Friday, March 27, 2009

Thoughts from Josh...

I have had some interesting transportation issues happen to me the last couple days. While I was riding my moto up to a work site I noticed that my front brake was not working all of a sudden. Not the most comforting thing to notice when I am going down hills. I was not sure what happened at the time and I figured as long as the back break works I will be fine, so I continued on. As I got closer I saw a lady that I got to know from working last year and offered to give her a ride on my moto to her house. After dropping her off and about to leave she noticed that my front brake had fallen off and was barely hanging there by the cords it was attached to. In typical Dominican fashion she got someone, a boy that maybe was 15 to fix my bike for me. I was very thankful for that because I had no clue how to fix it.

Today, I was driving three students that work in our Health Care site to the clinic to get some supplies and then to transport them to their work site. During the car ride one of the girls was asking me about traffic laws and other things related. I basically told her that there is not a whole lot of rules like in the states but that they do have rules but they are rarely enforced.

Well, on the way to the work site (I prolly should not be sharing this because some of you might think less of me but anyway...) I decided to take a little short cut and go down a one way street...one of the students mentioned this fact and I told her very confidently that "the rules are more of guidelines." As I turned and got back on the right road there was some police officers who promptly waved me over to the side. We said our hello's to each other and then he started talking about something and I just gave him a blank stare, told him I don't speak Spanish and did not understand and he let us go right away.

Anyway, things are going well with the teams that we are working with. Our 3rd outreach is almost over and we have now worked with about 130 students or adults since we have been here. It has been very cool for Vicki and I to see the impact that the ministry at Students International has on the people that come on short term trips. At the end of every outreach, they turn in evaluation sheets and we really get to see how God has been working in everyone's life.

3 comments:

Russ said...

The blank stare is recognized in over 1000 languages, luckily. ;)

Deborah said...

How cool to live in a place where everyone helps everyone!

Just out of curiosity, could you understand any of what the police was saying? :-)

Thanks for your thoughts Josh!

Josh said...

No I couldn't understand what he was saying after he greeted me. I wasn't really trying that hard to understand anything though. I did hear him say something about the Americans in the car though. Something about having "tres americanos" and to that I just nodded. Other than that I did not understand much. :)