Seeing Both Sides to a Rainy Day

At the current moment I am exhausted. The end of my weeks are intense I work Sunday night through Tuesday at 1pm which is the time it is now. I am beat. So I am going to try to jazz up my life with this blog after which I will need to go on a run (hopefully in the rain, the clouds are currently rolling in) to get my energy up.
So I had another good week with the girls learning what my new role is going to look like. I realized a lot of crazy things. The way we do things here is when a student breaks a rule they get exercises right away, it is usually a couple pushups or something like that. My role as a group leader is to come alongside of them and help them, so I do their exercises with them, sometimes for them, I make sure they are following the rules, I help negotiate for them. It is so crazy to defend someone the world has basically said you don’t deserve to be defended. To offer grace to those that don’t deserve it. It is so crazy to be doing this on such a small scale compared to the lengths God goes to do it for us. What is really weird is you would think that on our shifts, when the group leader is on by themselves that the kids would be perfect because we constantly have their back, but it is the opposite. Instead the students continue to see what they can get away with much like the way I abuse grace. These are things I have been pondering this week.
I have had some great conversations with my students! My favorite was on Sunday night after a controversial sermon at church that morning my girls wanted to know what I thought about it. It was a really great conversation that covered a lot about theology and the character of God. It was really awesome.
Prayer requests for this week! My girls are struggling, yesterday we discovered a bunch of information about stuff they had been doing and hiding. They are not in a good place right now. Pray for the ministry as we come up with a plan of action as well as pray for the girls that Jesus would bring redemption up in this place. Pray for me as I have been struggling emotionally this week, I am just tired, it is really hard not having a computer and not getting to talk to my family. I think it is really starting to ware on me.
Next week I will be going on vacation to the beach, so I will not be writing in my blog, but I will fill you in when I get back

This has been a crazy week! A lot of change! I am now a groupleader and no longer a teacher! What is a groupleader? Well let me fill you in. A groupleader lives in the house and is on the houseteam (a houseteam is a house mother, father, and groupleader) and their role is to be a big sister for the girls and to help them out. It is kind of hard to explain but the housefather is the authority, what he says goes and the groupleader is the one who says things like “oh you better pick up your things so they don’t get confiscated!” or “let me help you so you are not late on your chores”.
I could see this change coming for a long time and let’s just say God totally worked a miracle! When I came back from vacation I began to put puzzle pieces together and came to the conclusion that I was probably going to get asked to be the groupleader. My initial response was HECK NO! I love being a homeroom teacher! I was so scared to leave that and move into the unknown world of homelife. Slowly God spoke to me and I slowly let go of every reason of why I didn’t think that would be a good idea. Truth is the homeroom teacher is no longer a position, things are changing and so it’s just no longer needed. The way things are moving I don’t think I would be very useful in the education department, especially not having a teaching degree. That was the biggest one and hardest reason why I didn’t want to do this and when I finally let it go and began to really examine my role here the decision became easier.
I moved onto campus yesterday and worked my first shift. It was actually awesome. I built good relationship with some girls that I would have never gotten to build as a teacher and that was awesome. As a teacher I am the enforcer so it is hard to hand out exercises and then come back and ask how Jesus and them are doing. They are having a super hard time calling me Heather and not Ms. Donohue (I can not tell you how excited I am to have my name back)
So those are my thoughts so far. I will keep you guys posted; please pray for me I think God is going to do SO much with me in the house. Pray for the students as transition is always a struggle but that out of that transition things would begin to be good. Thanks!
Oh yeah I almost forgot! I bought a motorcycle and am working this week in continuing to learn to drive it and getting the title. Check facebook for a picture!

so this is going to be short for a few reasons all falling under the umbrella of my computer is sick and will be gone for the next 6 weeks. So my blogs may no longer be consistent. This one is brought to you by my friends Mac and those are really intense to get used to…but I did learn this week how to right click so maybe in the future (depending on how well HP continues to treat me and Taco) I will convert over to being a Mac user.

Anyway this week was great, I did a lot of yard work with my students! When I got back things were pretty crazy and so my focus was to pray for my girls and to challenge them. It was so awesome to raise the bar and watch them totally go for it. God really restored my heart for them! I had a lot more joy this week and I am totally blaming that on the fact that I was super consistent in my prayer time and running. I learned how crucial it is for me to run and pray so that I can deal with my stress in a much better way! It has helped so much.

Already I need to give up this computer so I will end with my big news! Within this week if things go as planned I am going to buy a motorcycle! My roommate made me an offer I couldn’t refuse! So I will be buying her bike and today we had our first lesson! It was so exciting! Good news, I didn’t actually hit anyone! I can dangerously close though. I got all the way up to 3rd gear! I only stalled it a couple of times! I even went down this curvy road after a little while. I still need a lot more practice but it was one great start! Maybe I will write next week if I get a chance! Keep me in your prayers, joy with my girls and new ways to challenge them!

