La Semana Santa

Hola Todos,

Como estan? Bien? Espero todo bien. Ok I'll stop with the spanish. One thing that is going to be very hard for me to do when i get back to the states is to only speak in english. i use spanglish constantly. Well, we had our spring break this past week, called Semana Santa (Holy week). I found out that the DR doesnt really celebrate Easter. People went to church and treated it like a normal day. But on the weekend everyone flocks to the beach--so we did the same. Me, Casey, and Robin spent the whole weekend together. In Cabarete we danced to reggaeton and hip hop. It was the COOLEST thing because they had a bubble machine. I definitely danced and got completely covered in soapy bubbles. Sorry I didn't have my camera with me or I would've taken a picture. It was amazing. In Sosua (another beach) I saw a little Haitian boy playing by himself and his mom was ignoring him. Well, I really felt like I was supposed to go play with him. But like satan usually is, all i could think about is the doubts i had "he prolly doesn't speak english or spanish, he's fine by himself." but i went anyways and he speaks spanish. His name is Antonio. He is 9 years old and the look on his face when i asked him if he wanted to build a sand castle with me was priceless. He light up SOOO much! Definintely a divine moment that I'll always remember. The highligh of my weekend , by far. We ended up making a sand turtle that he named "cookie" lol.

Since the kids at the orphanage didn't have any plans this weekend we decided to throw them a pool party on sunday. They were sooo estatic that we came. Claudia was out of town so it was only me, Robin, and another girl named Elsie that I haven't talked about before. We had a blast. The bad thing is a handful of them have pink eye now. I tried hard not to touch my eyes just in case but I think I'm good. GREAT NEWS: I showed up to teach english on monday and the kids were ALL ready to go and behaved SOOO well. It was a complete miracle. It got so bad that last wednesday we told them we weren't going to show up because they didn't deserve it. What a complete turn around! also, claudia and I made the hard decision to separate the class into those who couldn't continue and those who could. The ones who aren't, are going to work with claudia because many of them either have ADD or major psychological problems or are traumatized from past experiences--whether that was sexual abuse, neglect, etc.

Thank you for all your encouraging emails. That really helped me and continues to help me all the time.

Ciao, Natalie

Prayer Requests:

1. I might be tutoring/teaching a 15yr old dominican girl english. I haven't gotten ahold of her yet though. Guidance and patience with her specific learning style (Tal, I'm becoming a teacher like you now...lol)

2. the kids at the orphanage that seriously need psychological help and counseling

3. the kids at the orphanage get rid of their pink eye

4. Praise: i lost my 10 pg spanish paper that i had already written and PRAISE GOD i put my disk drive into another computer and it came up. i didn't have to write it again!!! what a miracle!

5. Praise: i'm doing a lot better with temptation with boys YAY FINALLY! but please still pray for self control and the desire for me to follow God instead of the world in this way.