Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Sunday


One thing I failed to mention about our first day on the work site was that there was a bit of rain. Enough rain to make people who have lived in the Dominican Republic for decades comment that it never rains this much since it is the dry season. That trend continued Saturday night and by Sunday morning, the once a month joint church service  we were going to attend was postponed because some roads were impassable because of the amount of mud. Our team opted to have church together on the hotel balcony after breakfast. 



After church, some of us took a walk where found a park that used to be a military fort, complete with rusty cannons. We watched some locals fish from the rocks below and a few of the young group members climbed down to chat and check out the fish.





We also had our fancier restaurant meal so we went to a lovely open air restaurant. We got to choose our fish before they were cooked, and it was very tasty.






After we were stuffed to the gills from our seafood dinner, we said goodbye to Sandra and Guido who went back to Santo Domingo, had some afternoon rest time, followed by more exploration of the small town of Boca De Yuma, and success after looking for ice cream shops.





To wrap up the day, Duane told us about the  history of Haiti, which is fascinating, complicated, heartbreaking, and also very relevant because the churches we partner with have Haitian congregations. 



Please forgive the lack of posts, wifi has been sporadic at best out here since our hotel’s wifi no longer works. We are trying to write offline now, so we can copy and post them when we do encounter wifi



Sunday, February 6, 2022

Days 1&2

 

Friday began very early with a 2:00 AM departure from Sioux Center. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare which was fortunate since there was an additional online form that everyone had to fill out. We caught our first flight with minutes to spare. After we arrived safely in Atlanta, we. discovered that we only had 20 minutes to rush across the airport.  We were the last people to board our flight to Santo Domingo, but we made it and is what is important. Don't ask where the airport photo of our team is, we were too winded to remember. 

We drove 2 hours to the town of Boca De Yuma, had supper, did group devotions, and went to bed.


Saturday morning brought us to the church work site. The congregation did the block work in the weeks before we arrived so we jumped in with them and began tying rebar, building forms for columns and corners, mixing cement, and pouring cement into the forms. We experienced more rain during all of this than anyone local can remember for this time of year.


Jordyn, Duane's granddaughter, quickly made friends with some local girls. They did quite a bit of coloring and learning about each other.  Jordyn was happy with. how well she could communicate in Spanish. The girls. were kind enough to invite Jordyn into their home when the rain began to pour.