Entry Into Nagua

Hi everyone – here is a quick update on our travels/progress so far - We drove for two hours from Santiago to Nagua, almost always able to see the beautiful mountains in the distance. None of the potholes were large enough to swallow us whole. We are thankful to the Lord for safe travels!

We are living together (the 10 of us) in a house just on the edge on Nagua. We are within walking distance from one of the main streets of the town, so I walked into town yesterday to get some errands done. Nagua truly gives the full flavour of the Dominican Republic. Very friendly people, motos (motorcyles) and pasolas (mopeds) everywhere, no stop signs or working traffic lights, and very spanish. I think we are the talk of some parts of the town. Seeing a white person in Nagua is very rare. I think they get a kick out of our attempts at spanish (and our totally non-Dominican accent when we say things right). But what an amazing feeling to walk through the streets and smell the smells of the Dominican, smiling and greeting passersby (and almost always getting a smile and greeting back). I pray that with every meeting we have with the wonderful locals, they would sense the love of Christ in us, and that many opportunities would come to share with them about the Lord.

Getting my cell phone hooked up took a couple trips. After waiting in line for awhile, I reached the guy at the desk (who we later befriended and should be coming to the beach to play football with us one of these days) only to discover I needed another piece of ID that I didn't have. That is kind of normal here – things usually take anywhere from two to ten times longer to accomplish down here. The laid-back attitude is wonderful!

After several trips (3 or more...) to the local ferreteria (hardware store) for lumber for shelves in our house, I think they must be wondering what these white missionaries are doing with so much wood. :) Met a couple guys there... one of them, Manuel, is working on learning English as I am workingon my Spanish. So he was trying to speak English to me as I was trying to speak Spanish to him. Both of us need to practise more. We are having a great time, praise God! We are just in the process of getting some transportation for myself and Adrian. By Monday we hope to begin travelling and networking with pastors along the coast here.

I have also learned that Nagua is the wettest part of the whole country. I guess that would be the reason that it rains every two or three hours. But the weather is beautiful. Winter with 70-80 degrees... can't complain at all. The ocean is a little walk from us so I will probably head down there later this afternoon.

More updates to come... thanks for your prayers! It is very neat being a part of a fresh, new work here. We are prayerfully discussing strategies of how we can best partner with the pastors that we will meet, in all the areas we intend to travel to... more on than later.

To see Jesus' Name lifted high,

Ryan

PS - I will send more pictures and details later... right now I am sitting in an internet cafe somewhere near downtown Nagua.