Home and Friends

I have gotten positive feedback on the blog format so I will continue. We are beginning to feel at home here. I was asked about our apartment so I will include some photos of our home so you can see what it looks like. We are very excited that Emily and Susan are planning to visit us. Everyone is invited.

This is the dining "room", the space was obviously intended to be a balcony but it is enclosed now and part of the living room which is a good thing. The windows slide open and you almost get an outdoors experience. The only problem is that sitting down I can't see out of the windows but I can if I stand up. The ocean is to the left. They are building a new building beyond the longer wall. It is not very beautiful yet.



The living room has our two couches and coffee table. We placed the table in the corner because we need the space every morning for our "2 mile walk" DVD. We place the laptop on the dining room table and do our "walk" right here. The front door is out of sight on the right. I'm standing in the dining room to take the photo. We saw paintings in front of a house on one of our trips and stopped to ask about them. We talked to the three children and the Mom who showed us quite a few paintings. The one on the left was still wet so we came back a couple of days later to pick them up and met the man who painted them. They seem like a very nice family. The paintings are "folk art" type and depict rural life here in the Dominican Republic. You can see them more closely below.




Here is our kitchen. If you walk past the stove you are in the living room. I am standing in front of the refrigerator to take the photo of the sink. The long counter and the refrigerator face each other with maybe three feet between. I'm glad I am not cooking for lots of people but it works for us. We need to invite people over for a meal but we haven't done so yet. You can see the drinking water in 5 gallons bottles. Just tip and pour, s-l-o-w-l-y or you need to mop up the floor.

Here you can see where the second bathroom is--right in the living room. If you approach the kitchen and go right you enter the bedroom. There are three closets in the bedroom. We have all of our suitcases and the broom and mop and bucket in one and Lewis has his clothes in the second. I have a walk in closet that juts out into the room to the right of the computer table.

The bedroom is large and also has an air conditioner. We haven't used it much yet because we get nice breezes but I'm sure we will. We hang out here with the computers a lot. The bathroom has a tub with a shower. The water heater is only five gallons and you turn it on and off with a switch. The trick is remembering at the right time. The toilet and sink are not fancy but work just like at home. Life is good.

We have contacted all of the English speaking Perpetual Education Fund participants in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and a few other places for the second month. One girl has emailed back a couple of times. She emailed us this story, "Hello Elder & Sister Pettingill, Thank you guys for keeping me on my toes. I don't remember the exact month that I paid the money. But I did pay $500. Which I faxed the receipt to Sis. Frazer. My problem or weakness is procrastination and you know what the scriptures say about that. I keep saying that I will go tomorrow to the bank, then I keeping pushing it to another day. Till the month passes. However, I promise to be a lot more stronger and make it my responsibilty to pay monthly. My best friend works at Scotia Bank as a teller, so I plan to give him the money monthly to put to the PEF Account and he will then give me the receipt, so I can fax it to Sis. Frazer. Elder Pettingill, remember I told you I was at a family "Fun Day" at Church yesterday? It was fun! However when my husband and I were driving home, we met in an accident. We were on the highway and a van drove off the side walk and collided with us. I thought Lord, this is it. I am coming home. I thought I was going to die. My life flashed right before my eyes. Then I thought of Alma 5. I got married November 2007 and I said to my husband, if we had died in this car accident,this would have been it for our marriage and our love. But I thank Heavenly Father that He has spared our lives.We are coming to the Santo Domingo Temple to be sealed this year and to receive our endowments. We are both o.k but our car is badly damaged, however the offender has acknowledged that he was wrong and his insurance will fix our car. We really have a lot to be grateful for. I will pay some money today and fax the receipt to Sis. Frazer. School is great! I love learning! It's Fun! Hey! I was called to be the "Young Women President" for my branch. That is also going great too. It's just a bit challenging to get all the girls to be excited about their "PERSONAL PROGRESS". But hey," The Lord Gives Us No Commandment Unless He Has Prepared Away for Us to accomplish it".
Until Then! Take Care! Jesus is the Christ, He Lives and is mindful of each of us.
Love, Sis. Chrissie-Ann ..."

Chrissie-Ann sent us this photo of her and her husband. If I saw this photo I would think it was for a rap music video or something foreign to me. Now I'm learning that this photo is of a young couple married in Jamaica last November and eagerly awaiting their opportunity to come to the temple and be sealed. I'm not sure that most Young Women presidents would have that same facial expression in a photo but this one certainly has a testimony. She asked for a photo of us so I sent her one.

