missionaryMAC

I went to my first destination wedding this weekend! I guess you can still call it that if I live  in the destination?  I've known Kelsey & Franco for about 2 1/2 years - ever since they started attending my local church. They're part of my small but treasured group of expat friends outside the LCMS missionary community. Kelsey is from the US and was on staff at Santiago Christian School (SCS); her husband Franco is Dominican but studied engineering in Michigan for several years.  Wedding fever started last month with a lovely bridal shower hosted by one of Kelsey's SCS colleagues. We played the newlywed game, wedding Jeopardy!, and hot potato with a bouquet of plastic flowers while trying not to melt in the afternoon heat.  The Cute Sundress Picture The Church Picture (I think we're laughing because right before this Val (far left) held up "her finger and her thumb in the shape of an "L" on her forehead"...for Lutheran...) My gift to the couple...

I'm not moving :) Buuuuuuuuut...I'm temporarily relocating :( I'll transition to a soon-to-be-vacated mission apartment in early July, head to Punta Cana and then on to the US for home service on August 2, and return to my temporary apartment until my landlord is ready to draft a new contract for "my" house. She continues to say the remodel will take an estimated "4 months," which would mean early November.  It's essentially the same  news that I was overjoyed about last Saturday yet a difficult pill to swallow for 2 reasons.  Early last week, there was a small chance my landlord would find another place to live during the remodel. Ever the optimist, I clung firmly to this.  My original conception of "temporarily relocating" has been rocked to its core. I will not be leaving wall hangings up and stowing some select off-limits items in one of the spare bedrooms. Rather, I'll be emptying the house completely and stripping it of fixtures ...

It's hot, and I'm not talking about my house while the oven was on for 7 hours making Oven Cooked Barbecue Brisket for tonight's all-team dinner.  I mean  that the DR is a hot-climate culture. I'll get there, though.  Tirzah and I went garage sale-ing and thrifting on Saturday. Sadly, no, garage sales are not a "thing" here unless you're a member of the Santiago, DR Missions Community Garage Sale Facebook group. Both of us are, so we hit four before heading to the mall for lunch and dress-hunting at a favorite secondhand clothing store.  Things I got for free: Scrabble Scramble A map of the West Indies (yes, I like maps, OK?) Things I bought:  Rummikub A 2nd (and smaller) cookie sheet One of those pouches that keeps your phone waterproof but still lets you take pictures A completely impractical summer party dress for a wedding a week from Saturday Neutral sandals (to go with the dress, but I was going to buy some anyway) AND Foreign to Familiar ! Foreign ...

I mentioned a few posts ago that I had news. Things have finally developed enough to share; in fact, it's gone from awful, distressing, sad news to the best news I heard all [yester]day:  I DON'T HAVE TO MOVE!!! The backstory is this: my  dueña (landlord) informed the mission's business office that I needed to move...by July 1...and I was crushed. My home here is a safe, comforting space to me that I continue to nest into . I wouldn't be the first missionary this had happened to, and I actually had an  oddly similar experience  in 2009 while serving as a GEO missionary in El Paso, TX, but my mind was immediately flooded with all of the reasons why I love my house and living anywhere else would be the worst fate imaginable.  I went from anger, to denial, to finally starting to notice things I would not  miss: the diseased palm tree in the front yard, the fluctuating water pressure, the wonky kitchen drawer. Talking through an action plan helped, too, but hi...

The last Sunday in May (pandemic day 439) was marked by celebration after celebration - in the Church, in the Dominican, in my local church, and at Concordia the Reformer Seminary: Trinity Sunday (yes, we said the Credo Atanasio in Spanish); Día de las Madres (Mother's Day);  2 Baptisms;   5 confirmations at Iglesia Luterana Cordero de Dios; and 8 graduations.  Chris & Jenn Gann are on staff at Santiago Christian School and have three kids: Calder, Ainsley, and Malachi. Calder and Malachi were received into the Lord's family yesterday! Later in the same service, Chris, Jen, Calder, Ainsley, and Nellie Fernández, an English teacher with the DRLM's in-house language institute, confirmed their faith in the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. The tradition at Cordero de Dios is to have a current member choose and read a verse for each confirmand. Pastor Fritzler asked me to do so for Calder; I almost said no since I barely know him, but a dear friend pointe...

I can check another item off my DR bucket list after this weekend: Montecristi. I didn't know much about this northwestern province on the border with Haiti, but I knew there was a mesa to climb with swings  at the top, so I was sold and worked together with Courtney to plan a 6-person getaway. We set out on Friday (pandemic day 430).  The tail car in our caravan: me (driving), Kelsey, Jess, and April. Montecristi is just over two hours from Santiago, and I could count the number of turns from my house to our Airbnb on one hand.  These aren't the swings, but we found these a short walk down the beach from our Airbnb. At high tide, they're surrounded by water.  Exploring what there is to see in town on Saturday morning.  One of Montecristi's most notable features is its clock tower. Remind you of the Eiffel tower? It was designed by the same engineer (Alexandre Gustave Eiffel).  Iglesia San Fernando as seen from the top. Saturday morning mass was underway, s...

A freeform trip to the capital on Saturday, pandemic day 424, was just the distraction I needed from some news I hope to share more about in the coming days. Tirzah, Courtney, and I followed the Krey guagua  down early with only an inkling of what was in store for us.  First up: help a couple of seminarians and an electrician get going on making a small apartment to the side of Iglesia Luterana Amigos de Cristo livable. We did more milling around than I would have liked but also unloaded paint supplies, drove to the hardware store, picked up lunch...and finally started prepping the walls to be painted to keep busy.   I hadn't laid eyes on this particular church in ???, so I enjoyed Regional Director Ted Krey's walking tour of recent facility upgrades and visions for the future. Imagine this lot as a community basketball court! Next: house [read: apartment] hunting! Soon, we hope, Rev. Lucas Elberhardt and his wife Agatha will get their visas and return from Brazil to...

A few weeks ago, my Bible study group talked about the conclusion of Paul's letter to the Colossians: a litany of people to greet or who send their greetings that usually gets glossed over. The author of our study, though, drew attention to the fact that each name represents an individual whom God purposefully included in Paul's cloud of witnesses so that the Gospel might be spread more effectively and further afield.  Colossians 4:15 introduces us to Nympha:  Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. The author held Nympha up as an example of biblical hospitality, asking "In what ways do we, as a congregation and as individuals, offer similar gifts of warmth, hospitality, and physical space today?"  My perspective on the question would have been much different had I been answering it from a conference room in the state-of-the-art ministry wing of my home congregation's towering edifice with its flagstone façade. Her...