The Whole Story
Hello everyone,
This is our story up to this point and what lead us to the creation of this blog. Claire and I both figured it would be a good idea to put the entire story on the blog since we have told it so many times we sometimes can’t remember what we told each person. It all started out with us putting our resumes online with a service that connects schools around the world with hopeful teacher candidates. St. Michaels School, in the Dominican Republic, then contacted us in late February interested in the both of us for teaching positions. We had a phone interview with the head of the school and were contacted a few weeks later and asked if we would accept the positions. The school gave us a little over a week to decide if we would be willing to make this life changing decision. At this time Claire and I were unsure if this really was what God had for us. We had the desire to try overseas life and had been taking all the steps to do so; however, we both have good teaching jobs and a comfortable life. We were wondering if we were crazy to give up the stability we had. We only had a week to decide if we are going to take these jobs.
Needless to say we did some extensive praying and soul searching that week. We talked to both sets of parents, our pastor, and some close friends throughout the week. Even after all these conversations, each of which was encouraging us to go for it, we still had our doubts. We were both praying that God would give us some kind of a sign that would tell us what to do one way or the other. Now some of you reading this would think that all those people so close to us giving us encouragement would be a good enough sign, and maybe it was, but Claire and I were still as unsure. It’s funny sometimes looking back on a situation once you know the outcome, I guess hindsight is 20/20. Well, it is a good thing that God knows our ignorance because he did give us our sign.
Claire and I are currently in a small group that meets once a week. At the time we were doing a video series about what it means to be a disciple of God. On this particular week, we were reading the story in which Jesus walks on water and Peter gets out of the boat. Through his faith, Peter is able to join Jesus on the stormy water. Throughout the video the narrator kept talking about taking a step of faith, following Gods will, and not being afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Claire and I kept looking at each other each time he said these things. Then after the video there was a series of discussion questions. The first question was, “What does stepping out of the boat mean for you, and how can you use your faith to step out of your comfort zone and trust God?” Well this to us was as good a sign as any, so two days later we emailed St. Michael’s and accepted the jobs.
Over the next several weeks we communicated back and forth with each other and learned more details about the job. These are some of the things that we know now. We will be living in Santo Domingo, the capital, which is located on the southern border. We are under the impression that we will be about a mile from the coast. The school provides us a modestly furnished apartment which is right across the street from the school. We are not planning on buying a car so we got ourselves some good walking shoes to take with us. We received a list of things that are going to be in our apartment and “modestly furnished” is a good term for it. There will be just about two of the very basics that we will need; sheets, towels, cups, plates, a TV, couch…. They told us that it is going to be cheaper for us to buy the things we need down there then it will be to bring them with us. So we are just taking clothes and will probably be doing a bit of shopping right off the bat. Originally we were told that there wouldn’t be any air conditioning in our apartment just a sea breeze but we recently found out that there is an air conditioning unit in our bedroom. The school is also paying us to teach. We are going to be paid in U.S. dollars but only about half much as we are making now. Thankfully the cost of living is much lower there so we should be saving about the same as we are now.
The school that we are going to be teaching at is an upper middle class private school. The parents of our students pay for their children to go through this school so that they will be able to attended college in the U.S. We will be teaching in English even though Spanish is spoken at home. Claire and I are hoping that while we are there we will be able to learn Spanish. I will be teaching 6th grade English and Social Studies and Claire will be teaching 8th and 9th grade English. Each classroom will have at the most 20 students which is about 10 less then both Claire and I are used to being in. School starts and finishes about the same time of year that it does here in the states. However the teachers are required to go about 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after the students. So the summers will be a little shorter. We receive a 2 and a half week Christmas vacation and Easter Week off along with a few other odd holidays here and there. Then over the summer the school pays for us to fly home.
We are looking forward to do a good bit of traveling on our weekends. There is a first class bus system that runs on the island that is very cheap and since the island is small everything is relatively close. There are fabulous beaches that we are hoping to visit and great golf courses that we are also hoping to play.
