Live from Santiago! James Marcus Koster has Arrived!

March 23, 2012  8:05 AM, HOMS Hospital, Santiago de los Caballeros

On Thursday, March 22, I had visited my doctor for what would be my last doctor's appointment before baby was born. She told me that late Thursday afternoon that she figured I was very close to giving birth, March 23rd also being my due date according to the ultrasound.  Well, she was quite right, for contractions were building pretty steady during the night following. So, here (in the picture) I am, together with my friend, Linda Riegsecker, (she is the school nurse at SCS), on Friday morning, March 23rd, ready to be admitted at HOMS hospital for the birth of our little Dominican.

3:38 pm EST. James Marcus Koster is here! Great thankfulness to our great God and Father fills our heart for having made everything very well. A beautiful and healthy baby boy of 7 pounds. Dr. Santillan and the nurses were so helpful and encouraging through the labour process, and the medical attention at HOMS is outstanding for a developing country.

Here we are after having comfortably settled our hospital maternity family room.

We are all so happy with our new Dominican little brother!

"Going home! Yeah, I am getting a free ride in a wheelchair with my mom!"

"Here I am with my daddy outside the HOMS hospital". 

"Hi, this is me, James Marcus, on Sunday afternoon. I love laying very quietly and looking around the room."

"My sister, Kaelie, is very happy with me. She always wanted a puppy, but she has quite forgotten about it since I have arrived. She is already helping my mom by running for a diaper and the wipes and she holds me very well when I am with her on the couch."

 "And my brother Tais thinks I'm very cute. He was hoping that I was a boy before I was born."

"This is the best way to get your daily dose of Vitamin D!" Just go up on the roof of our apartment, and soak up a few healthy Caribbean sun rays. Madison, my mom's friend, was waiting for me for a long time, and she has come almost every day this past week to take a look at me and hold me for a while. I love Madison."

"I sleep under a net to keep out the skeeters. Not that I am worried about them too much, since my dad put screens in the windows, but you never know of course. I think I might have heard one the other night, but he could not get in. Too bad. They can be pretty nasty I've heard. So, thankfully I am sleeping very well through the night. I wake up for a little 'leche' around five usually, and then I crash again till the birds are chirping loudly outside my window."

James (Santiago) Marcus Koster

Winter in Santiago

Sunset over Santiago (from off our balcony)

The winter months in the Dominican Republic are simply perfect when it comes to temperature and weather. You don’t have to worry about getting out of bed in the morning and stepping on a cold hardwood floor and rushing for the thermostat to get the furnace going, no worries about scraping car windows, no forecasts to listen to of sleet and rain that lasts for days. The temperatures are around the mid-twenties during the day, with an occasional shower here and there, a light breeze most days, but always a guarantee when it comes to sunshine. Beautiful, amazing.

Our Christmas holidays were wonderful. We tried to keep ourselves fairly busy for the first few days, especially Christmas Day and Boxing day, so as not to feel lonely being away from our families in Chilliwack. We had a nice Christmas evening, however, at the house of the Cohens (the director of SCS) together with many other SCS staff and their families. We sang Christmas carols, read Bible passages about the advent and birth of the Saviour, and at the end of the evening we sang Silent Night while standing outside under the stars and everyone holding a small candle.

On Tuesday evening, December 27, we picked up Jonathan and Jennifer Gelderman and their children at Santiago airport. It’s so much fun to get visitors! Mattais and Kaelie were also very excited to have William and Annaliese come and stay with them in our apartment, the first visitors which are close to them in age!

Annaliese, Kaelie, Mattais and William

When you have visitors, you have a wonderful opportunity to go exploring and sightseeing, so we decided Wednesday morning that we might as well get started immediately. Our initial plan of ‘getting to the cacao plantation by eleven’ became a wonderful drive through the country between here and San Francisco de Marcoris, about an hour from here. The rice fields around San Francisco are beautiful, stretching for miles, and the groves of orange and cacao trees create an inviting farm community atmosphere. Although the cacao plantation was not open in its entirety, we did get to admire the cacao trees and their seed pods full of cacao beans which take many months to mature, and ate as much free chocolate as we could, since we have not forgotten our Dutch roots after all. The kids really enjoyed the little puppies that freely ran around at the plantation. 

Rice fields around San Francisco de Marcoris

Pure delight! Kaelie and a puppy.

Master stackers of rice.

