Seeing Both Sides to a Rainy Day

Have you ever seen the movie Edward Scissohands?  It’s a 1990 movie starring Johnny Depp, if not pause right now and go Google it so you can understand the image I am trying to give you then clear your schedule because you got yourself a new item on your to do list: watch Edward Scissorhands! Any way I was having a bit of a rough week and Thursday morning I was talking to God about all my frustrations and I was trying to find the words to describe how it was that I felt (I am really into painting my emotions into pictures) and I just couldn’t do it this time. With my frustrations boiling over it finally hit me I felt like Edward Scissorhand! Everything I touched seemed to get a little worse and my intentions were certainly not that I just couldn’t help it. It was such a relief to finally get that out there and from there I was able to say to God that I needed Him to help me that I wanted to serve Him. That day was the best day ever! One of my students who has really been struggling had a huge break through with me, the light bulb went on and I could see that she got it! It was so awesome, one of those that is why I am here moments, it felt so good. It was defiantly a great reminder that success is not something we can measure, but only God alone can truly make the call on what is worth it.

I took Friday and Saturday off this week to have a little bit of a vacation. On Friday I got my hair done, it was intense. Going to get my hair done is something I absolutely love; not speaking any Spanish put a lot of fear into this. I had seen some of the hair styles this friend of a friend did and they were AMAZING and I deemed him worthy and I put complete trust and told him he has creative control over my hair. I like what he did with it! When he cut my hair we had a spanglish argument over the length that frightened me and I almost made him put the scissors down while we discussed it. All in all it was a very relaxing day. On Saturday I went for a rather long run and it was really nice to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and 70* weather. I did get bored this weekend which was my goal, I am just so go go go all the time I needed some time with no plans and I feel refreshed.

Haiti update: Two people from my school collected money and bought $1000 worth of food for friends who own an orphanage in Haiti that ran completely out of food. They woke up really early on Sunday so that they would get it before a meal was skipped. It was really inspiring to see one of my students come back from helping them shop. The school I work for is still looking into the best way we can be of help.

I am excited for this week, rest has done me good, but I am afraid it has made me a lazy blogger. I miss you guys!

What a crazy week for the world! So just in case you have not heard there was a huge earthquake in Haiti (for those of you geographically challenged that is the other piece of the island I reside on, don’t fret until I moved here I had no idea either! World travel sure has helped my geography!). I live about 120 miles away from it! That would be a two hour car drive. That is just crazy.

I am fine; I was running at the time and didn’t even feel it. Later that night my roommate mentioned that a huge earthquake happened but somehow the subject changed quickly and we never went back to the topic. The next morning I woke up at 4am feeling like I was dying because my stomach hurt so bad, no idea what happened there. Luckily before my body decided to turn on me I already had the day off and it was one of those days where your stomach hurts so bad you can’t stand up straight. It was intense. I decided to check facebook and that’s when I remembered the comment that was said the night before and I quickly sent out many emails to my panicked family.

It’s crazy…how much control we don’t have. Some days you forget just how fragile life is, how one minute you can be eating dinner and the next your whole life is different. Crazy. By Thursday night I got a great idea, I can go over there, I am just three hours away! i couldn’t sleep that night all I could think about were the thousands who were still buried. I just couldn’t justify lying on a mattress and calling it a night when people two hours away were starving and I had food in my pantry. First thing I did the next morning was talk to the outreach guy on our campus as to what we could do, if going there for the weekend would have been worth it. He told me that he is in contact with the missionaries there and they say teams from all over the world are coming so for now we can stay put. In about a month when the glamor of helping out a nation in need dies down, that is when relief we can offer is needed. We may go over there to help rebuild, or help the refugees who come over the border, as of now I am not sure what our response will be. I do have some cool stories.

A friend of mine here, her mom was in Haiti. Her parents lived there for a while but now live in Georgia. They put together a medical mission team that specialized in leprosy, a disease that has infected many on our side of the island but is an epidemic in Haiti. Her mom led the team and was over there during the quake. After the earthquake happened the U.S. Embassy flew all the Americans out to New Jersey. Her mom made it out safely but in New Jersey was worried how she was going to front to cost of paying for a ticket to Georgia for that day. They local news station had been following them since before they left and when the earthquake happened they aired their story again. A woman in Georgia heard the story and paid for a jet to take the entire team from New Jersey to Georgia.

