louisville. I saw several parallels to my life in the book, and even more became obvious when I met with the class on Dec. 31st. This was an encouragement to me on many levels, and it was exciting to share my story with these young adults and encourage them to pursue the dreams God has given them! God has big dreams for all of us, and I highly recommend reading this book to everyone - regardless of age!

Celebrating Christmas and New Years with my family also brought many blessings! It was fun to cuddle up on the couch with my niece and nephew and watch High School Musical, which my niece could not believe I had not seen :) and be able to sit and talk face to face with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law. I had not realized how much I missed them until I had that time with them again. While I saw my family more often when I lived in the states, I think these times will provide more lasting memories and help us build deeper relationships than we would have otherwise because we will all recognize the importance and value of our time together more than before.

Being in the states for six weeks also brought some challenges I did not expect, and I allowed myself to get caught up in the “busyness” of the holidays and of trying to see everyone I possibly could. This did not allow me time for a regular quiet time, and I felt that lack of time alone with God. Just as with my first experience with teams coming down, this first time going back to the states taught me how much I need time for reflection and study of God’s word, and that I cannot allow myself to be too busy to set aside a daily time with Him.

I returned to Santiago in the early morning hours of January 6th, which is a national holiday here and the day Dominicans celebrate Christmas. So, I had the day to rest a little, which I needed since my flight left JFK in New York at close to midnight, unpack and get settled. Later that night we had our first group of the year arrive, and we have pretty much been going non-stop ever since, though I have made sure to set aside time each day for reflection on and study of God's word. He continues to remind me that He is bigger than anything else in my life, and He will give me the strength to do what He has brought me here to do.

One of the things He has called us all to do is to meet the needs of the poor, and the group that was here last week was focused on doing just that. The group was primarily made up of doctors and nurses, and they provided two simultaneous medical clinics in two parts of the city – Hato del Yaque (which is also where we are building a church), and Los Salados. Right now only about half of the regular staff members are here, so I worked with the clinic in Hato del Yaque for the first two days. My official job was as the photographer for the group, taking pictures that would be used in their presentation at their Despidida (a “leaving party” held the night before the group returns to the states). I took the picture to the left - that's Nico, one of our pastors, taking down names of patients to be seen. As you can see, medical clinics are in great demand! I also helped out a little in triage and the pharmacy, both of which provided excellent opportunities to practice my Spanish!

A surprise blessing was another opportunity to go to Haiti on Wednesday the 10th! Our office needed some statistics on the children in the orphanage, so I went to get that information, with the help of Romano, one of our translators who is also a pastor in the Dominican. He is Haitian but now lives and ministers in Santiago and works with G.O. Another American staff member, John, went to pay the pastors who work with G.O. in Haiti and do some training with them. It was a one-day trip, just like the other two I have made, only this time we took public transportation.

For our trip there, we took a Caribe Tours bus, which is very comfortable and along the lines of a Greyhound bus in the states. We had a few stops to make, but generally moved along at a good pace and arrived in Dajabon, which is on the border with Haiti, in about 3 hours. However, since we did not leave Haiti until close to 5 pm, we missed the last Caribe Tours bus to Santiago, so our return trip was a bit different. We took an Expresso Linereo (“Express Line”) bus that was a little less comfortable – more like a city bus, only smaller – and it made at least 20 stops along the way, so it was not exactly an “express”! Only a few of these were official stops, with most people just waving down the bus to let the driver know to stop. It was great to experience this, though, as it gave me an opportunity to see more of Dominican culture and be blessed by the warmth and hospitality of the people here.

At one stop two women got on the bus with their dinners, and since we had not had the time to stop and eat anything more than granola bars and some cheese and crackers, the aroma was mouth-watering. John shared with them how enticing their dinners were to us, and they could tell how hungry we were, so one woman shared her dinner with us! We did not take much, just a small piece of chicken to share, but it tasted wonderful and was a blessing to us! We got back to Santiago nearly 4 hours after leaving Dajabon, and our team cook, Marisol, had left dinner warming for us on the stove, so we were able to get a good meal and then get some rest after a long day!

The next two days I worked the team again. First, they did a mini-medical clinic and then a mini-VBS for children at the "Hole" - a landfill where about 600 familes live. G.O. also operates a feeding center there that feeds nearly 120 children a hot meal once a day, six days a week, and the team took part in that as well. Then on Friday, we went back to the areas where the medical clinics had been and visited the people in their homes, inviting them to church and to know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. The group I was with witnessed eight people accept Christ! It was an amazing experience!

This week I was also able to meet with the Administration of the school to plan for the teacher training I had put together on classroom management and lesson planning. Before I left in November, we had talked about having the training on the 8th, however, that did not work out with the school schedule, so it is now on the schedule for the 25th. I gave copies of the presentation to the administrators, and we are going to meet again on Tuesday to review everything. Raquel, the teacher I mentored last semester, will be working with me as a translator, but I am going to try to do the majority of the presentation on my own in Spanish – please pray that the information is presented and accepted well!

Please also pray that the English and Drama ministries start off well! I will be teaching my first English class on the 16th in Hoya del Bartola, and the classes in Hoya del Caimito will start soon after. I will be using the curriculum I put together before I came, but I still have some work to do before I get started. I put my lesson plans together this weekend, and I am excited but a little nervous! It will be wonderful to be teaching again, as I have missed it immensely and teaching is such a big part of who I am, but this is something completely different than anything I have done before. However, I know that God is the ultimate Teacher, and my prayer is that I will follow His leading both in my planning and implementation of the lessons I will be teaching.

As always, thank you for your support of my ministry!

Con amor de Jesucristo,

Catherine