Back to La Vega --New Hope Girls' Academy

With Joy and Vidal Reyes and several others we had planned a Christmas gift bag walk through the barrio near the New Hope Girls’ School, and so on the Thursday morning we set out for La Vega. At the New Hope Girls’ School we filled twenty-five beautiful nylon shopping bags with rice, beans, oil, tomato sauce, a roll of salami, and packages of chicken bouillon, all as a Christmas gift to the families of the girls which attend the girls’ school. The walk through the barrio was quite the task, since part of the barrio is found up in the hillsides near the school. The hike was very rewarding, however, every bag being received with happy smiles and words of thanks. We saw a lot of poverty. On the hillsides, some people live in shacks built from sticks and large flattened out tomato-paste and canola-oil cans (pretty nifty idea, nonetheless!) and some children walk around with little to no clothes on their bodies.

Jonathan with some of the Christmas bags

We really enjoyed doing what we did, and yet, giving somebody a bag of food is not the best way to make a difference, even though it feels good. It’s the pointing in the right direction, the guidance, and the modeling of right Christian values and morals that will help these people on their way. It is exactly that which is going to make a difference in this country, and anywhere else in the world for that matter. Like the Chinese saying goes, ‘Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime.’ That is why the work at the New Hope Girls’ School is so important, and in getting the local community involved, Dominicans themselves will hopefully begin to see the value of what is happening in this place.

Anthony and Vidal

The sandal shop

It was really nice to see the place where several women of the barrio make fancy sandals, to be sold for a reasonable price in order to pay for their families’ expenses. This is a wonderful and rewarding alternative for these women, who in many other cases sell their bodies as prostitutes in order to make due. We also saw a large number of men working on constructing an entirely new level to the already existing parish school and church, all of which is managed by the Roman Catholic priest of the barrio. This man has done a lot of good to this small community, from providing good education to building small but sturdy little homes for the people in the barrio and renting them out for affordable prices. It is wonderful to see these glimpses of happiness, organization, and hope amid the sadness, mess, and despair of these people in this barrio in La Vega.

Beach Vacation in Puerto Plata

Our stay at the RIU resort in Puerto Plata during the second week of our holidays was very nice. Mattes, Kaelie, William, and Annaliese could not get enough of the beach and the pool, and the adults could not get enough of the tasty cappuccinos and Spanish coffees. The weather was great for the most part, aside from a few rain showers so now and then. The surrounding nature at the RIU is gorgeous, and we all had many ‘wow’ moments.

"Anybody down there in China?!!!" (thanks for the subtitle, Jonathan)

Anthony sailing

Sherilyn and Jen enjoy a tall coffee

One evening, as we were playing some games on the deck of Jonathan and Jen's apartment, it started poooouring rain. Jonathan looked at me, and said, "Anthony, I would love to take a run in the rain without a shirt. It's one of those things I would love to do, but I never get to do it. BC rain is too cold, and when do you get the chance. This rain is warm at least!" "You bet!" I said. So here we are ready for a run in the rain. It was great!

Up on the bluff, overlooking the ocean

"God made them, great and small". This is a tiny hermit crab, the size of a pea. (macro zoom)

North coast mountains and ocean at RIU

On January 9^th, the Gelderman family returned to Canada, and routine set in for us once again when we returned to school on the 10^th of January. The last few weeks have been busy at school in getting the second semester under way for the secondary students, and in getting our preparations under way for a spring concert, a grade five musical, and a grandparent and grandfriend event for the elementary classes. The pre-school and kindergarten students love their songs and games, and it is very cute to hear them excitedly sing their English songs with a Spanish accent. The first and second graders love the ways in which the various ORFF instruments (xylophones, drums, rhythm sticks) create wonderful rhythms and tone colours, and how these can be manipulated in enhancing the energy of the music they sing. The fourth and fifth grade classes are busy with recorders (yes, they play them here too! –you can’t escape recorders when you get to fourth grade, anywhere you go in the world!) and ORFF, and are getting on well in playing simple recorder tunes to short classical arrangement for groups, such as Beethoven’s famous 9^th symphony and a cool piece called Tick-Tock Shock. The sixth graders in choir are too cool for ‘kids songs’, so they are off on a series of medleys including both well-known hymns of the past and contemporary pieces such as ‘The Wonderful Cross’. The high school music class is facing a nice mix of theory and practice for this term, and you can probably guess which one of these goes over best. For some of these students, this is the first music class they have ever taken, and for others, this is second nature. At this age, however, it is nice to be able to have them help each other in some cases, so that some of the students that need the one-on-one help receive a bit more teacher attention during class.