This is our story up to this point and what lead us to the creation of this blog. Claire and I both figured it would be a good idea to put the entire story on the blog since we have told it so many times we sometimes can’t remember what we told each person. It all started out with us putting our resumes online with a service that connects schools around the world with hopeful teacher candidates. St. Michaels School, in the Dominican Republic, then contacted us in late February interested in the both of us for teaching positions. We had a phone interview with the head of the school and were contacted a few weeks later and asked if we would accept the positions. The school gave us a little over a week to decide if we would be willing to make this life changing decision. At this time Claire and I were unsure if this really was what God had for us. We had the desire to try overseas life and had been taking all the steps to do so; however, we both have good teaching jobs and a comfortable life. We were wondering if we were crazy to give up the stability we had. We only had a week to decide if we are going to take these jobs.
Needless to say we did some extensive praying and soul searching that week. We talked to both sets of parents, our pastor, and some close friends throughout the week. Even after all these conversations, each of which was encouraging us to go for it, we still had our doubts. We were both praying that God would give us some kind of a sign that would tell us what to do one way or the other. Now some of you reading this would think that all those people so close to us giving us encouragement would be a good enough sign, and maybe it was, but Claire and I were still as unsure. It’s funny sometimes looking back on a situation once you know the outcome, I guess hindsight is 20/20. Well, it is a good thing that God knows our ignorance because he did give us our sign.
Claire and I are currently in a small group that meets once a week. At the time we were doing a video series about what it means to be a disciple of God. On this particular week, we were reading the story in which Jesus walks on water and Peter gets out of the boat. Through his faith, Peter is able to join Jesus on the stormy water. Throughout the video the narrator kept talking about taking a step of faith, following Gods will, and not being afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Claire and I kept looking at each other each time he said these things. Then after the video there was a series of discussion questions. The first question was, “What does stepping out of the boat mean for you, and how can you use your faith to step out of your comfort zone and trust God?” Well this to us was as good a sign as any, so two days later we emailed St. Michael’s and accepted the jobs.
Over the next several weeks we communicated back and forth with each other and learned more details about the job. These are some of the things that we know now. We will be living in Santo Domingo, the capital, which is located on the southern border. We are under the impression that we will be about a mile from the coast. The school provides us a modestly furnished apartment which is right across the street from the school. We are not planning on buying a car so we got ourselves some good walking shoes to take with us. We received a list of things that are going to be in our apartment and “modestly furnished” is a good term for it. There will be just about two of the very basics that we will need; sheets, towels, cups, plates, a TV, couch…. They told us that it is going to be cheaper for us to buy the things we need down there then it will be to bring them with us. So we are just taking clothes and will probably be doing a bit of shopping right off the bat. Originally we were told that there wouldn’t be any air conditioning in our apartment just a sea breeze but we recently found out that there is an air conditioning unit in our bedroom. The school is also paying us to teach. We are going to be paid in U.S. dollars but only about half much as we are making now. Thankfully the cost of living is much lower there so we should be saving about the same as we are now.
The school that we are going to be teaching at is an upper middle class private school. The parents of our students pay for their children to go through this school so that they will be able to attended college in the U.S. We will be teaching in English even though Spanish is spoken at home. Claire and I are hoping that while we are there we will be able to learn Spanish. I will be teaching 6th grade English and Social Studies and Claire will be teaching 8th and 9th grade English. Each classroom will have at the most 20 students which is about 10 less then both Claire and I are used to being in. School starts and finishes about the same time of year that it does here in the states. However the teachers are required to go about 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after the students. So the summers will be a little shorter. We receive a 2 and a half week Christmas vacation and Easter Week off along with a few other odd holidays here and there. Then over the summer the school pays for us to fly home.
We are looking forward to do a good bit of traveling on our weekends. There is a first class bus system that runs on the island that is very cheap and since the island is small everything is relatively close. There are fabulous beaches that we are hoping to visit and great golf courses that we are also hoping to play.
posted by The Roths at 8:02 PM
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