Dominican Republic Team: Jarabacoa!!

Both the Logos and Dayton Christian teams met at church this afternoon at 2:40pm so we could load up luggage for all 50 of us and leave for Jarabacoa. After everyone settled in and we prayed, we headed out. An hour into our trip, we stopped at a little store to stretch our legs and get some snacks and drinks. An hour and a half later (6pm), we arrived at “Pico Escondido”, the place where we will be staying for the next week. Our bus couldn’t make it up the big hill, so the guys loaded our luggage on the back of a pickup truck while the rest of the team hoofed-it on foot. We had about an hour and a half to get settled into our rooms (the 29 girls of our group have four rooms and the 12 guys of our group have two rooms) until dinnertime. We really enjoyed dinner tonight – a typical Dominican soup called “sancocho” (made of chicken, beef, yucca, plantains, carrots and broth) and on the side we had tostones (fried plantains) and rice. After dinner, we gathered together for praise and worship (and Jon got to play the guitar!) and then we had a time of sharing praises for what God has done in our lives.

One of the things that we do to encourage team bonding between the Logos and Dayton teams is have some healthy and fun competitions during our evenings together. This year, we are divided into six different teams with Dayton and Logos mixed together (each team choosing their own team name, as unusual as some of them are.) The two challenges for tonight were for the Logos students to memorize and recite our team verse (I Corinthians 12:5-6) in English and the Dayton students to memorize and recite it in Spanish. After that, each team had to form its own pyramid and see who could stay up the longest. It was definitely a fun (and very loud) time!! At 10pm, we headed back to our rooms to take showers, get settled in and write in our journals. Most were pretty tired and ready to fall into bed when lights went out at 11pm.

Tomorrow should prove to be a great day….the moment we’ve been planning for all these months. Wake up time will be 6am, followed by personal quiet time at 7am, breakfast at 7:30am, group devotions at 8:30am and leave for our ministry at 9am. The guys will be doing work projects at Palo Blanco (the day care center) and the girls will be doing work projects at El Arca (the orphanage.) After lunch we will have our childrens program at El Arca. Both the drama and mime teams will be performing and we will do a craft that teaches about God’s provision. The weather forecast looks great too, so you can count on the fact that we will be working on our tans as well. *wink*

Thank you for your prayers for us and our ministry here in the DR. I will keep you posted as often as I can. Be sure and scan through the blog each day because you may have missed some blogs that I posted late. Sure wouldn't want you to miss out on some of the exciting going ons and pictures of our time here in the DR! Special thanks to my friend, Shawnda, who posts a daily blog each morning called “Today's Prayer Focus.” She has been on this trip with me for the previous seven years so she knows a lot about what we are doing and experiencing from day to day. Her goal is for you to have a different team member to pray for each day and to know how to pray for us and our ministry here in the DR.

Snapshots from the day...

The whole group in front of the bus...