Time seems to go by fast, and you ask yourselves if you are actually covering everything you are supposed to cover as a teacher. But then again, in many ways it’s not really all that important if you cover a lot and forget the big ideas, the ideas that have the greatest value and are of the greatest importance. The moments when we sit down with students in our Friday morning mentor groups, and talk about what is on their minds or how their week has been, and our interactions with the students outside the class or apart from the lesson material are of great importance. We really have felt that the students are opening up more as time progresses, and it’s the positive teacher-student relationship that becomes the environment in which the seed of God’s Word has a wonderful chance of taking root.

Love from all of us. :)

Snapshots - Into the Month of December...

The past weeks have gone by so fast! Semester 1 is finished for highschool, except for exams this week, and primary, intermediate, and middle school are finishing by this Thursday as well. And then...Christmas break.....

The Semester 1 highschool choir class; a great bunch of kids.

Grade 4 Music

.... Strange in a way. Advent and Christmas in such a different world. No cold wind and rain. No dark days. No frost and snow. But, you do see Santa Claus and Christmas trees displayed everywhere, you hear "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" being played in the stores, and at La Sirena, the big grocery store, they have already had a synthetic ice skating rink set up over the past four weeks. They have a soap bubble machine going so it looks similar to snow flakes floating through the night air. At school we practiced the Christmas carols for our Christmas program for the past two months, with 30 degree temperatures, last Thursday afternoon and evening we had our Christmas concerts at the school in the open air gymnasium, and yesterday we had our staff Christmas banquet. We sang "Silent Night" in Spanish (Noche de Paz). But if you really come to think of it, Christmas is about Jesus coming into the world to save sinners, and not about all the extras that we associate with Christmas. That's what struck us. Jesus was born in Israel, and most likely there was not a snowflake to be seen when he was born. It might have been warm even...

We were all very excited when Steph and Chad Hampson came as our first official 'visitors from abroad' on November 29. With them they brought a treasure load of boerenkool, Mennonite farmers' sausage, droppies, Brinta, cheddar cheese, cookies, maternity clothes, and gifts, which they, and Opa, Oma, Grandpa, Grandma, and Oma Krul had all sent along to spoil us with. Wow, it was like 'Sinterklaas' in the large scale! The Hampson's suitcases were literally bulging with goodies! Thanks again everyone! Mattais and Kaelie were very excited with their presents, Sherilyn revived after seeing the droppies, and I had nearly forgotten how tasty 'gevulde speculaas' is.

We had a wonderful time with Steph and Chad, just being able to chat like we have done so often, and they really enjoyed their time visiting the school for one morning and lending a helping hand at the New Hope Girls' School in La Vega (see one of our previous blog entries to read more about the New Hope Girls' School). Thanks for the great time, Steph and Chad!

With the Hampsons at "El Rinconcito". Great burgers!

This new LEGO is fun!

This really is my favority meal: BOERENKOOL met WORST. Thanks Oma Krul!

Saturday, December 3: A Daytrip to Constanza.

We had this in the planning for a long time already. Jose, the school watchee (guard), and I had talked about it for weeks already: when are we going to Constanza? Constanza is about two and a half hours south-east from here. Situated in a high valley between the mountains, Constanza is really a unique place with an altogether different climate than here in Santiago. Very few palm trees, but many pine trees. It even freezes up there at times. Can you imagine frost in the DR? Besides coffee and tobacco, many varieties of fruits and vegetables are grown there which cannot be grown in the Cibao valley in which we live; strawberries, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, corn, etc. So, we had to see this place, especially the cool 'aguas blancas' in the mountains. And besides, Jose told us that we had to meet his family members, many of whom live in Constanza and nearby Jarabacoa. So there we went, at six in the morning. Wow, what a trip! It's an amazing world out there!  

Looking a little like the Fraser Valley?

Gorgeous views at 1200 mts

These "aguas blancas" are cold! I took a dive in the waterfall pool, and was surprised at how cold the water was.

Back at home....

We miss our garden a little, so why not start a patio garden up on the fourth floor? And, besides, back in Canada you simply wouldn't try growing tomatoes and strawberries during the winter months. We started tomato plants from seed about a month ago. They are nearly ready to flower. They are the healthiest tomato plants ever seen; healthy green, and thankfully no whitefly (yet) Worth a picture...

