DR 2023 - Nagua - Day 4

Sunday, February 12: Worship Day!

We accepted the invitation to worship with our Haitian friends in their existing church building. We had around 75 of us packed into their 15 ft x 35 ft building plus many kids and extras outside of the building. It was a beautiful service with enthusiastic singing and a little dancing! Our Haitian friends definitely show a passion for the Lord during their worship time. 

Later in the afternoon we went for a walk on a beach that is across the road from our hotel. Unfortunately the beautiful beach is spoiled by much trash on and around the beach. Trash is commonly found pretty much everywhere in Nagua. 

One thing we didn’t mention on the first post was the visit we had from the police at the job site on our first day there. If you get a chance to ask any of the team members about this experience do so - they would be excited to share the details of this! 

DR 2023 - Nagua - Day 1, 2 & 3

Thursday, February 9: Travel on Thursday was uneventful considering we left Sioux Center by 3:00 a.m. and traveled in some fog to Sioux Falls. Our plane left a little late from Sioux Falls but arrived early enough in Atlanta to make our connecting flight. Steve and Guido were at the Santo Domingo airport to pick us up. We survived the Dominican traffic and made it safely to Hotel Cambri in Nagua, which is where we will be spending our next 8 nights. We got settled in and then gathered as a team for devotions and orientation. We turned in fairly early as we were all tired from our big travel day. 

Friday, February 10: We left for the church/job site around 8:30 a.m. The Toyota van survived the pot holes, which is amazing since it’s pretty much impossible to avoid them all! The morning was spent meeting our new friends. Pastor Hanold and his wife were there along with Pastor Pierre and at least 20 church members. The team members that have served in the Dominican before said this is the most support they have ever seen by church members. This was wonderful to see as there were many helping hands as we worked together laying block and moving dirt. Our Haitian friends definitely took charge of their project and taught us how to mix crete and lay block their way! 

Saturday, February 11: After breakfast and devotions we headed to the church/job site again. When we got there, our Haitian friends were up on a home-made scaffolding already laying more block. They are planning on this being a two-story church someday so the structure is a bit different than the experienced team members were used to. The women were there busy cutting chicken and chopping vegetables for the meal they were hosting for noon lunch. Although the language difference is definitely a barrier, we can sense their love for the Lord and their gratefulness to have help on their project. 

Tuesday

 Tuesday at the work site looked like peeling forms off of the final pillars, cleaning them up, then reusing that wood to build a large form around the upper perimeter of the church to make a bond beam. 

We took an early lunch so that we could come back sooner to get more work done before we left for an early supper. We got ready for the rescheduled church service, and went right back to the batay we had visited on Monday when we were in the sugar cane fields.

Church was a unique and exciting experience, and it was very special that we could share it with our new friends who welcomed us warmly and joyously. This was a special joint service with several local churches that typically happened once a month. The vast majority of the service was in the creole language, but Steve, who was with our team, was invited to preach and he delivered the sermon to us in creole and english. We introduced ourselves during the service, and greeted as many people as we could afterward. 

Monday

Long post alert! Monday was a busy and amazing day!

When we arrived at the work site, we peeled off the concrete forms from Saturday, cleaned them up a bit, then set up and poured the forms for the remaining columns.

At the work site, concrete is mixed in a big pile on the ground with shovels. On Monday especially, A few little girls were extra enthusiastic about hauling buckets of concrete. This was impressive and humbling, since the adults thought the buckets were heavy but the kids made it look easy and didn’t leave many buckets for the adults to haul. They were nearly covered in concrete but they quickly washed up with the water we used to make concrete and left for the afternoon school shift. We left the site to eat a late lunch a few minutes later.

We had some time that afternoon because we could not proceed with building until the concrete set so after lunch, we hopped back in the van and drove into the countryside hoping to find someone harvesting sugar cane. When we found a couple men cutting cane, we introduced ourselves, explained that we wanted to learn more about how sugar cane is harvested, then humbly asked if a few of us could give it a try. The men happily handed their machetes over to Tristan and Trevin who got to work. After a couple more people took their turns harvesting sugar cane, we sampled some sugar cane, then walked further into the field where we saw a larger group harvesting and loading up a wagon pulled by a team of four huge oxen. The men jumped in to help fill the wagon, we took a few photos together, then walked back to the batay, a small community that houses people who harvest sugar cane and their families. Our organization helped build a church in that batay years ago, so we visited with a deacon who lives there for a little while, and also chatted with a large group of children who had just left school. 

Our next stop was a small cave just outside of Boca De Yuma, the town we’re staying in. We explored for 30 minutes then went back to the hotel. A smaller group broke off and got some ice cream, then we had supper and evening devotions. 

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

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.