Safely Home!

I am safely home, protected by angels and God’s grace once again. Apparently my decision to return home quickly was a wise one. I spent most of yesterday driving around town to different sectors of the hospital and seeing different doctors. I then proceeded to collapse onto the couch and finally sleep for a few hours. Placing a cast on a knee injury-especially before a plane ride-is the worst thing you can do. Apparently enclosing an area that is still swollen and will swell more during a plane ride is dangerous and can lead to blood clots, which can cause strokes and heart attacks. It was probably a blessing in disguise that I had the meanest flight attendants of my life that refused to allow me to sit in the promised seat with more legroom and I was forced to stuff my cast and all under the seat for 3 hours. If I hadn’t been so uncomfortable (periodically sticking my leg into the isle) and squirming to keep the swelling down and the blood flowing I might have really been in a real pickle. I “missed the bullet” on that one as my doctor put it. I am feeling incredible fortunate at the moment to have wonderful parents that are willing and able to look after me, a father that knows a quality orthopedist (bones and joints doctor), US health insurance, caring friends and family, and a quality education. The best orthopedist at the newest and most modern hospital in the province around Jarabacoa was dead wrong---dangerously wrong about my knee injury. I wonder how many Dominicans are unable to recover from their injuries because they didn’t receive proper medical care. Proper medical care would require a quality education which seems to be difficult to find in the DR since the doctor I saw was trained in the capital (where the best schools are). He was a nice man and obviously did his best to help me, but medical training in the DR seems to need an upgrade. This all leads me back to believing that the quality education that Doulos is providing could truly change the DR for the better. Anyway, it is looking like my ACL is severed and that I will need surgery, but I wont know until next week after an MRI and a few more doctor visits. I am very relieved to be home even though I will miss my students and friends in the DR. I will keep you all posted. Thank you for all of the encouraging messages and prayers.

Adventure in Sports Medicine?

So um…………my adventures in medicine continue. The discovery channel filming on Fronton Beach was amazing. I will post more about that later. In my attempts to play more soccer with my students I have wrecked my knee. I was going for the goal and thought I had successfully stolen the ball when a flurry of legs crashed with mine. My left leg was hit from the side and I fell pretty hard. I did a classic fetal position clutching my knee and had the new experience of being picked up and cared for by my students---pretty humbling. After icing it Friday night, I was unable to walk Saturday morning and the knee was badly swollen. A friend of mine took me to the newest hospital in the largest town in this province (Santiago-about an hour away). I seem to have ruptured several ligaments and my leg has been put in a cast for a month or so. For those of you that enjoy gross medical things, my friend Laura did manage to catch a picture of the doctor sucking all of the bloody fluid out of my knee. Since treatment, physical therapy and a reliable doctor are not readily available in Jarabacoa, I will be returning to the US this Tuesday. I am disappointed to leave in the middle of the semester, but if the ligaments don’t heal properly I will need surgery and am not willing to risk my leg on an unknown doctor with variable training. The new art teacher will be taking my place on the upcoming weeklong hike up Pico Duarte (highest mountain in the Caribbean) with the 10th and 11th graders. I will be staying with my parents in Champaign while my leg is in a cast for the next month and then another month of physical therapy. I will still be writing lesson plans for the school while a substitute will be teaching my classes. I am hoping to make a speedy recovery and return to the DR at the end of 2 months. At the very least I will return to the DR at the beginning of January for the Spring Semester. Prayers for safe travels—(especially traveling alone with a full leg cast through 3 airports), a full recovery without surgery, finances, and the hole I will be leaving in the teaching staff at Doulos. I am once again reminded of God’s grace as good friends have helped me in numerous ways and am extremely thankful that I have access to quality medical care. I am also thankful that my wonderful parents are willing to look after me for the next 2-3 months. The amazing ministry of Doulos will continue to flourish while I am gone, and I look forward to returning to it as soon as possible.

