Wow!!! We were blown away by the response to our last update, "Triple Whammy." To be honest, it hadn't even crossed our minds to send out an update at that time, but Tonya's mom happened to be visiting when it was all taking place, and she strongly encouraged us to do so. We are so thankful she did! Thanks to her prompting, and the Lord's stirring in the hearts of many of our supporters, which means YOU, we are now the proud owners of a scooter, a new queen size bed and two nightstands, and our vehicle is being repaired (at least, on the outside.) We are so grateful and humbled by the response we received in our time of need. Thank you for caring, giving, praying, and for little notes and emails of encouragement. IT ALL MEANS SO MUCH!!
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We have all been loving our new house. It fits us so much better, stays cleaner because our front door is not literally right on a muddy dirt road, and most of all, the yard is big and has an amazing covered patio area! When I (Tonya) saw the house for the first time and walked out to see the backyard, my first thought was that it would be perfect for the neighborhood classes we'd been hosting. And my Dominican friend who was with me turned to me and said the same thing. She and I were right! :) We hosted our first activity for the neighbor kids a week and a half ago and it went really well. Half the kids who came were from our old street, for which we were very thankful because it is important to us to keep up those relationships. The new kids expressed a great interest in learning English, so we will continue to host classes in which we read a Bible story, do a craft, sing, play games, and learn some English.
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Prayer requests:
Our progress on starting a Skatechurch continues to move forward. Donations have come in to Skatechurch in Portland in order to supply skateboards and shoes.
Ben participated in a prison ministry last week with a local guy from our church. He hopes to continue to be a regular part of that ministry.
Tonya continues to help teach English in the school. She and Emilie are now teaching 3 classes of students of all different ages. It can be overwhelming at times, as children here tend to be unruly, but it is a neat opportunity to be involved in the school and in the children's lives.
On April 16th Tonya needs to go to court for the accident. Please pray for favor with the judge; although the evidence points to her not being at fault, there is the possibilty that the ruling will not be in our favor, due to the fact that we are "rich" Americans and the motorcyclist had no insurance.
We are feeling strongly that Jolie and Ivan need to attend school here in the Fall. They just haven't learned the language as quickly as we'd anticipated, which means they aren't making friends as easily as we'd hoped. We plan to check out the private school options in the next week or two; please pray for guidance in this process.
Praises:
We met another missionary family here from America and they have teenage daughters, which means Jolie has new friends! We are so happy and thankful for this answer to many months of prayer.
We mentioned previously that by this summer we anticipated a deficit in our budget due to the support from our church in Portland coming to an end. We are happy to share that this has already been met! We are so thankful and again, blown away by how quickly that happened, and the generosity of our supporters. Thank you so much!!!
With gratitude,
Ben, Tonya, Jolie, Ivan, Samuel, and Melody
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We had a friend from church build us this bed and matching nightstands. The bed was made with four drawers underneath, so it wasn't necessary to purchase a dresser. We love it!
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We can fit four of us on our scooter! We feel like Dominicans now. ;) Truly, we are so thankful for one of our supporting churches in Washington, who took an offering on our behalf and supplied the amount we needed in order to purchase it. And because our vehicle has been at the mechanic for 3 (!) weeks, we were extra thankful we could buy the scooter when we did. As you can see, it meant that the kids were still able to attend Judo each weekday.
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