This is our friend and boss, Domingo Aybar. I like him very much. He is kind and cheerful and a great example of leadership and teaching skills. He has been a Bishop and a Stake President. He has a wife and three children and has earned his Master's Degree. He is employed by the church as the Area Welfare Manager and has responsibility for all of the Caribbean Area. He does a fair amount of traveling and teaches an Institute class every Thursday night. When you work for the church and have responsibility to train Priesthood leaders your job never ends-and he is the Bishop again in his ward. I'm sure his wife understands the frustrations of several of you with small children and busy husbands. Oh, my favorite part is that he speaks English very well. And his Spanish is clearly pronounced so I can understand almost all of that as well. He is a very fine man. Lewis said that he was reading a sales/finance book on the plane to Haiti. He has been infected with the American drive to invest and plan for the future and has a business with two locations selling motorcycles. He tells us that his wife is OK with him selling motorcycles but he can't ride one because they are too dangerous. I agree with her. He told us that is it almost impossible for an "older person" (someone in their 40's) to get a good job in the Dominican Republic and there is no such thing as a pension. I guess everyone who works for the church hopes to keep their job for a long, long time. Planning for the future is a good idea for all of us.

Lewis came home from the store with this bunch of sunflowers. He saw them and thought of Leiann. I'm sure someone was selling flowers to stopped cars at an intersection. You can buy a lot without ever entering a store. He insisted that I take a photo immediately and include it. What a good idea!--and they only cost $3.00. The only "vase" I could come up with was an empty 5 gallon water bottle.

Here are closer views of our paintings. There really are flowers in the trees here. I've seen people hang their laundry on stair railings and fences and bushes here in the city. I'm sure there are many people who still do laundry in the rivers. In fact we did see a group of people washing clothes and taking baths in swimming suits. Little kids were naked and having a great time splashing in the water. In the city they splash in blow up plastic wading pools like we do-only they don't have a yard. We ran over the hose one child was using driving by. It was a tiny narrow street with no other options. His Dad seemed to think that was perfectly normal. There are often things that surprise me here--like the time a pig ran across the street when we were driving out in the country, and the way they pile 6 passengers plus the driver into a taxi that was built to hold five people. There are no seat belt laws here for passengers or rights for pedestrians.
People here use their transportation efficiently. The more the merrier. We have always felt that way about our family and friends. Hope you are able to get together when the opportunity arises. We think of you often and love it when we get emails. Encourage the kids to write and ask us a question.

We are in charge of Family Home Evening in two weeks. Hope we think of something fun to do with just boring old adults.

Love to all of you,
The Pettingills

First month in the Dominican Republic

Dear Family and Friends,

I am trying a new approach with our letters. Let's see if I can blog. Please let me know what you think. The photos can accompany the words and no one has to mess with attachments. Do you like the blog format?

I promised photos so this message will emphasize a look at our new surroundings.


This is the view from our dining room. We are on the 6th floor of a nice apartment building and if I stand up to look out the window I can see the ocean. This view is with a telephoto lens. However there is an even better view from our bedroom:



Yes, that is Moroni. We can see the temple from our apartment. No excuses for us about how hard it is to get to the temple often. The other bedroom window faces the Marriott Courtyard Hotel. It is an attractive brick colored building with a tiled roof and a beautiful tree full of orange flowers in front. We have our computers in the bedroom because it is large and we get a nice cross breeze. If it is too hot, we close the windows and turn on the air conditioning. We are very comfortably situated.

We do not have the black songbird who sang to us in Tenerife but we do have a flock of small green parrots who chatter and squawk to each other as they fly and chase each other in the mornings. It is not a melodious noise but it is fun to watch them dart and swoop and circle the taller buildings. There are at least 15 of them on most days.


I mentioned the cute girls that visited us on the day that our living room furniture was delivered. I haven't seen them since but hope they might visit again. The smallest girl lives next door to us. Their names are Olfelina 8, Evelin 10 and Vialexa 2. They loved looking at your photos and spelling their names with our Scrabble/Take Two tiles.


Here is a closer look at the ocean here in Santo Domingo. There is a major road that follows the coast here in the south. In the city it is called the Malecon (the real name on the signs is Avenida George Washington) It is close to the water. Since the land is solid rock here it seems to work just fine.

We did drive east one Saturday on this road for a an hour or so. We went to San Pedro de Macoris and found the city buzzing with "motors". That is what they call motorcycles and scooters here. If you were a mother you would just die when you see how dangerous it all looks but they are amazingly efficient at getting to where they want to go--quickly, cheaply and carrying more than you can imagine. In the center of the roundabout going into town there is an old train engine and several metal sculptures. The metal sculptures were kind of cool.

But I liked the very big crabs that were crawling up each of the four corners.

There is a real beach here in this town. It has sand and looks like a great place for swimming.





