Time to Change the Name

We started posting to this blog back in the early part of the year, with the idea that we could keep everyone up to date on our activities and adventures as we began to unravel our lives and follow God's call into missions. We haven't done a great job keeping up with posting, but part of that might have been the craziness that permeated our lives for the last 6 months. It has been a long journey to this point, filled with so many highs and lows, but all with the obvious guiding by God's hand. We are thankful to have the discovery, planning and preparation periods behind us. But our blog is named "Gearing up for the Dominican Republic", at least for now. So over the next few days, we will have to pick a new name for our blog, one that can describe this next season of our life.

Because now begins the hardest part.

We arrived in the DR on sunday night, an hour and half late, and missing 5 bags. Our trip was uneventful, for the most part, and we arrived safely, met at the airport by our friends Nate and Maggie Slabach. We made our trek up the mountain to Jarabacoa, took a few instructions from Nate and Maggie about our house, and crashed into bed, exhausted from our long trip. It was a surreal feeling that night, sleeping in our new "home". It certainly didn't feel like home, with all of the things that are unique to this area. The air feels different, the smells are ever changing, yet ever unique, and the temperature is plenty warm. All of which made the first night here a little restless for all of us.

The rest of this week has been really indescribable, with so many new places to go and things to learn. Monday was spent working around our house and getting our bags unpacked. Nate and Maggie took us to a few places here in town, most of which we had done before, but now have become necessities to our daily lives. On tuesday, Lindsay and I and the kids had to make our first "solo" trip to the airport to retrieve our lost bags. We arranged with the airline to come pick the bags up, instead of having them delivered, mainly because there are missing elements here that we just couldn't seem to work out. Namely, an address to deliver the bags to. There are a few places that have addresses, but most of them require a dominican driver to call you once they arrive at that location. Since those drivers would speak only spanish, and my spanish wouldn't really accommodate at conversation of that type, we decided the "easiest" thing to do was drive down to the airport and pick the bags up ourselves.

But...the thing about living here is that you never really know what is going to happen next. I suppose that is true in every culture and every country, but when your life is already out of control, little changes seem like huge problems. So, on our way down the mountain, we noticed that there were some really dark clouds surrounding the peaks of the mountains ahead of us. By the time we reached the bottom of the mountain, it was a full out monsoon. The water was rushing down the roads so fast, the water would pour over the sides of the bridges as it reached the bottom of the gullies. Because drainage and other things like that aren't really high on the agenda here, the roads at the bottom of the mountain were flooded. We attempted to continue on, only to have the car become flooded and run horribly. We limped the last 20km to the airport in the car which would only go about 30mph. It was a little tense, mainly because the car seemed like it could die at any moment, but also because it continued to pour rain. Finally we arrived at the airport, got our bags, had a green hamburger (yes, green, I ate one bite and that was it), got back to the car which had some time to dry out, and made our way back to Jarabacoa. It was a LONG trip, and one that we won't forget for a while.

The rest of the week has been spent learning about other needed places and things, and the first few days of school for our kids. All three kids started school on Wednesday at Doulos Discovery School. (www.doulosdiscovery.com) We are learning the flow of the days here in Jarabacoa, and getting the kids to school on time and in the correct way, which is so much different than in the states, is something that is going to take some time.

We are so thankful for the leadership at Students International, namely Lowell, Cheryl, Nate, and Maggie, for giving us a couple of months to just be a family and learn to live again here in the DR. We have felt like fish out of water most days, trying to just do little tasks, and I am not sure how I would be able to manage trying to work on top of that. We are going to use this time to make sure our family is healthy, learn the language, learn to live, and get a firm foundation of life here, before I begin to transition into full time ministry work. I am excited to begin working, but feel so unequipped at this point.

We hope that you will continue to pray for us in our transition time. One thing we have realized already is that we miss our friends and families back home very much. We would love to hear from you via email, skype, facebook, or whatever. Please stay in touch, as hearing from friends has been so helpful and uplifting.

We can be reached at:

jayson615@netzero.net
lindsay615@netzero.net
FACEBOOK: Lindsay jayson york
skype: jayson.lindsay.york

We will post again soon, as we are headed to La Sousa this weekend, on the northern coast of the island, for a couple of nights on the beach with the entire SI staff. We will post some pics soon.

Many blessings to all of you...

Jayson