Strawberry plants from Constanza

SCS Primary and Intermediate Christmas Programs

Our Christmas music programs took a lot of planning and practicing, but the results were very good. Sherilyn did a wonderful program for the pre-school children this past Tuesday, and the attendance was very good. Kaelie was allowed to wear her fancy white dress and her white 'little lady shoes' as she calls them.  

For the K-6 programs I had chosen two musicals based on well-known Christmas carols and Bible texts, with as a setting 'Israel during the New Testament times'. The kids all dressed in shepherd, merchant, Roman soldier, Egyptian, servant girl, or king and queen costumes, to create a 'real' Bible times feeling. Prior to the program I did a short introduction and devotional about 'the Light has Come', and the true meaning of Christmas. It was a great opportunity to share the gospel, since a lot of the parents are either nominal Catholics or non-Christian. (Thankfully we are hearing from time to time that some of these parents have started attending a local Christian church and others that have been saved.) The students all sang and narrated very well, so much to be thankful for.

 

Mattais the shepherd boy.

"O Come, Let Us Adore Him"

A very full stage and gymnasium!

Kaelie showing her work and Christmas card

Singing "Immanuel, God is With Us"

We wish you all a happy and blessed Christmas and New Year!

Huelga Without Water

On Friday after school the school staff was called into a brief impromptu staff meeting. Sonia informed the staff that there was a possibility of a national huelga (pronounce welga =strike) on Monday, which would mean no school. Over the past few weeks rumours had floated around about protests because of electricity prices and social issues, including abuse of women, which is a growing sad reality here in Santiago.
Sonia explained that we teachers live in fairly safe neighbourhoods, but since some would need to travel through some less safe areas to get to school, it would be necessary to shut down the school. Also around the school itself, a huelga might mean that some people might show their protest by means of burning tires or blocking roads. Sonia told us we would receive an email on Sunday to let us know whether school would be in session or not.

Sunday afternoon we got the awaited email, informing us that a huelga was in the forecast for Monday and that school would therefore be closed. We were excited to have an extra day off and started making tentative plans of what we were going to do the whole day. Anthony wanted to paint the kids' bedrooms, fix up the little school desks we have been using as night stands, I wanted to bake, tidy up the house, do a load of laundry, and the list went on.

Just after our Sunday night dinner, I noticed that our water was off. Strange enough, the power was still on. Usually when we loose power, we loose our water too since the water pump downstairs does not operate without city power. "Oh well," I thought, as I looked at the stack of dinner dishes sitting in the sink, "I have all day tomorrow to do them. The water should come back on soon."

But by the end of the evening, there was still no water. "Surely it will be back on tomorrow," I thought to myself.

But Monday morning came, and still no water. How disappointing. The day off, staying at home started to loose its appeal.  A whole day at home as a family and then no water?!  By the time breakfast was finished the sink was overflowing with dirty dishes and the counters and table were sticky from the pancake breakfast.  There wasn't even enough clean dishes to eat lunch! Never mind baking, which I had hoped to do!  I sighed. It was going to be a long day. I quietly asked God for extra patience for the day.

A while later Anthony came in carrying a large bucket of water. "Where did you get that from?" I asked, as he grinned from ear to ear. "From the tap outside in the parking lot!" he told me happily. "We need to wash the kids uniforms for school tomorrow, and besides the wet towels are beginning to stink with the warm temperature. I'll haul up enough water for a load of laundry and for you to do the dishes."
About 5 trips later up and down the long stairway the washing machine was running and I got down to doing some dishes.

"I'm going to take the kids to the store with me to pick up some paint, they need to get out for a bit." Anthony told me after a while. Since everything seemed quite normal and calm, and the La Sirena store is just down the road, I agreed it would be fine to take the kids out. I decided to stay home and finish the stack of dishes.

After all the dishes were washed and counters wiped clean, I went to check on my laundry. It was stuck on the rinse mode. "Of course," I thought to myself, "it needs more water to run the rinse cycle. I guess I will have to start hauling some more water."

