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Showing posts from September, 2024

Stayin' Alive

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It's a quiet afternoon in the office as I put the finishing touches on plans for OIM's first foray into partnering with MOST Ministries on a short-term mission team. There's so much to tell before you'll get to hear about that, though.  The week before classes begin at the DR seminary is always set aside for "orientation." It's a chance for new and returning students to (re-)acclimate to student life, get to know each other and any new staff, and, oftentimes, benefit from some kind of practical skills enrichment. Pastor Fritzler opened last Monday's First Aid/Basic Life Support Training to the entire school, group home, and missionary community. I went because as someone who's regularly responsible for groups of extranjeros , I wanted to brush up on what to do if, God forbid, the unthinkable were to happen. It's been several years since my last CPH certification, and the recommendations are always changing with the times. I was also hoping we&

Painting the Forest For the Trees

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Lots of plates spinning around here, but I (mostly) set aside planning for an upcoming FORO and eyeglass team and running point as far as on-field orientation for four new families to help friends Kelsey & Franco get ready for baby girl Hernández. It took me ~45 minutes longer than it should have to get to their apartment in Santo Domingo Friday due to rain (as if I didn't get enough of that in Belize ), but we still got all of our catching up out of the way over a spaghetti dinner so we'd be ready to buckle down in the morning.  The plan: paint a pine forest on two adjacent walls in the guest-room-turned-nursery.  The work crew:  Turns out Franco is a sketching machine! We got off to a slow start prepping the walls, fiddling with the projector, projecting the image THREE separate times on the longer wall and figuring out how to make the seams look...seamless, and running to the store for smaller brushes - all before lunch.  Admittedly, I was questioning Kelsey's life c