January 2015
Greetings, Friends and Family!
We are not home. We are still on an
island in the Caribbean. Still missionaries taking pictures of old,
dirty books every day. We are thriving and surviving this adventure
and have lots of work to do before we go home in September.
There. Now, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Christmas
has come and gone and I couldn’t send out Christmas cards. I enjoy
putting the cards in the envelopes, sticking on the stamps, sealing
the envelopes then dropping them all in the big blue mailbox at the
post office. I can’t do that here! So, this year I’m doing the
new thing—new for me—and simply sending a blogpost greeting. That will
have to do.
We’ve been in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic as Records Preservation Missionaries for 15 months
with 8 more to go. We take digital pictures of birth records for the
entire country in a government office about 3 ½ miles from our
apartment. The photos are shipped to Salt Lake (on a hard drive)
where the Family Search people will eventually have them available
for online indexing. Right now you can
actually see some of the books we photographed at familysearch.org!
Click here.
Some might say that sounds tedious.
You’re right. I think it’s a missionary blessing that we haven’t
gone bonkers. It is interesting, it is hard, it is tedious, but it
needs to be done and we are doing it! We’ve taken over 600,000
photos with a goal of over a million photos before we’re finished.
I’m pretty sure we’ll make it if nothing icky happens. Here, you
never know!
This country is
interesting. Mostly I say this place is crazy. The prices are high,
the traffic is horrendous, and the traffic is horrendous. Did I say
that twice? Good. I mean it. However, the weather is rather
pleasant; the year round flowers are pretty; the palm trees
are great; the mangoes, pineapples and avacados are delicious; the
view of the Caribbean out our windows is lovely; and the people are
very friendly. If anything in this country is charming, I’d say
it’s the people. Maybe not when they’re driving, but most other
times, yes.
I’ve had a hard
time adjusting to this place, but I’ve learned a few things that I
will share:
- Cockroaches won’t kill me.
- Seeing a cockroach won’t kill me.
- Mosquitoes might kill me with chikungunya.
- Drinking the tap water might kill me.
- I won’t die when the electricity goes out.
- I haven’t died when the air-conditioning quits.
- I’m not happy when the water goes out.
- The Lord blesses missionaries, even wimpy ones who complain
Sigh… I’ve had a hard time
adjusting to this place, but I am getting better. Our family has
received many blessings that I consider missionary blessings.
Tom and April, living in Japan, adopted
a Japanese baby girl! Kimiko was sealed to them in the
Tokyo temple in November. Big brothers Peter and Clark were able to attend, too,
so it was a wonderful event for all of them!
Emily and Sean (above) moved from England to Derby, Kansas and are now in the same city and ward as Kathryn and Rob (right.) Their families get together often, the cousins fight it out, and mostly they are having a good time living close to each other!
Monica and Ryan enjoy living in our house in Elk Ridge and 2 year old Michael has lots of room to explore and play. (And climb on my Japanese step tansu. Humph.) They are taking good care of the house and yard while Ryan continues his college journey.
We’ve also been blessed this year because Tom was able to come visit us—YAY! We did lots of normal things with him and it made me feel more comfortable here.
My sister
and her husband came for a week in May and we had a glorious time at
a north shore beach, seeing where Columbus lived when he first landed
on this island, and—the best—we did the sealing for our parents
and we were sealed to them. The Santo Domingo Temple will always be
special to us!
This past week we began working on a
new project. One of the oldest cathedrals in the western world has some old
documents they want us to photograph. Woohoo! Cool beans! They
even provide a parking space! No, really, this is a great
opportunity to go to the Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo and take
pictures of some of their old records. Some of the original parts of
the buildings date from the 1500s. Diego Columbus (Christopher's
son) went to that church! The church people recently found Diego's
baptism record. Maybe we'll photograph that for all the world to
see.
So, life happily goes on here. It is
sometimes difficult, but there are many blessings when serving the
Lord. In any capacity. Taking pictures of old dirty books is our
mission right now and yes, we're enjoying it.
