break not-so-much.

There are SO many wonderful things about this country.  And the country next door.

But then some things?  Not so much.

Like, when it's fall break, and when they are fighting with each other, and you are suddenly reminded that a little break in these two countries is still so...in these two countries.

After years of everyone at EBS saying, "We need some kind of a break to chop up fall semester...we're all burning out!" we finally instituted a Fall Break this year.  There is no Thanksgiving break, obviously, no Memorial Day nor Columbus Day, so August through Christmas with no day off has just been a little much.

That fall break is tomorrow and Friday, a nice little four day weekend, and so several weeks ago we made a deposit at a cheap little hotel right over the border so that we could renew Rosa's visa (by leaving the country every 90 days), eat some food someone else cooked, hang out at the beach and pool and actually REST on our break instead of using it like we usually do to catch up.

To keep out of politics and what feels like complete and random confusion, a mass series of deportations over the past several months lead to boycotts of purchasing (Haiti buys MUCH of it's food and supplies from the DR) lead to boycotts of truck drivers lead to a border that is technically "open", yet blocked by semi-trucks and unhappy people.  Both presidents supposedly met yesterday, but came to no resolution. Until now, it's mostly shown itself through food prices rising, and lots of food becoming unavailable...no more lettuce, no more cabbage, no more eggs.

But when you have reservations at a hotel across the border from weeks ago, and today the only people crossing the border are on foot?  And the hotel required a big deposit?  And we have four days off and the kids have been counting down the days for weeks?

What you have now, folks, is nice little weekend off turned big old adventure weekend off.  (Dad, you can pretty much stop reading now and answer your own question of "are you kidding me?" with my  "yes, of course", and pretend like none of this is happening.)

There are 16 of us (8 kids 0-14), and so after tomorrow, this blog will have a very exciting story, no matter how you look at it.  And Nora's pack-and-play is no longer making the pack list.  Hopefully, somewhere in there will be rest, wonderful family time, store bought tortillas and chicken I myself did not fry.

I'd say this will be baby Nora's first big adventure...but that would not be true, would it.

Meanwhile, Junior and a group of students are heading out on an even more exciting adventure of finding unreached zones by basically heading out to an area not far from here that is rather remote and asking village after village if they know about Jesus.  Talk about an exciting way to locate unreached people AND do evangelism at the same time!

Everyone else, I hope, is staying home and having boring rest that will restore all of us through the semester!


ps...Matt made it safely home from Texas last night, all filled up on steak, Starbucks, and encouragement from the wonderful people there and the fantastic time he had sharing Haiti and giving and receiving Christ!  No, we are not attempting this adventure without him!