I don’t know if you will remember but a while back I talked about the directors son who got into an accident way back and damaged his leg so bad he could no longer walk correctly, the one that by a miracle a missionary hospital had the rare equipment and offered to do the surgery. Well on Thursday a guy with a really fat wallet walked in and paid whatever it took to help the transport all of their medical supplies and machines to Haiti to help out.

People’s responses to disasters shock me. Please keep praying for Haiti. So many of my friends have friends there and it is crazy stuff. Every day is a blessing.

What a crazy week it has been! This last week brought so many changes it seems like it has been a lot longer than just a week. Like I may have mentioned the branch of our ministry located in Indiana has shut down and all the willing staff from that branch were sent to ours. We got four more staff in the education department! It has been less than a week since they have been here but the relief has been huge! We were understaffed to say the least and all of us were stretched so very thin. It has been an awesome change and that was just the beginning I look forward to all the stuff that is going to change as they get more situated in!

This week was filled with a lot of stress with meeting new people and adjusting to all this change. My boss changed this week and I was the only person who didn’t know him. It was awkward because I have discovered I make a good third impression and usually blow it on the first two. I am working on this it is my hopes to make a good first impression because not everyone holds out for the third. This week I received a very encouraging note from one of my youth girls from back home, it made my day. Just thought I would throw a little recognition in here for you because you are awesome.

The best part of my week was Sunday! On Sunday a mission team from Colombia International University came and brought a breath of fresh air. They did a lot of work during the week for an extremely impoverished town and used our school as kind of a home base. They did minister to us and it was wonderful! They took over on Sunday! They brought their own worship team and the worship leader demanded the presence of God when she sang! She didn’t ask for it or hope for it, she demanded it. It was intense. Then they shared 3 testimonies that were also intense, here is how messed up my life was then God stepped in kind of testimonies. It was so good. It was one of those Sundays where God feels so close that you can reach out and touch Him.

This week is a short blog, just a quick read. Some prayer points would be for the house father I work for, please pray for encouragement for him. He is under a lot of stress lately and this week one of the students spilled coke on his computer, it was an accident. Pray that it is the cheap thing that needs to be replaced (when something breaks and someone gives you a quote it’s always well it could be your whole computer is ruined which would be $400 or your keyboard and that would be $40, pray for the $40!). Pray also for New Horizons, the ministry I work for as transition happens. As for me please pray joy over me and that I would learn to love God deeper this week. I miss you guys!

I have been here over six months! Wow! January first marked my 6 monthversary and everyone stayed up just to support me entering into my six month here, it felt like a holiday. Ha ok New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun but that is getting ahead of myself. It has been a little while since I have written. Christmas was really good, hard but good. I got pretty homesick but on the flip side, having been removed from the craziness that typically leads up to the holidays, this was one of the first Christmases where I pondered the impact of the Savior of the World being born had to this world. So that was pretty cool. Dominicans celebrate the 12 days of Christmas and today is only the 11^th day, I have yet to see turtle doves, French hens, pipers, or lords leaping, but tomorrow I fully expect 12 drummers drumming.

New Year’s Eve was fun we had a campus wide dinner and watched movies. The first movie was “kid” friendly so that some of the staff who had kids could be included. It was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which made me think of my nieces who I would normally be visiting this time of year. At about this time an adorable three year old girl named Gracie came up to me and asked if she could sit in my lap while we watch the movie. With a huge smile I said “ of course”.  It is crazy how God knows us so well and provides exactly what we need. After the second movie we counted down and watched for fireworks. The director set his clock to the official time, an atomic clock was involved it was pretty intense, however in proper Dominican culture the fireworks did not start until 5 minutes after 12.

This last week in Sunday School something really stuck out to me. In a discussion on pride this was said when you make yourself an idol someone will always treat you sac religiously, because you are not something to be worshiped. This echoed into my week at one point one of my students was really upset by something I had said and it lead into a bigger thing because at the root of everything I am not what you would call her favorite person. Some hurtful things were said but I walked away differently this time because I am not a thing to be worshiped. I valued what she said changed what I could and moved on.

