March 5

CRAZY week!!!! I don't really know where to begin....my students are crazy but i LOVE THEM! I have never gotten so many hugs in my life. It is funny because things are often really tough during the day, and at the end of the day i am always really tired, but i LOVE IT! Monday my friends Katie and Aldo were in town from Santiago, so I hung out with them which was really fun and good to see some "old friends"!! Tuesday I went to Young Life and Bill Paige, who is like VP in YL happened to be there checking it out because he was in Santiago speaking at something!(YL is just getting going in Jarabacoa, so everyong is kind of here helping) It was so cool to meet him and hear his story. He had some great things to say, I especially loved one thing he said about YL "if you suck at loving kids, they aint commin (to YL)" YL was great, I love to be back in it. My friend Chris, who is YL director in Santiago was there too, and I talked to him a lot about YL stuff...which i will talk about!
This is a lot...but really cool!
SOOO i have been seriously having like majorly answered prayers/doors opening for me these past 2 weeks. I had an interview Last week Tuesday at Jarabacoa Christian School (which partners with the school i am at now) and the interview was AWESOME. They asked me why i wanted to teach, and I said that my heart is in ministering to/creating relationships with kids and I think that teaching is a great way to do that, and they were like SWEET because we first and foremost consider JCS a mission field because its students are mostly non-christians, because the parents just send them to JCS for an American education because it ends up being some of the wealthier students (because they have to pay to attend). Also, they said that this is HUGE because these kids come from the families that are in politics, own buisnesses, and basically run Jarabacoa and the whole DR, so when you are impacting these kids, you really can help change the way the whole country is!! It was just really cool to talk about just how exciting it is!
Sunday a couple that teaches at JCS invited me over for lunch to talk to me about it. First, SO WEIRD, their last name is STANLEY!!!! Tim (the husband) asked me the same thing why i wanted to teach, and he had heard that I was obsessed with Young Life (HAHA) and I was like YES if i am a teacher I have to do YL and he was like well...how do you feel about Wyld life? and i waas like OMG yes and he was like we really need someone that loves Middle school kids to help get that started, and i was like woooooow that could totally be me, so that was really exciting ! HELLO, Wyld Life is totally where my heart is, so that was huge!
THEN on Tuesday I went to YL club with them, and my friend Chris (that i met this summer) who is the director of YL in Santiago, was like we would love for you to be on YL staff in Jarabacoa because we need somone who knows Wyld Life...and i was like ummm did you talk to tim because we just talked about this on sunday, and he said no he had not! SO that was just really cool because they both mentioned it to me without even talking to each other about it!!!
SO in between all of this i have been praying for guidance with my small group(that FYI is AWESOME!) about just doors opening, and they have been! like CRAZY! AND last week I prayed for wisdom about how to talk to my parents about all of this, and on Saturday I called my mom and we had a great convo about that and later this week my dad emailed me and was like whatever you do, we are behind you 100%!
SO this is where I am now: I am 90% sure that I want to take a job here next year and be part time on YL staff! I have to tell JCS by March 31, so i am going to hold out till then and just spend some major time praying about this before i give a final decision, BUT i would REALLY appreciate your prayers too!! I just feel so encouraged that things are just happening like this, and i have never had this/felt God like this in my decisions before so i feel like it really is God opening this up for me....but I dont want to get it wrong! I dont know, just crazy, scary, fun, exciting!!!!
SOOO if you would pray for me in this decision...that would be awesome! I would come back here in August, then be able to come home for christmas, and obviously summers would be in Holland which is really cool too bc it is not like i would just be going away for 2 years and dissappearing! SO long story, i know!

Anyways, i am about to head over to one of my student's houses for dinner!!!