I have a follow up story to the hotdog on a stick post! This week I went with the students back to Awesome (see previous posts for a description of this wonderful place) and we were in a huge assembly line throwing rocks to each other to pass up to a pile. I was standing on a slippery surface and inevitably I fell. As I was lying on the ground the girl whose face I burned with a hotdog threw a rock my way without looking. I jokingly let her know that throwing a rock at your poor teacher who fell totally makes up for burning her face with a hotdog. It was funny.
It has been so crazy! Ever since I have gotten back it has rained every day, ok not yesterday and so far not today…but other than that for the last 2 weeks it has rained every day! I didn’t even know this was possible. One day it was so gloomy all day and while I was working on cleaning a moldy driveway with my students all the sudden a small blue sky patch formed in the sky and I quickly screamed “girls come quick soak up your vitamin D!” they came running and we all squeezed into the small patch of sunshine before it began raining buckets of water 5 minutes later.
When I was in the States God really took some time to speak to me. He filled me in on some things that He wanted to focus on this year in my life. I want to tell them to you so I can share what God has taught me. Really it came down to two huge things that really cripple me in my walk, one is people pleasing and the other is stress. These are things that I have been aware are huge problems but on my vacation Jesus was like oh no! those have got to go! I remember I was convicted about the people pleasing one when I was driving and I began to hope that the person behind me thought I was a good driver, sick I know…I need help! Pride has defiantly wrapped its ugly little fingers all over me and produced a monster. So after spending some good time in prayer asking God how He wants me to go about them He very clearly showed me this was going to be learned through situations. Since I have gotten here God has attacked the people pleasing problem (p3) when after an intense situation I was far more concerned with what others thought of me when God stopped my thoughts and asked me to focus on seeking what He thought about the situation. It has been a lot of stopping my thought process and redirecting it. As far as the stress goes there has been plenty to stress out about since I have gotten back! In the midst of drowning myself in the what-if thoughts God again stopped my thoughts and asked do you trust Me? Those words took my breath away. This week has been a series of repentant prayers of God I am sorry I don’t trust you to take care of me; sorry I don’t trust that you know what is best for me, please teach me to trust. One thing can be said for sure about the D.R., God is alive and intense here!
Prayer request!!! Please pray that God would help me in changing my mindset in helping me my p3 and stress situation. Speaking of stress my computer is causing me all kinds of problems again I am sending it in to HP, please pray that they send me a different computer it is clear I own a bad egg. With that I will not have my own computer for the next six weeks, please pray for my sanity. Pray also for my girls they are really struggling right now, it is a huge time of transition and they are struggling to handle the transition well.

Wow what a month it has been! I have to share with you some funny thoughts! Transitioning back to life in the US was a little weird…which was weird. When I got to the airport in Santiago a really weird thing happened, I saw all these white people and immediately began to wonder where I knew them from. After racking my brain trying to find any little hint that would clue me into the ministry they work for I realized that I was not in Jarabacoa anymore. You see in the town I live in, just about every American is someone you know. I had to remind myself that I will no longer know every white person I see. It was weird. Adjusting to the craziness of America was fun and awesome. Being able to drive to a grocery store find everything I could ever want and more, put the things in my trunk and drive home was really nice. I got a little overwhelmed at the amount of choices Wal-Mart offered.

My vacation was awesome, not long enough but awesome! I am so glad I got to talk to so many people, to spend time with close friends where you can just pick up where you left off is awesome! Getting to see my nieces, my family, friends, and my best friend get married was pretty much the best equation for a wonderful month. Getting back on the plane to come back here was hard…not seeing my nieces for a year is torture.

My transition back here has been a little rough for various reasons but I think I might be past the rough patch. I do love that I have so many great friends here! That has made it easier. I have a funny story and then I am going to call it a night, sorry for the briefness but I am still trying to adjust back into being here. This week I went on a trip with my students to Monte Christi…it was beautiful! Hopefully I will post pictures soon on facebook to give you an idea it was like Arizona with a beach…yes desert meets beach. So after a long day we light a fire in a wind storm and are all huddled around it cooking hotdogs. Something you should know about me is that I am really dangerous when it comes to carrying hot things, put them on a stick and I don’t stand a chance. So after cooking my hotdog I pull it off the fire and before I know what’s happening I burn one of my students forehead with the hotdog! I brush the ash off ask her if she is ok she says it stings but it will be ok. I felt SO bad. The next morning when she woke up she had a little blister on her forehead where I burned her. I felt even worse! I have to say it was really funny to overhear this conversation “what happened to your forehead?” “Ms. Donohue burned me with a hotdog”. Even writing it makes me laugh!

Please be praying for my heart to be where I am! Homesickness is a hard one to fight off right now. Also pray for our ministry as big decisions are being made, pray that we would make them with God’s guidance and wisdom. Pray for my students they are struggling right now as many staff are coming and going as they take their vacations. Thank you for your prayers!