We thought we would take a different route home from this city and ended up way north of where we thought we were. We went to Hato Mayor before we came back down and went home the same way we came. It was a fun drive. But there were lots of pot holes in the road and we wouldn't want to drive that road at night when you couldn't see them. This picture is of one of the more prosperous little "homesteads". Notice the horse in the front yard.




This man rode his horse to the store.

We were invited, along with Pedro who is in charge of the Employment Resource Center. to speak to a meeting of the Stake Presidency, High Council and Bishops of the stake in La Romana which is on the eastern part of our island. Our time was very short in the meeting, so Dad just gave a very brief overview of the program and we handed out more details in written form and answered questions. It seemed like they are anxious to become more involved and had some good questions. We will go back and present a fireside for their youth so they can take advantage of the program. It is so much more than a loan program. The two preparatory classes are great even if a person is not planning on going to school.

We enjoyed our trip there. We stopped at a beautiful building that sells artisan type stuff. Across the street is a metal fabrication place where they make furniture, lamps, wall hangings--lots of amazing things. They invited us to visit the factory but we didn't have time. The store is a also a studio where they hold painting classes and have lots of activities. I really liked some of the things I saw. Good thing they are big and heavy and I can't take them back with me. On the way out I saw some bright painted wooden fish. A wooden fish is more reasonable than a metal bench. Right? I want to go back. Who wants to go with me?




Yesterday we went to Barahona and Bani toward the southwest of our island, again to do training with the employment people. The only problem was that the District President in Barahona had cancelled his meeting because he had to take his sister to the hospital. And the message didn't make it all the way to us. So we left at 8:00AM and went to Barahona. When we finally figured out the problem Pedro and Lissette were embarassed but we enjoyed our morning and were blessed with a miracle as well. We didn't know where the chapel was so had stopped and asked two men who were in a park. They were telling us the directions to get there and then said, "Why don't you talk to that man coming this way. He is a member of your church." Turns out he was a counselor in the District Presidency and told us the President was in Santo Domingo with his ill sister. But we were able to talk with him briefly and give him the printed material we had made to share with the District Presidency and the Branch Presidents. We will go back and hold a fireside with them when they choose a date. So we were able to accomplish most of what we had planned.


My favorite thing on the drive were the blossoming yucca plants. I have never seen orange puffy flowers like these before. I wonder if California yucca plants bloom? I'll bet in another week all of the green will be bright orange.



The second meeting in Bani was still happening so we drove back toward Santo Domingo, found Bani and had time to walk in the park and drive around the town. The Stake President was very nice and promised to call a Stake specialist over employment and education and encourage every ward to do the same. He asked if he could call a woman to this position. Pedro said, of course you can, in fact we find that the women generally do a much better job. Lissette and I smiled. These specialists have access to all of the information and training available in the employment center and it is impressive. They have many employers who call and ask for referrals because they have been pleased with previous hires. There are also lots of training programs available. The government will often teach classes in the chapels for free. I have heard of classes in merchandising, secretarial skills, and sales for example. These specialists also become the person to contact all of their stake's PEF participants and see that they receive help and support from their Priesthood leaders when they need it. The beauty of the program is that the contacts will be made by people who know the participants and can find them local help with whatever they might need to be successful. We have permission for these specialists to use the Family History computer to access the information they need and update the records. It is absolutely amazing to me how many different areas the church is working in to better peoples lives. When all of these separate concerns work together to help the members learn to help themselves and be prepared to reach out to others, we can change the world.



This is an example of the older more modest homes in the town of Bani. (There is an accent on the i so it is "Ban-E".) The wood above the doors and windows has cut outs. They are different on every house and very attractive. Because it is a warm climate they provide ventilation all year round, I guess. Most of the wooden houses are painted bright colors that are cheerful.


Here is the detail on this house.


We feel very blessed to be here. We feel even more blessed to have you all at home keeping the wheels turning and raising the grandchildren. There are a million things going wrong in the world but there are lots of things going very right. Don't forget that the right will win. And all of the most important things will turn out the way they should if we do our part.

Monday night we had our weekly Family Home Evening with the senior missionaries. It was Elder and Sister Mask's turn. They have a big apartment so invited us all to dinner. We had Hawaiian Haystacks and all brought the toppings. Reminded me of Randy's mom, Renee. That is what she served when we first went home with Randy and met her and Don. Tasted great and is perfect for a crowd. Elder Mask is the Area President here and a General Authority. He used the March Ensign on the Savior in his lesson and told about his calling and bore his testimony of Jesus Christ. It was a lovely evening. We hope you all know that we have a testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ and that our job here in this life is to come to know him and follow his example. We do not have a copy in English but hope you all do.

We love you all,
Dad and Mom P.