My school week was pretty good, it was rough getting the new semester started but now I think we are going to start settling into the norm again. This semester I really wanted to work on doing thing right and humble. I heard someone say a few weeks ago that it’s not about not messing up; it’s what you do when you do mess up that matters. This is intense because sometimes I feel like I have to be perfect in front of my students because I am a walking example for Christianity. I have tried to say and do everything just the right way and beat myself up when I do something wrong. This week was different, I made sure to publically apologize to my class when I messed up, I also had to go back to a few students. It was hard but I think in the end I was a much better example. This was also a continued week of joy and that was so nice to have that random burst of energy when least expected is strange and awesome.

Please pray for continued Joy, I love this feeling. Please also pray for us as we switch around staff, things are going to look different and while I fully believe this change is going to be great all change takes work.

I miss you guys!

It was weird giving the finals this year and not taking them. It was kind of funny to see the look on the kids faces when upon passing out the normal weekly Bible quiz I pulled a fast one on them and told them it was over the entire Bible. The air was sucked out of the room, it was funny.

This week has been pretty good, it’s weird to write that because as I look back on some of the moments in the classroom I wouldn’t use the word “good” to describe it. As we get closer to the holidays, I have many students who have never been away from home so some chose to act out. It was weird though at the end of the day I had out of control joy, it felt like being a little kid and anticipating going to Bush Gardens tomorrow. It was 4 in the afternoon and I got a burst of energy and a smile that wouldn’t leave my face. It was weird…and awesome.  This happened on Saturday, which is even more of a miracle because honestly I make it few Saturday nights without sitting on my bed and crying. Saturday is a very stressful I have been working for over 12 hours kind of day. I like them, and they are enjoyable but just super stressful. Anyways so this Saturday again at 4 I was hit with a wave of joy that took me all the way until 9 that night. It was beautiful! I have been pondering as to why this is and let me tell you my hunch. Almost two weeks ago we got a couple who is volunteering out here; the husband is going to be our Chaplin. I am guessing that when the current sermon series is over he will begin to step in and do some preaching…so what do they do in the meantime? They pray. Weird I know but they pray all the time…first couple I have met that take “pray without ceasing” literally. They pray hard and specifically for the students to have a real relationship with Jesus, for the staff to feel joy and rejuvenation, for the program. It’s awesome. The other night they went up to the house I work for just to be around the kids more so they can better pray for them. I was talking with the pastor’s wife about stress and she said that one night she woke up feeling this heaviness of stress on her and she felt as though she needed to pray for that spirit of stress to be lifted from the campus. It has been really encouraging to talk with them and to know that we are constantly being coated in prayer. I believe that every ministry and Christian organization should have someone who’s job is to simply cover everything in prayer.

On the flip side of joy homesickness hit me really hard on Sunday, for Christmas for the last four years I have been going to my sister’s house for Christmas and not doing that is hard. I still love it here and know that I am supposed to be here but I deeply miss my parents, family, and friends. What I do like about Escuela Caribe is we have traditions for everything, for the holidays I have already been caroling! We got to go into some of the Dominican homes and attempt to sing Christmas carols in Spanish. It was a lot of fun and the first time I have been in a Dominicans home. Yesterday we distributed big bags full of food to families who live in houses that you would probably call a neat fort from your childhood, just whatever you can find nailed together. I have to tell you a funny story, one of the houses was up a crazy steep mountain. I wish I had a picture because it was Grand Canyon crazy switch back comparable but I know I know without pictures I am just a big fish kinda gal. Anyway I had taken time away from work to do this so I am in nice work clothes hiking this insanely steep dirt path. When we got up there it started to rain, which was awesome but when it was dry I was worried about how I was going to safely without staining my clothes get down and now I have to factor mud in….impossible. As we start heading down one of my students says from behind “Ms. Donohue, I am really worried about going down this mountain” to which I reply “don’t worry I am too” she said “yeah I am so terrified of heights” then I replied “…oh…um heights don’t do anything to me I am just worried about getting my clothes dirty” it was really funny. It was so awesome to see the look of hope on someone’s face, that joy that says its all going to be alright…I am going to make it. I got to see that 13 times yesterday; I got to hug these tiny frail, beautiful widows, widowers, and families. I think I am going to pocket that as one of the best moments here so far.

Today I was talking to Sandy (guest star in the adventures of last blog) and she said she was in town today and saw the Finish guys (guys from Finland) from our vacation. I hope you remember them they were the guys who would just randomly show up around the town and also told us about the hike. How random is it that Sandy saw them 6 hours away in our little town! I thought that was so crazy and I told her it was blog worthy.

I hope you guys can experience true joy this Christmas season! I love you and miss you guys!