Our Dominican Experience: Felize Navidad

Our Dominican Christmas was great! Chris and I continued our annual tradition of opening one stocking stuffer on Christmas Eve. I got pj's and Chris got boxers. The following morning we exchanged the rest of our gifts. Mine consisted of mostly scrapbooking stuff and I also got a Dominican coffee maker. Chris got mostly junk food and a pair of flip flops. Abriel enjoyed opening her gift because of the tissue wrapping paper. She got a turtle full of blocks. She seemed to really like her gift as she would take a block out and put it back, take another block out and put it back. Very cute. We also Skyped with my family and opened some small gifts they sent back with us. Then we Skyped with The Edwards' family. It was nice to see our families faces but really made us miss everyone. We know how difficult it has been on our family members and we appreciate their sacrifice of missing the first Christmas with Abriel.

Abriel reading the tag. Did we mention she reads?!?

"Alright! BLOCKS!

Abriel testing out the new wheels.

Also fun Abriel news.....as of Dec 31st...... SHE WALKS!! My prediction of her walking by the end of December has come true which makes Chris's prediction of walking by February WRONG! haha (This is Chris writing now: I said January.... not the end of January)

We picked the team from Ontario up on December 22nd. They were an awesome team filled with 1 nursing student, 2 radiologists and one neuroscientist who is in the process of getting her PhD. Yeah, they were some smart ladies.

They did some great ministry while they were here. First they bought groceries for five families (one of them had seven children!). They bought diapers and visited with the children in Mustard Seed. Mustard Seed is an orphange for severely handicapped children whose parents can not or no longer want to care for them. That was a special time to just love on kids who have been abandoned and bring them some love during Christmas time. They put on four kids programs (a total of almost 300 kids) and they fed 200 of those kids. They taught 100 adults about nutrition and the importance of clean water and had the opportunity to hand out a water filtration system to each person courtesy of Mike Williams who started the ministry To Whom Much Is Given. My favourite part was taking out the shoe shine boys we have created relationships with over the past five months (including Miguel of past blogs). We drove down the road looking for them and got them to hop in the back of the truck and took them for ice cream!! We had a great time with the team (especially beating them in Settlers of Catan). It was awesome being a part of giving and serving during the Christmas season and we were able to be a part of so much giving and serving because of the team that was down here. Thanks again!