Just so that I can keep all my
thoughts in order, I wrote this by day. So here it goes!
Sunday/Monday: So we left Joshua at about 9 to walk down to the
vans. It was too icy to drive them up the hill. At the bottom, James and some
of the people from Grace were there to meet us and to pray over me, Daniel, and
Antonio. It was really awesome of them! I hopped into Brett’s van again along
with Jordan M, Brad, Logan, Ji, Ali, Bella, Dylan, Jonah, and Marina (#wassupdog?).
The ride down was a ton of fun. We got to a church in LA where Trent Lewis
(previous speaker) goes to church. We got to hear how he proposed to his
girlfriend at Disneyland before getting on our busses to go to LAX. We loaded
on our planes and headed to New York to catch our connecting flight to the
Dominican Republic. Everyone says red eye flights suck, but it didn’t really
bother me even with the 4 hour time difference. (Israel will be another story…)
Anyway, we go to the DR about noon on Monday and loaded in busses and vans to
get to the Students International base in Jarabocoa. The base was so cool. We
stayed in cabin style buildings with little porches and rocking chairs. We had
the rest of the day to just relax and to shake off the jet lag. I laid down in
a hammock and finished reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis for book
discussion on Wednesday. It’s a great book. I could really relate to some of
the characters in the book on how my relationship with God looks like.
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| the base |
Tuesday: We got up to have our first devotional time. Throughout
the week, each morning we read a parable of Jesus and had a devotion about it.
Afterwards, we had orientation and then ate lunch. The food there was soooooo
good! We left for our sites in open trucks. My site at Genesis is so amazing!
It’s a school for special education kids. We took a tour with our leaders, Mike
and Karen. They showed us the school, the yard, playground. They even had pet
bunnies! With me in my site were Alyssa,
Michaela, Julian, and Jonathan. Afterwards, we headed back to base to get ready
for culture night! We started out tasting Dominican coffee. It was pretty good,
coming from a coffee hater. Then they taught us the Meringue, which was super
fun plus A) we go to dance! And B) we got to listen to music! I danced with
Antonio, who was really funny and kept running me into other people, and with
Jonah, a somewhat expert dancer doing spins and such. The last thing we did was
have a Don Ramon tournament. Don Ramon is a game played where you pass cups around
a table while chanting a sentence and it gets faster and faster and whoever
knocks over a cup is out.
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| the base |
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| the base |
Wednesday: We got up at 6:30 for a prayer time, devos, and worship.
Great way to start the day. After breakfast, we headed out for our first work
day at our sites. We met all the teachers and watched to kids arrive at school.
We started out with Maribel and Angie, two of the teachers, who taught us a
little basic Spanish, starting with the vowels and their sounds. Then we got to
help the kids one-on-one with math (matemáticas) and with speech. Once a week,
the older kids get to have a cooking class. This week it’s seasoned chicken so
we got to watch them prepare the chicken. Lunch was a lot of fun. I helped
Yunior (pronounced Junior) and Genesis (pronounced Henesis, like the name of
the school) go up the playground and down the slide. Both of them are in
walkers so they need a little more help when it comes to active play. I also
played basketball with Henny (Pronounced Enny). She really likes to scream! After
lunch was music time. Everyone got instruments like tambourines and little egg
shakers. The only song they sang that I could recognize was “If You’re Happy
and You Know It…” in Spanish. This week, story time is the story of Moses.
Today it was Moses as a baby. When school was over, we played Duck, Duck, Goose
(or Pata, Pata, Ganso) while we waited for their parents and the bus to show
up. When all the kids had gone, Mike took us to visit one of the students
house, Juan Carlos. It was an incredibly humbling experience. They live in a
tiny three room stone house, with plastic chairs for furniture. And even though
they had so little, they still offered us food and soda. Juan Carlos’s mom had
died due to complications in his birth, so he lives with his dad and two
sisters. It also made me think how blessed I am to have the family I have and
the home I live in. Juan Carlos and his family are also blessed, that they know
God and trust Him. And their house is surrounded by one of the most beautiful
gardens I’ve ever seen.
Thursday: In April, the school will be moving to a new location a
couple miles away from the current one. So today, we went out to the new site
to clean up all the grass and the dead banana trees. We chased giant dinosaur
lizards and chickens, ate not-so-ripe bananas (bleh!), and talked about
exploding cows. We came back to the school for lunch and then raked up all the
giant leaves from the trees. The kids really enjoyed jumping in the big leaf
pile once we finished. After, we sang, read about Moses and did a coloring
craft. Once the kids where gone, Mike took us out to a waterfall! We hiked down
(I fell down part of it) and got to swim in the waterfall pools. We climbed all
over the rocks (where I fell several more times…) It was gorgeous. I definitely
had the best site leaders. Mike took us back to base to shower and change real quickly
so that we could do out for dinner in the community. We drove to Angie’s house
where we ate dinner and Angie told us her testimony. Afterwards, Karen took us
out for ice creams! Yummy!
