Day 5 "Je suis un pamplemousse"

One of the obvious challenges when we come to a different culture is language.  Here in the Dominican Republic the primary language is spanish.  Some of the people down here also speak some english due primarily to the tourist trade.  In the Haitian neighbourhood where we're building and ministering to the folks here the primary language is Haitian (obviously) - a mix of french and creole.  But they also speak spanish.

So since we're here some of the folks are taking the opportunity to learn or extend their spanish.  This has caused no end of rolled eyes or even gut-busting laughs from our wonderful hosts.  For example (apologies to anyone out there who actually speaks or reads spanish):
"tengo mucho calor" : I am hot (as in it's hot outside)
"yo soy la patrocinadora de ____" :  I am the (female) sponsor of ______
"?como se dice esto en espanol?" : how do I say that in spanish?
"grande ponzu" : large tummy (some of us seem to get this a lot from the kids for some reason...)
"como te llamas?" : what is your name? (literally "what are you called?")
"cuantos anos tienes?" : how old are you? (literally "how many years do you have?")
...
But that's just part of the story.

One of the encouraging stories here involves Joselito - the son in the family that we're building the home for.  When the team was here in January building a home for another family he accepted Jesus into his heart.  When we came back now it was clearly evident that Jesus was alive and well in his life.  You could just see it in his smile, his attitude, just everything.  It's evident in his face.

It's great to see.  In the background is Benjamin (in the red shirt) our host, and Ventura who's our construction guy here.



Here's some more pictures for your enjoyment...

Here's Galen up in the roof.

And Andrew too...

We'll post more pictures as we can.

We've got the roof completely framed and the exterior walls completely up.  We start putting on roofing and siding tomorrow, and windows and doors arrive on Saturday.

It's late so we'll post more tomorrow.