A Little Game the Brothers Down Here Play

So the last few days have gone pretty well.

Jason seems to be really get a real taste of what the Dominican is like. Today he got to cross the river for the first time, and then got to cross another river on a donkey (don't worry, I will get some pictures up soon), then coming home the raft guy had to give him a piggyback ride to shore.

We also had our special assembly day Sunday, which was a very nice program. When we got there, Brother Abad, the elder in our hall, tells me that from here on out I am going to be the talk coordinator. Ok, that sounds easy. Then he explains that it all has to be done with the other coordinators right here at the assembly. I don't know how they do things in the states, but I have an idea that this system is pure Dominican. Basically, it consits of all the coordinators from the halls in our circut standing around in a specified area playing a game something like "Pit". If you get the mental image of these brothers yelling "two speakers two speakers, who can trade me two speakers" you wont be far from the reality. It was like getting thrown into a shark tank. Going in, I get the advice to be very carefull because the other brothers will try to take advantage of me, taking all I have and not giving me any speakers in return. But seeing as how we only have two speakers in our congregation, I am at the same time getting advice to do the exact same thing to every brother that I can. All and all I came out pretty well: at least we should have speakers for awhile.

Then on Monday we went to the beach with a big group, but more on that some other time, because where I am connecting to the internet is on an outside balcony, and I am actually getting rather cold. The sun went down and it has dropped below 70. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr

I can see clearly now. . .

That's right, the rain is finally gone! At least for today. This is about the first time in a week that we have seen the sun. Actually, it cleared up the end of yesterday, but today is actually clear blue sky with not a cloud in sight.

For the 3 people that actually check this blog on a regular basis, I will admit that I cheated. The 2 posts before this one were actually just posted today, irregardless of what the date stamps say. The internet that we use here is based on satellite, so with all this heavy rain I havn't been able to post anything. So I had these posts that I wrote, but couldn't get up, so here they are.

Jason is down here visiting with us now, he arrived Monday. He seems to be having fun, even though it has been raining, the power has been bad, and there has been no water since he got here. He did try and kill us all last night though with some crazy chile. It was tasty, but he used some hot sauce Eric had brought down from the States. The recommended serving size is less then a drop, and he put a big 'ole spoonfull in. It litterally laid you out on the floor. So in addition to seeing clearly, we can all breath clearly as well.

Back on Track

So I have been home for a bit here now, and things finally seem to be settling into a groove.  I think that from here on out we should have things a little more organized and less hectic.  Of course, we have more company coming tomorrow, Eric is talking about heading back to the states after that, and we are making arrangements for an assembly next week.  But for now, we have a good groove.

It's been kinda rough weather these last few weeks since we all came back down from the states.  The rainy season has been in full swing, although it has not been as cold, which was nice.  January was basically a complete write-off by the time it was all said and done.  As if being back stateside didn't wreck my month enough, we then spent basically a whole week moving Joe to his new place in Santiago. (Joe would be our old roommate who went to MTS and then got himself assigned away)  It took so long because of the weather, and the fact the we had to go shopping for so many different things: we had our whole house put together combining everyone's stuff, so we had to replace all the stuff that Joe took with him, and Joe had to replace all of our stuff that got left behind.  That left about the last 5 days of the month to go out in field service.  Like I said, January was a write-off.

The good news is that when we do get out, the studies are amazing.  Down here, we find a lot of people that aren't very well educated.  That doesn't mean they are stupid, they just have never had a chance.  I have a study right now with a woman way out in the hills that is a good example.  The 'main' road to the house is so bad, when it rains it is basically impassable because of the mud.  The kids that live out that way don't even try to go to school.  Of course, when I say impassable, I just mean more fun.  But anyway, this study has had hardly any education.  Her reading and vocab are very poor, and she has little other knowledge, but she is one of the smartest studies I have ever had.  She grasps the points and answers in here own words with ease.  When I first started studying with her, I was afraid to cover to much information at a shot because of her limited reading, but now she is one of my fastest moving studies.  Another one of my studies is a police officer who, because of his crazy schedule (and mine), hasn't had his study in a while.  Today, however, he chased down Mike on his bike to tell him that I should come by the police station and we can study there.  Cool.

Super Sunday

We had sort of a crazy day this past Sunday.  To start the day off right, we were surprised by some nice rain.  The rain of course makes the river so much more fun.  The same river that takes us about 5 minutes to cross when it is dry out delayed us for more than an hour.  For starters, the current is so much stronger, therefore the raft guys can't reach the normal spots.  To make things worse, when it floods a little bit, you get about 6 inches of water that you have to drive or walk through before you can even get to the rafts.  So there we are in our suits, Mike and I on bikes, and about 10 other witnesses on foot.  The special pioneer brother has a pickup truck, which he takes as far as the river and then leaves it there.  He gets the bright idea to see if he could back the truck out into this shallow flooded section to at least ferry the people on foot out to where the rafts can pick them up.  Of course, that ended badly, with us having to wade out into the river to push him out.  Not that it made much of a difference in how wet we got: Mike and I still had to drive our bikes out into the river, then stand in it to lift the bikes up onto a raft.  When we finally did get to the other side, I find out that my good buddy Eric, who had been so kindly holding onto my shoes for me, had in fact dropped one into the river getting of the raft, and then chased it down stream.  Don't worry, he had gotten it back, just soaking wet.  But wait, the adventure continues, because now we have to cross the bikes through all this loose sand on the other bank that the changing river had left behind.  Not a real problem for me, but poor Mike has only had his bike for about 6 days at this point, and down he went.  Not a big deal (he was moving about a half a mile an hour), the only thing hurt was his pride (I guess posting it on the internet doesn't help. . .sorry Mikey).  So now, we are a half hour late for the meeting (not that they would start without us, we had all the brothers, including the speaker), it is still raining, and I get to spend the next 15 minutes shuttling people the rest of the way to the hall on the back of my moto.

The meeting itself went rather well, with the exception that it continued raining the entire time.  As we are sitting there listening to the talk, we are all thinking the same thing:  getting home is going to be interesting.  Sure enough, by the time meeting is over, the river has swelled even more.  The trip home is always harder for the raft guys anyways, simply because of the way the river flows.  On the Kingdom Hall side, there is a second little river that flows into the main river just above where we cross.  This means that starting from that side, the water is deeper and faster.  Because of the rain, this little river had flooded over a section of the bank, creating a sort of triangle shaped sandbar out in the river where the two meet.  The rafts could only make it to this patch of sand, which meant we were left up to our own devices to get ourselves across the first stretch of water.  This is the point where I figured out that my bike could still run even when the water is coming up over the wheels.  Even so, the actual depth of the water wasn't as big of an issue as the current which was pushing pretty good.  By the time I got to the other side the muffler was squirting out water.  With Mike's bike, he and one of the raft guys basically just picked it and carried it through the water.  The actual raft ride, once we got to them, was not very eventful, just that by the time we made it to the other side, we had been swept way downstream.  Not a big deal, we just have to drive back up through all the mud.  The final touch to the morning was watching Mike struggle and fight his way up through this mud, only to be passed by a Dominican guy driving his moto one-handed while talking on his cellphone.

Of course after all this we had to have a Super Bowl party.  That basically consisted of Matt and Debora, Chris and Cherrie and the three of us going out for pizza.  We found out who won the day after.