Un Año en la República Dominicana

1 year

12 months

365 days

525,600 minutes

Holidays without family

Moving Emma Grace into dorm

Car accident

COVID mania

Borders closed

Protests and riots

Birthdays missed

Packing our home

EG moving into first apartment

Selling home

Funerals

Missing family dinners

Unavailable during a crisis

Hurricanes

Endings to some friendships

Nesting and creating a home

Buying a car

Meeting new people

Learning language 

Writing

Exploring the new country

Discovering ministry opportunities

Serving staff

Beginning job

Trying new things

Starting a podcast

Celebrating holidays and birthdays differently

Sitting on the beach

Riding a moto (scooter)

Eating great food

Building community

Listening

Trying to understand perspective

Missing Bigs

Not in our wildest dreams could we have imagined our first year in the Dominican Republic.  COVID took all of our expectations and plans and shook them up until we simply threw our hands up and decided to wing it.  You cannot plan too far forward when you aren’t sure if the borders will open or if the curfew will be extended.  WIll stores open?  Restaurants?  We simply woke up each morning and made the best of that day.  I laugh when I look at the color coded spreadsheet outlining our language acquisition plan.  Just bless my heart for trying to have a solid plan!  A year later and I am happy to report Scott did really well with language, but sadly I did not.  And here is the thing that I am most surprised about this reality, it’s fine.  It really is.  Ideally, I would wake up tomorrow and be completely fluent (praying for a miracle).  My heart’s desire has always been to be able to have good conversations with Dominicans and be able to serve them well.  Guess what?  COVID and my fear of failure halted my language, but they did not keep me from having great conversations with Dominicans.  The last few months I have seen ministry opportunities present themselves over and over.  Our plans were thwarted, but our God is bigger than a spreadsheet.  

Oh how I miss our BIGS!  Of course, I knew we would.  I knew it would be hard to miss birthdays and everyday events.  My biggest fears and worries about moving were all about Jake and Emma Grace and our relationships as a family unit.  We talk often despite the growing frustrations every single time the WiFi causes us to lose connection.  Bigs sold our house.  Bought a car.  Moved.  Started school.  Got jobs.  All of these things without us there and it SUCKS!  I wish I could find a more eloquent way to write that, but it is the truth.  I will also share this truth.  Our kids have sold a house, bought a car, moved, started school, and work.  They have had support from our family, but the reality is the Bigs are adulting in ways they would not have had we not moved.  Watching them from the outside tackle all of these things reminds me that they are freaking amazing and we didn’t mess up this parenting thing too much.  I hold onto the belief that the Denton family will only be stronger and more unified because of this experience.

The most surprising hard thing has been not being available for a few of our friends during crisis.  Two of our dearest friends lost parents while we were here.  More than anything, I wish we had been home during the illnesses and to serve and love our friends supporting them as they grieved.  A friend with a marriage crisis and I wish I could have sat on her couch with her just to listen.  A friend with an unexpected health crisis in her family and I felt helpless sitting on this Caribbean island while she sat in a hotel room.  We missed these moments in time and they are moments you can never have back.  Learning how to love others well from a distance is hard, but we are trying.

All of these moments in a year’s time and it is as though they happened in a blink of an eye.  A year has come and gone so quickly.   In this past year, I have only been with the Bigs for 8 weeks.  How?  We are planning our trip home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  How is it possible that it has been a year? At the end of the day when you look at the things we have missed and the things we have experienced, not a single doubt lands at our feet.  We are exactly where we are supposed to be and doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing.  It isn’t easy.  It isn’t predictable.  It often magnifies our weaknesses, but if you look closely you see how beautifully it has highlighted Jesus’s strengths.  Each day we wake up on this beautiful island.  We place the Bigs in God’s hands.  We live our life simply as the Dentons and pray that God would use our family’s journey to encourage others and glorify Jesus.  It is all we have ever wanted.  Plans thrown away.  Hard stuff still sitting there next to the beauty of the experience.  Here we are.  Use us.