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| Joselin |
Friday: We started work with learning more Spanish, review letter
sounds. We played a game of musical chairs. It was down to me and Mic. When the
music stopped, I pulled the chair away and she almost fell over! I guess I can
get a little competitive when it comes to games. I worked on flashcards with
Joselin, a little 4-year old boy with Cerebral Palsy. He became super attached
to me over the weeks. We played with Alphabet tiles and picture magnets. Brett
and Chad stopped by with some over people to tour the site and they both
interviewed us about our jobs there at Genesis for the wrap up video. After
school, we got to take the teachers to see the new site for the first time.
They were all really excited to see it. I think it’s going to be a great
change, with a lot more room. Alyssa, Mic, and I talked about moving there and
renting the extra room at the new site! The truck picked us up first this time,
so we got to go out to another site in Los Higos to pick up an education and a
social work team. Back at the base, I taught Shelby how to throw a football and
later that night, we all played dodge ball. To end the night, we had a bonfire
and shared how we can see God working in all our sites.
Saturday: White water rafting was crazy fun! We rafted down a level
2 river. I got to be in a raft with Kelly, Jordan S, Matt L, Luke, and Shiloh.
When we got in, the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life crawled out of
nowhere and we flipped out trying to smash it with our paddles. We probably
looked crazy to everyone else around us! The water was crazy at times, falling
over boulders and running into things. I even fell out once and started
floating down stream. They had to chase after me. Even though the water was
only like 2 or 3 feet deep there, I still could stop myself because of the
strong rapids. I bashed my legs against a bunch of rocks and received some nice
bruises. Now I can cross “rafting in the DR” off my bucket list! We got back to
base and I took a nap before we went downtown to shop and get dinner. A lot of
the stores were closed for a holiday they were celebrating. We got back and
they opened up the SI store where I bought a bunch of gifts to send back home.
Sunday: We were fortunate to be able to experience church in the
DR. My group went to a church called La Vida, or The Vine. It’s an outdoor
church under an overhang. The pastor talked about the fulfillment of God’s laws
and what Jesus preached about them. It was an awesome experience. On a wall
they had John 15:1 painted on it in Spanish, which is part of one of my
favorite sections in the Bible, John 15:1-17. “I am the true branch and my
Father is the gardener…” When we got back to base, a bunch of us played two hand
touch football on the field until dinner. After dinner, we had our very last
Isaiah class. It lasted 3 hours… I do love classes and such, but I do NOT have
the attention span for a 3 hour class at 7pm.
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| Spanish class |
Monday: At Genesis, we
started learning a bit of Spanish again and played a couple games. I accidently
said a bad word in Spanish when asking a question, (*facepalm*) of course I
would, of all people. Anyway, I played with Joselin during lunch. He kept
wanting to go up down the slide which meant I had to carry him up the plank,
put him in the slide, then come down to pick him up at the bottom to do it
again… and again…. and again… It was incredibly exhausting and very difficult
to do when wearing a maxi-skirt. And climbing up that plank with him in my arm
was a tad bit nerve wracking, as I tend to fall off of things. A lot. But, it
did get me thinking. Something God has been showing me in Joshua is how
possessive I am when it comes to my problems. I don’t want to share them with
anyone and I especially don’t want to give them to God. But He has been opening
my eyes to the fact I can’t do it myself. I even have a hard time accepting
help from other people in every day stuff, too. Joselin helped me see this
because I need to rely on God to carry me through tough things, just like
Joselin relies on me to carry him up to the slide. We also went on our prayer
walk today, after school. We walked around the surrounding streets praying for
the community in Jarabocoa. It was really cool. Back at the base, we had a time
of worship, sharing, and prayer. People talked about how God is working in
their sites and through them in the DR, Joshua, and in life. It was a great
time of fellowship. Lots of crying and hugging, kneeling and rejoicing.
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| Mic working with Yunior. |
Tuesday: I worked with Joselin and Yunior on tracing and flashcards
after Spanish lessons. At lunch, the teachers challenged us to a game of Don
Ramon. I was practicing with one of the girls, and she kept moving the cups
farther and farther away from me, so I had to stand up to reach. When I went to
sit down, my chair was gone. It had fallen down the steps behind me, so I
followed after landing right on my back with my legs straight up in the air. I
took me a minute to comprehend what had just happened, before bursting out
laughing. When everyone realized I was okay, they all thought it was hilarious,
too! When school ended, Mike took us Melvin’s house. Melvin has Cerebral Palsy
also. When he was born, he was dropped which caused all of his muscles to
tighten up. The doctors had to cut all of his muscles so that he could stretch
out but now he has no control of them. He lives with his mom in a small 3 room
house, soon to be 6 rooms as the construction site has been adding on to it.
