Hijos llegaron

Luke and Melinda arrived about the 27th, after over-nighting in the airport in San Juan. Luke left that afternoon with several from the church here to deliver food to folks in the mountains, hard hit by Hurrican Olga. Since then, we've been shopping together, hanging out with some of the locals and trying out Domincan street cuisine. Melinda went to Spanish class with us. I think the accent is a bit different from her last several professors, especially the one she had from Spain! The kids are heading to the mountains for a youth camping trip. There'll be about 25 all together. They are going to need blankets. We've only been sleeping under a sheet, or uncovered. Over night lows have been in the low to mid 70's. They are planning a secret Santa gift exchange while there, and after describing the game "chubby bunny" game to the youth leader, he bought lots of marshmallows for the evening. Karen and I have a secret Santa exchange here at church. We bought our gifts at La Sirena last night. The church here meets on Sunday night on the first and last Sundays of the month. They'll be back by then. Our address, listed in the bottom post is: Ken & Karen George Calle Primera, No. 61-B Hoya del Caimito Santiago, Dominican Republic Until next time...

Our New Home

We've had a warm welcome, both from the weather and the people here. We overlapped for 2 days with an American family that helped us get settled. (See http://daveschwulstfamily.blogspot.com/) Everyone on our street has been friendly. We are on "1st St." in our little community of Hoya del Caimito, Santiago. There are shops every 50 yards to buy bottled water, bananas, bread, milk, etc. Imagine an 8x10 room with floor to ceiling cans, bags, bottles, etc. That's the size of most stores on the street. We are also walking distance from several small hardware stores. (ferreterias, no, not where ferrets eat.)

We are continuing our Spanish classes for 2 hours a day. It's about a 25 minute walk to class. (It's not uphill and there is NO snow.) Being in the mid-80s, it can get a little warm. Victoria is a great "profesora de espanol". We pass a ball field and Tony Pena's house everyday. Ball players are working out at both places. It's a league with teams at the field. They look to be about American Legion ages. They take baseball seriously around here!

Karen has already gone to a ladies' Bible study and has connected with several of the ladies other times.

Before doing furniture shopping we decided it was more important to have "Aris" the electrician install a power inverter. Electricity is on about 23 hours a day. The longest outage in our neighborhood since August is 5 hours, but we've only seen about a 1.5 hour outage. There is only one water line, cool water, so we added an electric shower head. (nick-named "widow-maker") They were going to ground it to the PVC pipe, so I had them run a real ground to the outside with a 6 ft. copper rod in the ground. (There were no grounds in any of the outlets. I had them ground the ones that will have the appliances.) We then installed a 10 cubic ft. fridge, just enough for newlyweds! I brought screen with me from Cary and installed it on one of our bedroom windows. (The other one remains closed.) As bad as mosquitos are down here, hardly anyone has screens!

We've also gotten a water cooler for those 5 gallon jugs. We put it in the foyer and are planning to have Matt. 10:42 painted on the wall above the cooler, in Spanish of course: "And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."

We've ordered a land line and DSL. They promised an installation of 1 - 10 days. (They asked in the application, "What color is the house?" Addresses seem to be optional down here.) I guess having Time-Warner give a 4 hour window of installation seems pretty good to me now.

Our address here:

Ken & Karen George

Calle Primera No. 61-B

Hoya del Caimito

Santiago, Domincan Republic

(We're told mail service is not reliable, so if you'd like to send us something, there is a Mail Drop in Miami for the ministry. It is then flown in weekly and delivered to us through the G.O. Ministries Headquarters, two blocks from our house. Let us know via email and we'll get instructions to you.)