This past week has been great -- this upcoming week is my last and all we are doing is psending time here at the orphanage doing some structured things and a lot of unstructured things. I am excited to have a great week and then venture home... as much as I don't want to leave I'm estoked to start my more Long-term mission back home. Your mission field is what you make it. :) (Credit to Emily).



As per usual, here are some good pictures from this past week. God bless, see ya'll soon.



jose luis and his youngest sister luz maria


me with indiana and jennifer, a little whelmed





luz maria, rockin' my sunglasses and carrying around a towel, for whatever reason





this one is for izzy... and sometimes, jennifer isn't my friend





monument in santiago -- josh this lady were very mismo





view from the monument





the monument



fin

In Him

-brooke

Week 8...

This past week we had another group come in from His House and also a group from Tom's (Orphanage Outreach Director) church come in. We did two different camps and the one I was part of did a camp at the Baseball stadium just a couple blocks away and also one in a neighborhood about 45 minutes away which had never had a camp there before. It's crazy to see the difference between the camp at the stadium and the camp at the neighborhood b/c the kids who come to the stadium are so used to having camp and kind of take it for granted a little more. The neighborhood was awesome and all the adults from the neighborhood were very helpful and actually participated in camps by assisting us when we couldn't completely explain the rules to a game or keep the kids in their groups. Friday morning everyone went to Dajabon but us interns got to go to the ADMAT center which is where there is a team of archeologists working to dig up and preserve ruins from ship wrecks all around the banks of the DR. We got to see some really ancient stuff so that was pretty cool. We also got to ride in the back of the truck which is always fun. From there we went out to lunch and then when to the El Morro beach for the afternoon. The groups left early yesterday morning and now it's just us interns and a couple of 2 week girls. I'm gonna go take a shower and play with the kids a little. Here are some pictures!

Heat Lightning! An often occurance around here...


This is El Morrito Beach during the day, we usually go there every Friday


Izzy and I on the back of the truck on our way to ADMAT


A little girl at the neighborhood who when I asked to smile, made this face


Sunset from the roof...


Josh and I got a package from our friends Alicia and Mark!!!


The gang of little gals at the Orphanage... back row, Jennifer, Joanni, Nena, Piley, front row, Franchesca, Luz Maria, Lisy


Jennifer!


Praying for you all, Peace and love
-Brooke

Mi Dios es ton GRANDE

Week 7...

This past week has been really good.

We did various work projects in the morning around the Orphanage, we completely re-did most of the kitchen and cleaned up the Green bano roof (for those of you who are familiar), we also painted the outside of La Copia, the Chapel we did camp at last week. It looks amazing now.

In the afternoon we did a Reading Camp here with the kids, all of us chose 3 kids to work with, I chose Leonel (17), Jennifer (3), and Nathan Woods (Eric's Son) (6). I actually ended up reading the same books with all the kids. We used bilingual books so Leonel would read in English and Nathan would read in Spanish and Jennifer would pretty much just listen to whoever was reading or draw pictures or mimic whatever we said. It was a lot of fun. On Thursday we had prizes for the kids and a party with cake and juice. It was good to see them learning and having the desire to learn more.

Yesterday, Our day off we went to Cabarete, a nice beach/tourist town about 3 or 4 hours away. We met a girl named Priscilla who goes to the University in Mexico but grew up in Santo Domingo. We hung out and walked the beach for a long time and went to a couple shops, had some pizza. Etc. It was fun to have time off to chill and stuff, even though we missed the kids.

A couple pics...

This is Josh, half of Jessica and I at the beach in Caberete


Mi Amiga, Lisy at the reading party


Me and My Amigo Winston


This is a picture of my friends Beth, Ismelda (Izzy) and I in front of La Copia -- with a fresh coat of paint


Thanks again for everyone who reads this and supports me and prays and all that jazz -- I really appreciate it.
Love you
-Brooke

Ps... Hi Mrs. Devine :o) Kristen is doing well!

Not to us, but to Your name be the Glory

Week #6 (?)
This past week a team from His House came in, we did a camp in the morning at a Batey called La Madre and one in the afternoon at La Capia (a chapel just a few minutes from the Orphanage). They were both a lot of fun, this week I was in charge of Recreation so we played Kickball, played w/ the giant parachute, etc, it was sweet. At La Capia it is actually the church of Annalesa one of the ladies who comes in and does laundry here - she is an amazing lady with a great heart for the Lord. It was cool to see her out of the laundry room and able to play with us and all that, a very cool experience.
La Capia was also cool because a lot of the kids there were kids that I had taught my first week here when we taught english in the schools. They remembered me and I got to see how they were and meet some of there brothers and sisters and stuff. It was a really cool experience to be remembered 5 weeks later, and be able to show kids pictures I had with them at school and stuff. Jesus is cool.
It was fun to have familiar faces here, now this week we don't have any volunteers coming in so some of us are going to do a camp at the English Institute and the rest of us are going to do some real service projects around the Orphanage and town. I'm stoked for that, I really am excited to do some sort of traditional service in the ways of things like painting and cleaning up stuff etc etc.
That's the excitement of the week, I can't seem to get my images to upload this time so you'll just have to wait and see ya know.
Love you all, praying for you, God is good all the time.
-Brooke