By the time I was on my third trip up the stairs with the buckets I was exhausted and discouraged. I had at least another three trips to make to have enough water to run the rinse cycle. "Maybe I should just wait for Anthony to come home." As I made my way up the stairs, I had to think of the many people in this world who live every single day without running water. We are so blessed to have clean running water in our apartment. What was I complaining about, no water for one day? Just a few minutes away there are many families who daily have to find water to carry home. I had to think back to a few weeks ago when we were visiting the New Hope Girls Academy, and I had the priviledge of walking through the neighbourhood where these girls's families live. Just a little tin house with no running water, no bathroom facilities. I remember coming home afterwards and thinking that our little apartment seemed like a palace. I remember being so thankful to God for all our blessings. How could I forget so quickly how very blessed we are? How dare I complain about a few hours of no running water, or doing a little walking for clean water? I told myself to be thankful instead for the blessing that I do enjoy.

Although one of the neighbours had told Anthony that the prospect of getting the water running again would be slim, due to the huelga, late in the afternoon we were delighted to have our water problem fixed. A nice plumber who must have taken the time to come and fix the problem, despite the huelga! When Mattais and Kaelie noticed that the water was back on, they shouted, "Hurrah, the water is working again! Now we can finally have a shower!" At dinner time we all thanked the Lord for His goodness in giving us running water again.

A Visit to New Hope Girls' School in La Vega

La Vega is the third largest city in the Dominican Republic, and is about a half hour drive south of Santiago up against the hill sides.  This past Saturday we went there to visit the New Hope Girls' school, a project that was started by a Vidal and Joy Reyes, a couple from Santiago, who have their children in our school. Together with the Reyes and several other teachers and our children, we had planned to go to the girls' school to put up Christmas decorations and spoil the girls with some treats and as a surprise, a new pair of shoes.

After driving through the old part of the city of La Vega, we came to a very run-down "barrio", or district, up against the hillside, mostly comprised of shacks built of cinder blocks and tin. We parked our cars along the main road, and climbed up a dirty alley-way, littered with garbage, refuse materials, and dirty water trickling over the broken and uneven cement slabs. The New Hope Girls' school and home rises like a friendly place along this sad path of poverty, dirt, and brokenness.

Vidal and Joy bought this property in April, and coverted the old broken home into a functional two-storey building. During the day, 24 girls from the surrounding barrio come here to hear from God's Word and to learn how to read, write, and do some math. Back in June, when the Vidal and Joy had just started the school, out of all the 24 girls, who are between 6 and 14, only one girl knew the letter A. Tells you something about the illiteracy of poor Dominicans!

The school is also a home for 4 girls who are no longer being looked after by their parents. Very sad. Vidal and Joy told us stories of fathers who are not faithful to their wives, mothers who prostitute to make a living to care for their children, sicknesses, hunger, drunkenness, and fights. This is why the New Hope Girls' School is there. To stand like a symbol of hope on the hillside. Thankfully, soon after Vidal and Joy began working on the home, local Christian people began to help and offer their assistance in many ways. Three Christian ladies from the neighborhood have taken the task upon themselves to teach the girls during the day and also to stay with the 4 girls during the night. It is Vidal and Joy's hope and plan to have the local community involved as much as possible, rather than making this project look like it is run by some supposedly rich and arrogant Americans!

Sherilyn and Kaelie on the path leading up to the school.

Mattais and Kaelie were quite happy to hand out some little toys and teddies which Oma Koster had given along with us in July.

The upstairs level of the home functions as classroom and sleeping quarters. It's a very cozy place. We strung up some Christmas lights and all the girls helped decorating the room with little ornaments. They loved it.

 

The downstairs area is for cooking, eating, and playing. There are many things to be done to the home yet, but at least there is a partly tiled floor where the children can remain clean.

Look at this cutie! These little girls were staring at us with big brown eyes, and it must have been quite a bit to take in for them; to have all these new visitors, to get some treats, to get a pair of new shoes, to do Christmas decorations.

Tim Houck, our Canadian colleague said: "The title for this picture will have to be: Where is Waldo?" (see if you can figure out why he titled it that way -- guesses can be placed as a comment on our blog).

The shoe manufacturing company, KEEN, which has a factory in La Vega, donated shoes for all of the girls. They were so delighted!

 

This little girl was a new visitor to the school, and did not have a pair of shoes that had been ordered for her. She got a little bunny (teddy) as a gift. She was very happy with it and held onto it very tightly.

At the end of the afternoon we returned to our own apartment, quite overwhelmed by the many things we saw that afternoon, feeling very blessed by  everything that we receive from God every day, and determined to return in a few weeks again to do some work at this place of new hope.

Please pray for these little girls, and that God would bless the work that He has called Vidal and Joy to do in this little barrio.