We are home...

ok so our plans to post the video's didn't work, so I will be adding pics & video tonight :) Thanks for everyone's prayers & support, the trip went really great & and we can't wait to share more with you!

Greetings from the DR!

So we have been here for 3 days (including our travling day. Saturday we left at 5:30 to get to Dulles airport, flew out at 8am, had a short layover in San Juan, and finally arrived in La Romana around 2ish. I slept the entire time so it went very quickly. We checked into our rooms at Casa de Campo & went to the pool right away - we knew this would be our only chance and it was great!

Sunday, we met with some girls that have been volunteering at the orphanage & compared notes about our needs and goals for our work there. They have been working with SCORE a group that has been working with the orphanage and they are gathering information about each orphan so that they can try to set up a sponsorship program. We ran lots of errands and then headed back to the hotel. Kevin and I squeezed 2 hours of beach time in at Playa Minitas which was SO beautiful! We even got a little bit tan - just a little though :) We then all took a few hours to visit the kids at the orphanage. It was a lot of fun to play with all of them and see how they are all getting so big - this is our third year here & some of the kids have changed so much. Also, the property has really grown - a new laundry/shower facility & the church and tech school is mostly finished. They have a ceramics teacher there that is teaching them a lot of cool things & one of the women at Casa de Campo is selling some of their pottery at the Marina & her store at the airport.

Today, Monday, we had a lot of planning for the girls retreat to get done. We are leading 2 sessions - one about the family & one about marriage. After that we went to Altos de Chavon, a great cobblestone village on the Casa de Campo property for lunch.

Tonight we went to 4 of the girl's graduation - it was of course a million degrees in the gym! All the girls were very dressed up (they wear what we would consider prom dresses under their grad gowns) & then we took them out to a fancy pizza place called Limocello's that was at the Casa de Campo marina. Afterwards we took them for ice cream & then gave them some "driving" lessons on our golf carts. Zuleika & Yulissa took turns racing around a parking lot :)

All right, that's it - we have a lot of errands to run tomorrow & logistical stuff to get done before all the teens (150 of them) come to town.

Thanks for everyone's prayers!!!

DR here we come...

We are off to the DR (in less than 5 hours). Please keep checking back, we'll be posting videos during the week (well we will try to anyways :)

Thanks for everyone's support!!!