Glimpse into our life - Dominican Sledding

A few weeks ago, we had a retreat at the STV property for the young leaders of our church.  We studied the Bible, we spent time in prayer, and we had several long meetings.  However, we also had great food and a lot of fun.  One afternoon, the guys decided to give "Dominican sledding" a try.  After watching the video, you will  not be surprised to find out that they were all in some pain that evening.



Dominican Sledding from Carrie Ramos on Vimeo.

Glimpse into Our Life - Team Season

Eddy and I started working with Sharing the Vision on January 1.  Here in the DR January is the beginning of what missionaries call "team season".  It's the time of the year when most teams plan their mission trips.  January through March were full of teams and visitors. 

This the Jacobe team. They came down for seven days in the first week of January to help with construction on the STV property.  Along with these four men two other friends of Jim and Teresa came down to help with construction as well.  Mick for a week and Kerry for two and half weeks.

This is a picture of the Remnant team.  They were here with us from January 26 to February 3.

The is the New Castle team.  They were here from February 16 to 27.

The day after the New Castle team left, the Grannies arrived.  They were with us from February 28 to March 10.

My mom organized the Granny Team and my Dad came down half way through the week.  After the Grannies left, they stayed for a few more days to spend some time with us.

Along with all of these teams and visitors that we hosted.  We also were thankful for the opportunity to visit with and spend a little time with both of the teams that came to help out at Pathway to Jesus.  There were several people on each team that we knew from hosting previous teams during our time at the school.

The Crown Point team visited in February.

The Illiana team was here the first week in April.

It's been a busy few months.  We were so blessed during this team season by the people who came down and the work that they did for the kingdom while they were here.  It is such a blessing when people choose to travel here from the states and partner with us in the work that God has called us to here in the DR.

Glimpse into our life - our home #2

 Our Home #2

Our apartment is very small.  It is just big enough for two people.  The whole apartment is about the size of the average living room/dining room area of a typical house in the states.  Our house if a very typical Dominican home.  It is built completely out of cement.  All of the walls are made out of cinderblocks and then covered with cement to look smooth.  It is also very typcially Dominican in that it is basically just a cement cube divided into rooms.  There are no closets or pantries.

Many Dominican homes have tin roofs, in which case the walls don't meet the roof.  This causes a lot of problems with mosquitos and other bugs and critters.  We are fortunate to have a cement ceiling/roof on our house that helps protect from unwanted creepy crawly things. 

We have rearraged our space several different ways trying to maximize the space that we have.  These pictures show our currect set up. (Update: Actually this post was written a few months ago and since then we have switched things up again.  Oh well, it's still worth posting.)

This picture is taken from our front door.  We are looking through the dining room and into the kitchen.  The cabinets that you see over the counter are brand new.  Eddy just put those up to help with storage.

This is our kitchen.  The picture is taken from the doorway on the right in the last picture.

This is our bathroom.  We managed to get a bathtub, toilet, and sink into a very small space.  Sidenote: the bathroom door is the only door in our apartment.  The other spaces are seperated by curtains because there is no room for doors.

This is our bedroom.  This is taken from the doorway of the bedroom.  The foot of the bed almost touches the wall.

Our "mud room"

This room is technically "Eddy's office" but is pretty much a catch all for everything else.  It is our closet (the white thing on the right is a wardrobe with all of our clothes.  It is our living room (see the tv on the left) and it is our office. 

Glimpse into our life - our home

 Hi Everyone!  Back in January, I posted our annual update that explained about the transition that Eddy and I made at the beginning of this year.  Since then, we have been very busy preparing for and hosting teams and receiving visitors.  Now that things have slowed down a little bit again, I would like to get back to posting glimpses into our life.  I will post some that are recent but I will also go back and share what we have been up to for the last few months.

For now, I will start with two posts that I had written a couple months ago but then forgot to post.  They show some pictures of our house.  Here's the first one (check back tomorrow for the second one):

 Our Home

Our apartment is on the second floor of a building.  For several years, downstairs there was a colmado.  We live on the same property as Eddy's sister Yasmin and her husband and four sons.  The house that you see at the bottom of the stairs is their's.  Here are some pictures of the outside of our house.

our stairs

Yasmin's house.

 In both of these pictures you will notice the bars around our porch and on our windows.  This is necessary to protect us from  theft.

our "backyard"

Yasmin's family let's us use their carport for the truck.

front view of our building