little area in a corner at the boarding gate of my connection flight and slept for a bit. This is where it starts, I thought to myself, lying on the open floor of an empty airport, the next 10 days is going to be just like this, where assumptions of comfort and ability to adapt will be challenged, and maybe we’ll begin to have a slightly greater capacity to understand and be reminded of how most of the rest of the world is like.We met up with a couple Dominicans, Pastor Ricardo and his son Ricky, Pastor Jacky, and Pastor Bronny and we all traveled together in Pastor Ricardo’s gua gua (it’s a type of a small bus). As we d
rove through the country we had the opportunity to see the mountains and the oceans of DR. We also had our first encounter with the Dominican culture when we briefly visited a small village that the foundation
has worked in before. As soon as we arrived there the kids all came out and surrounded us and all came to hold onto our hands. Most of them don't know any of us and it was kind of surprising how approachable they automatically perceived us to be and welcomed us without hesitation. We walked around the village for a bit and checked on the water treatment and sanitation system others have come to build before. The kids followed us the whole time holding onto our hands everywhere we went. There was a worship service, it was a bit late in the evening and there was only a lifeless florescent tube on the ceiling that barely did anything and the room was nearly pitch black. But the people sang, and they sang, there was no instrument nor any kind of planning and to be honest it sounded pretty terrible, but they sang, and they did with a passion. Maybe it wasn't art, maybe it wasn't presentation, but it was the heart of worship that they understood. a lot better than I do. After 25 hours of travel we finally reached Barahona where we stayed for the first night. We slept in a room that's basically a cage on the balcony. The "room" has no walls but only metal bars for safety. It was quite interesting, but there wasn’t much energy left in me to marvel at the construction since I hadn’t really slept for 36 hours. I just remembered waking up the next morning to rooster crows and trees in my face and felt like I was in the middle of a forest
A couple more hours of travel got us to Pedernales, where we stayed for the rest of our time on the trip. It is a small town at the border between DR and Haiti but on the DR side. For a few days we crossed over the border and helped with construction of a church in Anse-a-Pitre in Haiti. As soon as we crossed the border into Haiti we could clearly see a drastic change in the level of poverty, the paved road ends and dirt road begins and people were living in shacks with tin roofs and unfinished walls.
The church we helped to work on has been under construction for 8 years, but when we first arrived, we saw that all there was was basically four 10-feet-tall walls. The co
mmunity has had the dream of building a church for the past 8 years, and each year they manage to save enough money to put on a layer of bricks. We spent a few days digging holes around the walls to put in rebars and pour concrete to build the posts that could support a roof. The construction processes are very casual at the work site and pretty much anything goes, which is good in the sense that many creative solutions can be implemented to move things alone, but it also meant that things aren't always monitored or well-thought out and you have to be aware and alert of what's going on around you to stay safe. One Haitian almost died when they were knocking down some concrete posts, and one of those posts ended up accidentally crushing a table sitting near it in half. 
Luckily no one got hurt or died at the end of the week, the danger just made things a bit more interesting. It was cool that we were able to cross the border to help out in Haiti, and also to bring Dominicans with us to work together at the site. There has traditionally been a fair amount of tension between the Dominicans and Haitians. A chance for some of them to offer help and volunteer together was definitely a meaningful step towards building their relationships. We got update that the Sunday after our team left, they'd gotten enough work done to be able to pour the roof, which is something the people there had been looking forward to for a long time. We will post pictures of the progress as we receive them. 
We also spent one morning working on another church in Pedernales. The weather was cool that day and we were able to get a lot done because you don’t have to take a break every 10 minutes from overheating. It was quite satisfying to see things accomplished in a couple hours.
We held medical clinics for two days, one in Haiti and one in the DR. 9 doctors traveled from Santo Domingo, the capital of DR, to come to volunteer in the clinics. We were able to serve over 1200 people during those two days and provided them with medicine and other health supplies that were donated to the foundation. Most of these people have no access
to health care, and when we asked them what happens if they really needed to see a doctor, their answer was that they basically just die. Due to the poor living conditions and a lack of access to clean water, even many infections that would've been considered trivial to treat in the US result in difficult complications for the people there. Two little girls came with an infected ingrown big toe nail, and since no medical follow-up was available to them, instead of prescribing antibiotics, the doctors brought them outside and pulled out the toenail on the spot.
Entertaining the kids (and ourselves) at the medical clinic
Toenail removal surgery... seems like a big deal
We took an afternoon to visit and hang out at a secluded beach that was about an hour drive and then 30 minutes of boat ride away to an area that isn’t easily accessible by road. It was a nice break to relax and un
wind after a few days of work. The place where we took the boat was a cliffy area where people made houses out of caves at the bottom of the cliff. On the boat ride to the beach we saw more of these magnificent cliffs by the ocean. The water was a stunning turquoise green and the sky had different shades of grey where in the distance sunrays came through pockets of openings in the clouds like showers of grace falling across the far ends of the sea. And somehow there was no discord between this marvelous beauty and the broken and beatup shacks at the feet of its scope depicting the hardship and physical depravity experienced by the people here on a daily basis, but instead, our instincts seem to tell us that these things fit together in a picture as seamless compliments of one another. Maybe there is no answer to the problem of evil, but only a conviction of His grace and sovereignty and an acknowledgement of our own limitedness.