Surviving the Storms

I just wanted to calm everyone’s fears about the current hurricanes. There have been three hurricanes in a row, but so far there has been nothing like the devastation along the coasts that last years’ hurricanes caused. The Northern beaches have been damaged in the DR, but most of the damage occurred in Haiti. My house in Jarabacoa is high and dry for the most part. The roof leaks (only in a few places) and we lose power when there is a storm, but we are quite safe. Jarabacoa is a mountainous town that is safely tucked into a valley near the highest peak in the Caribbean, which I will be climbing with my 10th and 11th graders in a few weeks. There is some flooding and the potential for damage from the coming hurricane Ike.
Doulos’s work with Reef Check to study coral reefs has also come to the attention of the Discovery Channel. Weather permitting, I will be traveling to the East coast with 7 students to run a small camp studying the reefs so that the Discovery Channel can film it. It is very exciting and I hope that everything works out. Prayers for the people along the coast that are more affected by the hurricane and for safe travels this week would be appreciated.

Serving as a boat captain??

The school year has started with an amazing and intense week of staff training. We have one week left of training, preparations, and meetings before over 200 students will descend upon the school on August 18th for the first day of classes. The staff has grown to contain 47 members from a variety of nations and backgrounds.

The first week of staff training was focused on experiential learning and how to implement it. The training was truly inspiring and very practical. We started out with a day of workshops where all staff (including maintenance and office staff) participated in a variety of activities where they played the role of a student while learning background knowledge about coral reefs and their importance to the Dominican Republic. We then traveled to the coast of the island and took a boat out to Catalina Island to snorkel above some of the DR’s most beautiful coral reefs. Several members of the staff had never seen real corals and had not realized the state of their islands reefs and their importance. After viewing the amazing reefs, we pilled back into the bus to visit a local fishing village. Reef Check (an international reef conservation agency) has been working for years to create the DR’s first underwater marine sanctuary. The sanctuary is long overdue and the islands reefs are dangerously damaged. The local fishing village has banded together and with the education and guidance of Reef Check has agreed to set aside a portion of their fishing area to protect the reefs and conserve fisheries for future generations. The staff spent several hours talking to the fishermen about the government involvement in the problems of over-fishing and their hopes for the marine sanctuary. Talking to individuals that were personally affected by the destruction of the reefs and thus the local fisheries made the entire learning experience come alive and the staff developed a new passion for coral reefs and for the power of expeditionary learning. To complete the learning experience, the staff has begun working on educational signs that will be placed in the local park to help protect it from additional damage by tourists. I will be working with the sixth grade again to make additional signs. Instead of a long and dry workshop on how to teach experiential learning, the staff participated in the process and was thus inspired. The experience also helped to bond the staff together and create new friendships as well as an unforgettable experience.

Check out my web album for more fun pictures of our adventurous staff training (I recommend the slide show option).

Back in the DR!

I have safely returned to Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic! I arrived late Monday evening and was warmly greeted by my downstairs neighbors at the airport and started work at Doulos at 8AM Tuesday morning. It was hard to leave my wonderful friends and family, but I was delighted to have the chance to come home and visit people. My apartment was dusty, but with no major mishaps after being empty for most of the summer. My other two roommates (the kindergarten teacher and the high school English teacher) have also safely returned and we are all glad to be settled into an apartment for the year. I am delighted to have a more manageable teaching load and hopefully have time to develop the high school science curriculum and spend more time getting to know my students outside of class. I will be teaching ninth grade Physical Science, tenth grade bible and biology (I taught this last year), eleventh grade chemistry, and a health class (for one semester). I am delighted to have been able to bring back a variety of donated science supplies. I will be sending out a supply list later this semester once I build the new curricula and determine what else I will need. I have been healthy all week and even had enough energy after a long week to hike up a river! Praise the Lord for good health—please pray that it continues. My other major prayer requests are for funding, wisdom and patience with my students and myself as I teach three new classes this year. I will also still be assisting our new middle school science teacher with the middle school expeditions that I developed and taught last year. My prayer requests are listed in the margin (scroll down) of this blog and will be updated throughout the year. I know that God is going to teach me many new things this year and I am thankful to be part of the ministry at Doulos for another year and be able to see how the students and staff grow in Him.

