Dear friends and family,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s 2011! Thank you to each of you for all of your love, encouragement, prayers, and support throughout this past year. The year 2010 has been an incredible one, full of wild ups and downs, joys and losses, and we couldn’t have made it through it without you. Many of you probably remember a year ago at this time – we never realized what a ride the year ahead could hold for us. After our fundraiser we had bringing in the new year one year ago, we flew back to the Dominican Republic just a few days later to see the world had been turned upside down when the earthquake took place in our neighboring country of Haiti. It was a scary time as Dave’s brother and his wife were there in the middle of Port-au-Prince, and there were many other friends who we were not able to contact and did not know if they had survived. Thank God our family made it out okay, but our “sister orphanage” in Haiti lost a hospital, a guest house, and a special needs school, and many staff and volunteers were found both dead and alive in the rubble days later. In the aftermath of the quake, Dave, his brother, and other NPH volunteers were able to use the money that you donated at our fundraiser last year to fill truck after truck with food, water, and medical supplies and drove back and forth into Haiti to the NPH hospital which was still standing. You can only imagine the things he saw being in a hospital in Haiti only days after the earthquake. Dave was there for the largest 5.9 aftershock where people poured out of buildings screaming onto the streets, and was later hospitalized for several days when he came down with a severe case of malaria which doctors were not able to identify. Our days were full of anxiety and fear, but also extreme gratitude and even excitement for all that all of you who supported us allowed us to do in the country of Haiti during heartrending time. For months after the quake, our house, which was usually home to 16 of us international volunteers, housed dozens of doctors and aide workers from around the world, as well as Haitian refugees who came with devastating stories of loss, some of whom are still our closest friends. In March 2010, we said good-bye to Raquela, one of three of the children we worked with in the orphanage who died during this year of various causes from AIDS to cancer – tragedies difficult to comprehend; and we also met a new member of our family, our niece Ana Leah DeYoung who was born on March 22nd in Santo Domingo and we were able to be there for her birth. In June, we said our tearful good-byes to the children in the orphanage before flying back stateside for the summer, where Kristin took graduate classes to renew her teaching license and Dave worked hard each day to pay for these classes. Though it was great to spend time with our family and friends, we knew our work in the Dominican Republic was far from over. And so in August, we flew back once again to this little Caribbean island, first to visit our “little brothers and sisters” in the orphanage, and then onto our new home and new jobs in the small mountains of Jarabacoa, just a few hours from there. We are now working at Jarabacoa Christian School, where Kristin teaches first grade and Dave is starting a new K-12 art program, mostly using recycled materials and whatever he can find. In our “spare time”, we are keeping plenty busy with both after-school activities and ministering in the community. After school, Kristin is teaching dance classes and Spanish, as well as tutoring three students with learning differences, and Dave coaches American football for middle and high school and gives private art lessons. Dave also works one-two days a week planning games, activities, and messages for “Wyldlife”, Jarabacoa’s first English speaking youth group for middle school students which started this year. He also spends much of his free time chasing our newest member of the family, a Belgian shepherd puppy named Santa. Kristin teaches the youngest group (ages 3-7) for “Oansa”, a Saturday children’s ministry at our church, which involves many needy children from our neighborhood who spend lots of hours in our home as well (or the neighborhood “orphanage” as Dave likes to call it). She is also starting the first ESL program teaching English for our Haitian church, in order to help those who would like to learn English but aren’t able to pay for language school. She is working with the pastor and other missionaries on starting local projects including a feeding center to fight child hunger, as well as a refuge home for young victims of sex trafficking. When we able to, we like to spend weekends traveling back to the orphanage to visit with the kids who became our family in the past year. Kristin’s former teaching assistant and close friend Maria is doing a superb job running the special education program she founded last year, as well as attending university on partial scholarship, again thanks to each of you, our faithful supporters. Our other very close friend Cristel (a former orphan from Haiti who we helped last year after losing both her parents and her home in the earthquake) is now running a home for 13 Haitian children with cancer, in memory of Alberto, the Haitian boy from the orphanage who died in August of leukemia. Both of them are an incredible blessing at the orphanage and we are so proud of them.
Love, peace, and prayers,
David and Kristin DeYoung
