Last day at the betay

Coates and Amber were both feeling better this morning - still stuffy but better. Brandon however woke up with a stomach bug, so he ended up staying back and resting this morning. Things at the betay were better today. Ruby and Katherine did face painting and the kids loved it! During our closing a guy rode up to Jared and Ashley (one of the long term volunteers) on a bike (he was probably late teens early 20's) and wanted to learn english so they got to work with him for a little while teaching him some basic English. It was cool to see how excited Jared was about that opportunity. We were all sad to leave the betay. Ruby had one girl that would not let go of her.

The afternoon here at the orphanage went good. The boys did great with the different parts of speech in spanish. When then worked on clearing a new field for some fruit trees to be planted (see the attached picture - they weren't all really working...it was posed). One of the boys I have connected with most here, Chipa, loves to take pictures with my camera. While working today I heard him yell my name, which from all the kids ends up sounding more like Lancey. He got the camera and next thing I knew he was off in some trees getting pictures of flowers and being creative. It has been cool to see him come out of his shell. Chipa LOVES to take pictures. He will literally snap 20 of one person at one time. One of the days he got my camera at the betay and I'm pretty sure he took a solid 200+ pictures. It will be fun to load pictures on to my computer after this trip because I literally have no clue what they will be like. Tonight we had another game night with the boys. This one was a little more free so most of it was spent on their playground just playing and having fun.

The boys joined us again for the large group devotions. It was neat having them there. Terrill, the Orphanage Outreach leader here, wanted them to experience worship with us. We sang a few different worship songs and then closed the night singing Amazing Grace. Katherine has informed me that she is going to chain herself to her bed on Saturday so she doesn't have to go home. She wants to stay.

Tomorrow we will go to the border city of Don Jaibon (I think that's right) to see the market there. We are going so we can truly experience the culture, to see more of the real DR. After that we will see some of the city of Monte Cristi and get to spend a little bit of time at the beach.

Annette, on Saturday we will be JetBlue flight 1109 from JFK arriving at RDU @ 11:54PM.

From the mission field,
Lance
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