We seemed pretty curious about these starfish...
Kristin gave me a hermit crab that she found on the boat, which turned out to be one Leah caught and left on the boat earlier...
We also held a couple VBS sessions as well as attended worship services with the locals in Haiti and DR. All the people were very welcoming and even though many of us can't communicate with them at all through language, they felt like brothers and sisters even more than many of whom we CAN communicate with. Ruth taught me how to play Dominoes. For the Dominicans traveling with us that seems to be all they do every night, some of them are pretty competitive while playing this game and things can apparently get kind of mean with talking smack and what not (although I’m sheltered from it cause I’m basically clueless to whatever people are saying… heh). Ruth and I played against two Dominicans traveling with us. It was my first time playing so I had no idea what was going on, and Ruth wasn’t paying attention probably cause I was distracting her by asking what was going on every two seconds, but somehow we were winning which probably was quite disturbing to our opposing team and in the very first round of the game they just blatantly cheated by moving stuff around while we weren’t paying attention. David was sitting by watching us play and was just like, “dude, they totally just cheated and moved that piece right in front of your eyes.” I thought that was pretty funny. By the end of the night I think Ruth had enough of the talking smack and teasing and all the impolite treatments and was a little upset, though I found it pretty humorous how a whole other side of people come out regardless how nice they are during the day, and I think experiencing each other’s unpleasantness quite often allows us to identify with and embrace each other’s imperfect souls and eventually brings us closer together. It was a refreshing difference from the artificial etiquette we often operate on that only keeps each of us a safe distance apart.
VBS Photos
We spent a few nights talking about the physical poverty of the people here, and the unexpected aura of joy and contentment we see in them. We witnessed the openness and audacity in their worship that resemble a free and primitive attitude of human beings, and it makes you wonder, just what happened to US? It was interesting to compare North Americans to the Haitians/Dominicans. The Haitians live in a reality where each day they are reminded of their dependence on God, and maybe having to ask for daily bread is what keeps them from being distracted. North Americans, on the other hand, I think nobody will disagree that we are powerless addicts of materialism and pop culture. Even though we can easily have most of our physical needs met, spiritually, we are just as deprived as the Haitians are physically, and our pride only prevents us from recognizing our own sickness. As Wendy expressed, there is something fundamentally evil about a child starving to death in front of an empty bowl. True. but there is also something fundamentally evil about a teenage girl starving to death in front of a lying mirror. and there is something fundamentally evil about the utter hopelessness that brings so many to spill their own blood. We didn’t come here to try to offer some sort of salvation to these people, how arrogant to think we even have the authority. There is a different kind of brokenness in both of the cultures, and through giving ourselves we can only come together to exchange what we have and mend the wounds of one another
We took a walking tour through Anse-a-Pitre one morning and saw a bit more of the lives of the people there
Drainage Waterslide
Future Gymnist
On the long drive back to the capital we stopped by this gorgeous garden and hung out there for 20 minutes. It was a whole different world on it’s own and unlike anything else we’ve seen on this Island. There were some interactions with the waterfalls by certain group member(s). Kristin pointed out a snake swimming through the pool, which I caught and played with for a bit, Wendy shared little enthusiasm about that fact (possibly as little as when I was trying to buy that switchblade, or when I ate the unidentifiable fruit off the unidentifiable tree...)
The last night in the DR, we were back at the capital and stayed at the FFP missionary house. We sang some worship together after dinner. We prayed for Kristin after sending her off to the hospital. Ricky and I dragged our mattresses outside to sleep on the roof. I had to hunt for some cockroach Leah and Olivia claimed to be under their beds. Eventually we all went to sleep, but as I lay there on the open roof, it reminded me of when I slept on the open floor of Miami airport in the beginning of this trip, where I thought it all started. It felt like a lifetime, at the moment it felt a bit baffling how I ended up lying out there on the roof under the stars in the middle of the Dominican Republic beside some black kid I’d never met until a week ago whom I could now recognize as a brother and still can’t communicate to, like everything right then was just how it’s supposed to be, and I’ve gotten used to all of it, except that such reality only extended as far as tomorrow when each of us parted our ways back to our normal lives in the US.
As for what happens after returning, maybe I’ll be writing more another day
- I'd like to give credits for the photos. Some of them are mine, but many are from Anide and Kristin's Cameras (i.e. the better ones, or ones that don't contain a hermit crab)
