Getting Settled

It’s been quite the experience here and today I have completed a week in Jarabacoa. It’s amazing how much a week has taught me already. The first day I got here I was pretty overwhelmed. I got into town around 10pm and made my bed, hung out with my roommates and headed to bed. As I sat on my bed I felt like everything hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that I was completely out of my comfort zone now. The ones that I have shared life with for the past 4 years are now thousands of miles away. I am now meeting those whom I will be sharing life with for the next 2 years if not more.

Training started the next day at 8:30am. My roommates and I walked to the school and it finally hit me that I was really in Jarabacoa. Dirt roads, homeless dogs, chickens, little children walking barefoot to the store, motorcycles everywhere and then all the sudden there was the school. I met the entire staff and we dove right into things and the director started talking about what the expectations were going to be for this year. My roommate, Johanna, showed me where my classroom would be and she told me that I needed to start decorating the room. Johanna left me in my room and as I stood by my desk and I realized “I am a teacher”. This was nothing of what I saw myself doing and now God has completely changed my desires and has put me in a spot where I daily have to surrender to him and completely trust and rely in Him.

This is my classroom! Almost done decorating!! :)

I have met some pretty awesome people here and I am really excited to be able to have them part of my life for a couple of years. Things have been pretty crazy around here. This past week has been filled with meetings and with training. I have worked in my classroom quite a bit and its almost ready to go! Today we have a meeting with the parents at 6:30pm. We were supposed to start school on Thursday but now it has been moved to Monday. They have made some changes to the school and are building a new cafeteria and remodeling bathrooms so we can’t start school yet because none of it is done. So this week will be filled with preparations for the next week which is nice but at the same time I was mentally ready to just get things going Thursday. Oh well now we have time to hang out with all the teachers and relax a little before chaos starts!

Sorry it took so long to update you guys!! We have lost power about twice a day since I got here and it has stormed every day. Thanks for all your prayers and support!

For all you who are still interested in helping out financially I now have a church will be doing my finances. Any donations please write checks out to College Park Missionary Church and leave the memo part blank and mail to:

Attn: Daniel Hunter

Ref: Melisa Gomez

College Park

2014 Liberty Drive

Mishawaka, IN 46545