December here has been a whirlwind of a month – as it most often is! Maybe you can relate? Anyway, I thought I should post a few photos (with brief commentary) before they are completely “old news”. So, first up, a photo of the seven students who were the first ever to take the ACT on Cowman’s campus. Six of them were Cowman students while the 7th was our friend Haylie, who lives down the road at Emmaus Biblical Seminary. It will be a few weeks still before we hear how they did.
We had a great visit from our friend Kelly who helped a tremendous amount at Cowman during her week AND she spent some time with the orphans at The Potter’s House. I have much to tell you about Kelly and her relationship with the orphanage, but that will wait until later in January…
We got our annual Christmas card photo, and even successfully included both dogs (even though Oreo is not at all thrilled to have Ginger in our lives).
The final days of school featured a lot of dressing up and candy canes and class parties … and another special visitor who has become a real regular (for which we are very thankful!). Pastor Phil lead Cowman in a very raucous final chapel of 2017.
Caleb and Frantz helped with the music.
And the high school science students threw “snow” over the crowd as they left chapel.
During our final full week of classes, I came across an interesting little living object lesson on overcoming fear: One night I found a tarantula on our front porch and managed to catch him and bring him into show my students, especially my 6th grade science class. Of course there was a lot of screaming and a bit of theatrics, but I was impressed with the level of curiosity the students soon demonstrated. We even had a death match between the spider and a praying mantis. (The spider won.)
One day after school, a few of the students spent about 45 minutes working up their guts to let the spider crawl on their hands … oh so briefly. About three students successfully touched the tarantula but often the interaction ended with seeing the spider launched unexpectedly through the air. But THEN a young lady visiting from Ohio visited our class and showed us how easy it was to pick up a tarantula and how little we needed to fear a bite. Before you knew it, kids were lining up to take their turns at letting this little guy crawl up their arms. (I’m not sure I can convey how near miraculous this was, especially among Haitians!)Even Hannah got into the act:
Even I overcame my deep-seated hesitation…
The annual Cowman Christmas program required a lot of effort from a lot of folks. On top of all the usual orchestrations with food and music and acting, there was the extra challenge of driving props and participants 45 minutes down the pot-hole laden road to a church big enough to accommodate our ever-growing audience.
After school was finally out, we made a quick trip to Santiago, Dominican Republic, (with a few extra friends) mainly for Hannah and Sarah to get their orthodontist visit in but we took advantage of the opportunity to catch the latest Star Wars movie (which was terrible, in my humble opinion) …
And we did a whole bunch of shopping, which is exciting for the first few minutes (since there’s not a store anything like this in all the north of Haiti) but THEN you realize that Dominicans are almost as crazy with their Christmas shopping as Americans are. And I DO NOT MISS Christmas shopping.
Our second and final night in Santiago, we found a Christmas celebration with lots of trees lit up around a monument in the center of town, where we got a family silhouette.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
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