Learning to Serve

True to its name, Doulos (translated as slave of Christ) dedicated the last three days of school to service projects. One of the goals of the school is to cultivate a joyful servant heart in its students. If we are trying to help students become leaders in Christ, we need to teach them to serve like Christ first. I was initially apprehensive to spend three solid days with my rowdy 7th and 8th graders on a service project, but my excitement for an opportunity to serve the community with my students grew as the week approached. After a heated and boisterous debate, my crew of middle school students decided to visit the local school for students with disabilities. Our project for the week was to paint the playground wall white and then help the students in the school paint their hand print and name on the wall.
A brief snapshot of the experience:
After pilling into a local taxi, the fearless 7/8th grade crew was off serve! Armed and dangerous with scrub brushes, brooms, and an assortment of buckets we were ready for day 1: cleaning mold, moss, and other green growths from the playground wall. An excited bunch of students welcomed us at the gate and proceeded to give us a tour of the school. Our first morning was filled with complaints from some, joyful song from others, and a stream of humor from my class clowns. By mid-morning our wall was somewhat clean and we spent the rest of the time playing with the disabled students in the school. I challenged my students to focus on befriending one student with disabilities and learning to love and understand them as another person, not just a kid with disabilities. Bouncing balls in all directions (at times dangerously close to the clean and wet wall), jump ropes, gleeful giggles, and other thrown objects filled the air.



The first day was a bit rocky, but after much prayer, patience and explaining, my students were carefully and joyfully playing with students with a wide range of abilities by the last day. The playground wall is now complete with a colorful array of handprints and my students have learned a little more about what it means to serve. I was overjoyed to see some of my rowdiest and most impatient boys carefully teaching some of the younger children with disabilities how to throw a ball and hugging them when it was time to leave.

It has been a challenging year, but I can already see fruits from Doulos’s steady focus on service, leadership, and experiential learning, all to impact the Dominican Republic for Christ. I am blessed to already be able to see my students changing. They are growing in their faith as well as becoming more patient, loving, and kind. I myself am learning more about the same things from my students and from the community I live in.

Caving with 7th Graders???

My recent adventure with seventh grade was perhaps my greatest challenge and triumph of the year. I recovered from the amoeba and started gaining weight back, just in time to take my seventh graders caving. Teaching five different grades (6-10) does have its benefits; when one class is struggling, another class is usually doing well. Seventh grade has been my devotionals class and consistently my most troubled class; there are more students in danger of failing out of seventh grade than any other grade in the school, these students have the greatest behavior problems, and are the most exhausting for me to teach. I have grown to love them as individuals, but as a class they aren’t even nice to each other. In seventh grade science, we are currently in the midst of our expedition on caves. In the hopes of creating a bonding and challenging experience, I decided to take the seventh grade class on an adventurous caving trip. I hired the adventure leader from the local Young Life Camp (Laura) to guide us through the caves. We headed out from the school at 6:45AM and drove 3 hours to a relatively unknown and unexplored cave. Unfortunately, the caves on the island are in danger of destruction due to the massive amounts of mining for limestone. The mining actually prevented our van from driving up the mountainside. We were forced to pile out and hike up in the midday sun. A local police truck took pity on our straggling group and allowed us to pile into the back for a ride. The cave entrance was amazingly beautiful; complete with ancient Taino Indian Paintings, a wide-open chamber with sun pouring in from the roof, and moss covered walls. The descent into the cave was two 30-40 foot rappels. The open area of the cave was scattered with piles of limestone, bat bones, snake-skins, and fallen crystals. As we traveled deeper into the cave, we entered into a treasure chest of crystal formations, moon ponds, stalactites, stalagmites, exotic cave spiders, and small flying bats. I was just as excited and awed as my students and was delighted that they were finally looking after each other and making sure their partner didn’t fall down or get lost. I suppose necessity is the best teacher. The ascent was challenging and I ended up having to pull several students up the last bit of the climb. At the end of the day, we had all learned something about caves, ourselves, and what it means to overcome an obstacle or fear. Check out my web album for some awesome caving pictures!