Trip Summary...

Ok, so my comments on the last blog were to write about my trip. This is something I wrote for the Faculty / Staff online newsletter at Dordt. It was supposed to be only 250 words (it's actually 500) so it's a rather broad overview but that'll keep it shorter for those of you who don't want to read as much. Hopefully also gives you a bit of a picture. I really am planning to send out a mass letter or e-mail at some point but that will likely be longer and take awhile to write. So here's some stuff:

“Sorry, your flight to Dallas has been cancelled.” And so began our trip to the Dominican Republic. Brian and Barb rebooked flights, ran between airlines, and all twenty of us ended up in Santo Domingo in less within twenty-four hours of each other.

We were immediately immersed in city driving – Dominican style. Honking horns were not necessarily rude, nor a friendly greeting, they were an essential merging signal. Although only one line was drawn down the middle of the road, four cars could be side by side.

Our second lesson in Dominican culture came through work. In the morning we bought our supplies for the day, began work, and bought more supplies as they were needed. And at the end of the day, all the workers were paid. The people worked to work and enjoy themselves rather than simply working to get the job done. “This is the day that the Lord has made!”

The first two days of work were in the Batays: a poor Haitian village in the country. At the school we dug, weeded, moved sand, mixed cement with shovels and pickaxes, nailed boards in place and then formed a bucket brigade to pour concrete pillars. We were also able to play tag with the children who laughed at our ‘Spanish’, walked around on their hands, and grinned while they showed us their village.

The rest of our work days brought us to Renacer Collegio Cristiano in the city of Santo Domingo. We learned trust, patience and gratitude at this job site. The scaffolding was made of two by fours and nails, and though hesitant to walk under it at the beginning of the week, many had climbed over it numerous times by the end. We learned patience when the jobs were not all planned for and so the supplies were not right there when we needed them. We quickly realized how precious water is, when we ran out and had to wait for the trickle from the hose to fill our barrels.

We pulled nails, carried buckets of sand, rocks and water up three flights of stairs, and formed bucket lines to send the cement up the rest of the way. By the end of our time we had leveled and cleaned up the area around the school (I felt like an archeologist as we dug up layer after layer of garbage), sealed two and a half sides of the three story school, painted the bars on the first floor windows, knocked down a wall (and emptied the pieces out the window so we could pick them up again), and laid two classroom floors. We also sang “Down By the Bay” a few too many times, started a lunch hour English class for the workers (led by Jessi Rieken and Megan Haan), and played ball and jump rope with the students during their break.

I went on this trip planning to work but we did a lot more than just work. Several times, Barb reminded me that this was a Missions trip. We worked, but we also got to know some people, walked the beaches, towns and markets to get to know the culture, and go to church to worship one God in Creole, Spanish, and English.