It is hard to believe that in just a few days we will be starting a new year! It is honestly crazy how fast this year has come and gone. There are some days that feel long, but the weeks fly by. This holiday season has been no exception…I feel like so much has happened in that past few weeks! To start things off, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Kelsi’s apartment. I made the turkey and a pumpkin dessert, and Kelsi made the sides. It was a true Thanksgiving feast! It was fun to share this tradition and some traditional Thanksgiving foods with a few of our Dominican friends.

The following day I celebrated my 30th birthday. A few months ago Bianca said she wanted to plan something for me to celebrate and I told her that what I wanted most was to spend the day with my people…and that is exactly what happened! I started the day with Kailey, taking our dogs for a walk. Then a bunch of my friends got together to have lunch and swim. That evening a group of us walked through the Christmas lights in the center of town. I went to bed that night feeling so known and loved.

The following week we had our annual staff Christmas party. Katelyn did a great job planning the party! It is always nice to be able to spend time together outside of the usual work setting. We enjoyed dinner, conversation, did a gift exchange, and then the staff received some Christmas gifts from Solid Rock. It was a wonderful evening!

That weekend a group of friends and I made a trip back to the farm in Bani. It is the same place we went to the pumpkin patch back in October, but this time we brought some of the kids and it was fun to experience things through their eyes, especially the Christmas lights. I am so grateful for this group of friends!

Earlier I mentioned the Christmas lights in the center of town. Each year San Juan puts up lights, but the new mayor went all out this year and there are lights all over town. The best part is the center of town, and on the weekends they have even closed the streets off to make it safer for families to walk through the lights. One Saturday night Katelyn, Kelsi, and I drove some children from a local orphanage through town so that they could also experience the magic of the Christmas lights. I loved hearing the “ooohs” and “aaaahs” from all of the boys in my truck.

Kate, Kelsi, and I spent a few days in Santo Domingo prior to the arrival of our final team of the year. We were able to make a trip to IKEA so Kelsi could do some shopping for her apartment, spend a little time pool side, spend a couple hours in the colonial zone (we found a new museum on the indigenous people of the island which was really neat), and then we were able to see Wicked! I also tied in a trip to the vet for my dogs to begin the process of getting them ready to move to the US in a few months. Saturday morning we did the Pricesmart (equivalent of Costco) grocery run for the guesthouse, and then Kate and I headed back to San Juan while Kelsi stayed to greet the team. The group of Utah Health Scholars was a great team to end the year! Their flexibility and positive attitudes is exactly what we love to see, and we all had a great week.

A few days after the team left we celebrated Christmas! Monchy and Adia were kind enough to include Katelyn, Kelsi, and I in their family’s Nochebuena festivities. Christmas Day the girls came over to my house for dinner, and then on the 26th the Americanas got together again for dinner and a movie at my house. This is my third year celebrating Christmas in the DR and I am always grateful to have a Dominican family to celebrate with which makes it a little easier to be away from family back in the States.

Reading this blog (and probably many others) I know there are a lot of people who think my life here is all sunshine and roses. Well, there really is so much good in my life here but these blogs are mainly a highlight reel. I don’t think you guys want to read about how I was sick for a solid 2 weeks this month, or hear about all of the behind the scenes work that has been going on to prepare for the next several months of medical teams that are coming. I don’t think people would be super interested to hear about all the research I have been doing to get my dogs home after new laws went into effect in August making the process more challenging and a lot more expensive. And I find it hard to tell you that I have cried several times this past week thinking about leaving this country. My family is excited to have me home next year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and while I am too, I also can’t help but be sad knowing I won’t be here. But that is the reality of calling more than one place home — a part of you is always yearning for the place/people that you are not with. I was thinking about this yearning a lot yesterday, wondering if I will ever truly feel totally at home again, and I realized that as Christians this is a yearning we have our entire time here on earth; we will always have a sense of yearning until we get to our eternal home in heaven. So once again I am left feeling grateful. Grateful that Jesus humbled himself to become human, and that through his life and death we are able to have an eternal home. I am grateful for the family and friends I have in 2 countries. I am grateful that even on the sad or confusing days, God has a plan for my life. And it is with that grateful heart and sense of peace that I look forward to what God has in store for me in 2025.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Prayer requests:

• Health and safety
• For the Solid Rock ministry in the year ahead
• For the process of bringing my dogs back to the US. That there won’t be any hold ups, that paperwork will be approved in a timely manner, and that things go as smoothly as possible.
• That I will be totally present in the remaining time I have left here in the DR.