Melvin wrote music for an amazing CD and they sell it at the base for $10. A
generous donor is matching each CD bought so that Melvin gets $20 for each CD (which
is about 780 pesos). That’s a LOT of money in the Dominican. It was cool to see
his house and talk with him and his mom, hearing a little of their story. After
we left, Mike took us out to La Vega to get these milk/juice drinks. They are
soooo good, they kind of taste like an orange cream soda, only better! When we
got back to the base, there was a guy in the dining hall selling handcrafted
things. I bought a bunch for my family! That night, Chad taught an Identity
class, which talked about where we put our identity and what that looks like as
a Christian.
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| Rainbow! |
Wednesday: I woke up with a really bad back ache. My back doesn’t
do so well on thin campy mattresses. But I worked my way through it. At
Genesis, I made a card inviting Enmanuel’s family over for lunch on Thursday.
Then I went with Karen to pick up frozen chicken from her house for the cooking
class. On the way back, we stopped by the new site and saw that the
construction team had completely knocked down the big ugly yellow wall in the
front of the building! So cool. Back at the school, we played musical chairs
with all the kids, carrying the ones who couldn’t walk. I had forgotten to pack
a lunch, oops! No big deal, what’s one meal? (that totally rhymed!) We spent
the rest of our time after school rolling yarn into balls. It was nice to just
sit there and talk with Alyssa, Mic, Julian, and Jonathan. That night, we went
over a review for our Isaiah test coming on Monday.
Thursday: Instead of going to the school, we headed to the new site
first to start cleaning the inside while the construction team cleaned the
outside. We went back to Genesis for lunch. It was cool that the construction
guys got to experience a little of what we had been doing the past two weeks.
Each of the people in my site got to write a little paragraph or two for the
blog that Mike and Karen keep for Genesis. After lunch, we sang songs with
tambourines and played red light, green light, Moses style. After school, Mike
took both teams to the river to swim while Karen took me back to the base so I
could get my hair braided. Cornrows! It looks really funny, but cool. I’ve
never had my hair done like that before. At dinner, we said our goodbyes to
Mike as he had to go out of town for a day and wouldn’t be back before we left.
We had a debrief of the past two weeks with everyone. We shared five word
stories and what we are taking back to Joshua and applying to our lives. I’ve
definitely been learning that it’s okay to admit I can’t do everything myself
and that sometimes I do need help. I’m understanding more and more that not
giving up my burdens to God is not what Christ wants. I need to lean on Him
more than I ever have before. It’s time that I surrender myself completely.
Friday: Today was our last day at our sites. We spent a ton of time
in our Spanish class, all the way up to lunch. It was a little disappointing to
not be able to spend a lot of time with the kids on the last day, but Julian
shared his testimony (he doesn’t like that word, he’d say “story” instead) with
us during lunch. It was really awesome to hear and know that he trusts us
enough to let us into his personal life. That night, they SI staff took us all
out to dinner at Rancho Jarabocoa by the river. Afterwards, we had a little
thing at the base where all the site leaders gave short speeches about their
site members. It was really sweet. We celebrated and had cake. It was a great
way to end our stay there.
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| Burning Christmas trees! |
Saturday/Sunday: We left Jarabocoa about 10am and got on our flight
from Santo Domingo back to NY and then to LA. We slept at the church we stopped
at on the way to the DR. When I pulled my sleeping bag out, 50% of it was damp
and the outside had little mold spores all over it and a few inside it. I did
not sleep very much that night. Especially since we got there past midnight and
had to get up at 6:30ish. After a long car ride, we finally made it back to the
building. We had pizza for dinner and we burned some Christmas trees outside
(yes, burned!).
I’m so happy to be back in my own room, but I
am seriously going to miss the DR, Mike & Karen, Genesis, and little
Joselin. But now I’m super excited for what God has next. I feel Him calling me
to working with kids with special needs. I really have a heart for it and I can
totally see myself doing it in the future. But as the Joshua staff always says,
“We’ll see what the Lord has.”
Here's the link to the wrap up video + a little extra! more pictures to come!
Wrap Up vid
Almost Home
Tree Lighting Ceremony
Also here is the link to the Genesis blog :)
Genesis
