Breakfast was held at David and Jewels, and mui bein I must admit. Thank you gentlemen for the pancakes. We even had peanut butter for them!
Marc thought it quite funny to stick a dead tarantula in Steph's face, thus making her scream! But laughter is always good medicine. Jewel informed us that the boys like to hunt tarantulas on hikes and would probably do so this afternoon. So be prepared.
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| Neil with the spider found outside David and Jewels Saturday night |
After Breakfast, our team had a small devotion as well as a time of sharing what we're learning on this trip or our highlights. It was somewhat of an emotional time as we got to see how God brought things together for so many people on the trip and one by one we shared how much we've been impacted by the people. The theme that seemed to be biggest was how well we get along with the people and interact even though we don't and/or can't always understand each other's language.
The verse in 2Corinthians 12:9 that says: My power is made perfect in weakness kept running through my mind. To see how God was proved strong and faithful through the areas we see as our weakness has been so cool to see and I'm looking forward to seeing how he uses us the rest of the trip.
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| walking across the river |
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| on the trail |
Two miles is a decent way to walk in 80+ degree weather. And it's off we went to the fields for our afternoon picnic. Two miles on a trail worn down by the hundreds of men that walk it every day to go to work. And the work is all done by hand! Unlike in America where people LIVE on their farms, in the Dominican the farmers live in towns and walk to their fields everyday to work. I don't even know when the last time I saw someone using a hoe to work a field in America was!! I am so thankful for tractors, and milk! They don't drink much milk in the Dominican Republic, mainly because they don't have facilities to store it after they milk the cows. The cows are usually in the fields too, so when they milk them, the milk might sit a couple hours in the heat before they even bring it home. They do make yogurt and cheese though. Milk here is usually powered. It's just not the same. :(
We hiked to the field bought by Work Team Partners for Agriculture development. The shade was quite nice after walking an hour in the sun!
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| a view from the trail |
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| Neil and Kevin helping make orange juice |
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| The game faces are on |
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| Rafael leading the spider hunt |
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| Chevy let it crawl up his leg! |
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| the biggest one we found |
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| We found an aloe plant and David had some pretty bad sunburn |
Our walk back was much hotter, but that's kind of obvious since it was the middle of the afternoon! Marc and Jose Daniel actually raced back! Wow, I would pass out from heat stroke if I tried that! Wearing jeans in the heat isn't so bad actually, and I feel safer with all the spiders I might come in contact with. :)
On the walk back, I noticed something: So you know how in America, when we see boys wearing their ballcaps in weird positions on their heads, we(well I do anyway) tend to look at them as cocky or gansta. Well I noticed that Moises and Josue were wearing their hats funny and at first I was gonna roll my eyes thinking it was a fashion statement just like America, until we went around a turn and they moved their hats. THEN I realized that they are using them to block the sun from their faces!! :)
Believe me, a cold shower never felt better than it did coming in from a hot day. I don't even think they need hot showers here, cold showers are so refreshing after you've sweated so bad you actually had B.O. And the skirt wasn't so painful either!
While we were waiting our turns in the bathroom, Chevy and I got to talk to Samuel(Samwell) about the beautiful thing we call SNOW! I overheard Chevy asking him if he knew what it was and I mentioned that I had pictures with me to show him. Pictures I might add of the blizzards we got last winter. It's so funny to watch their expressions when they see snow. "No me gusta!" were the words out of Samuel's mouth when he saw pictures of snow up to my waist.
Samuel is David's nephew. And He lives in the house next to ours, and in Kevin and Jen's while they're in the states. He's 25 and one of the nicest guys I've ever met! He's only been speaking English for 3 months, but he's pretty good. We talked about baseball and snow sports, since Chevy and I both work at Whitetail Ski Resort, we explained skiing and snowboarding. Skiing-you get 2 boards. Snowboarding-1 board. :)
And now, it's time for church! Jewel asked us if we'd like to sing a song for church. Hannah, Stephanie and myself decided on Blessed Be Your Name with me on guitar. AH! You have no idea...NO IDEA how happy picking up and playing a guitar made me, even though it was electric! I would have played the rest of the night! We got tons of cheers and applause and whistles when we finished of course. :) :)
The sermon was called "God Never Forgets our Work". The Bible passages used were: Hebrews 6:10, Matthew 20:8-16. 7:22,23, and Esther 6:23. Thankfully Jewel did the favor of interpreting for us Americans! Although, I will say that I had a hard time paying attention because I was trying to figure out what David was saying before it was translated! He preaches with such body language it's hilarious!! But the sermon was good. Oh yea and their worship was great, I'm loving the beats. Kinda made me want to break out into random dance. And I love watching people worship God!
When church ended, we went back to Albina's... well after we shook about 50000 peoples hands and said iHola! to pretty much the entire church that is. :) We really weren't sure what they did after church, so we decided to chill and drink coffee made by Albina. Samuel and Jose Luis joined us. Time to practice our Spanish and their English. With Chevy doing an excellent job as the middle man translator, we talked about farming in Pennsylvania as well as some of the things we do differently. I was curious to know whether or not Christians danced. Samuel said NO...but they do to 'good' music. Christian music. I was relieved, I could never survive in a society where I couldn't dance. It was hard enough not busting moves to all the beats we heard from the bars. Samuel asked us if we could understand the words to the songs and when we said 'No', he was glad, because he said they weren't good songs. He asked us if we liked the weather in the Dominican and of course we all said yes! Then we told him what the weather was like in PA currently. You should have seen the size of their eyes when Chevy converted it to centigrade! And poor Samuel like spazzed out! "Mui Frio! Mui mui frio! No es bueno!"
Over the course of our evening, we were joined by Juan Samuel, Joel(JO-el), and Benedict. While Steph was writing a letter to her boyfriend, which of course brought up the topic of whether Hannah and I were single and whether we would be interested in a Dominican boyfriend. That was a little awkward. :) Random factoid: It's not out of the ordinary for a 30 year old to marry an 18 year old. They believe love has no age.
ANYWAY. While Steph was writing, Hannah and I were working on some friendship bracelets. With Samuel holding a flashlight so I could fix my knot mistakes, the boys all watched with fascination as we knotted these bracelets together. I wanted to make everyone a bracelet, but the problem with that is EVERY child would want one and that would be too much work and time. In this case, I looked over at Juansa and asked him if he wanted one. The smile on his face was enough of an answer for me. I gave them the bag of colors and said "Dos colores". They all picked out two colors and Hannah, Stephanie and myself whipped up bracelets for the group(David and Chevy included).
I for one am impressed at their color matching skills and the colors they picks. I couldn't even tell you who's was my favorite, although I'll have say Juansa's because I made it, it was the first one, AND blue and green are my favorite colors!
Around midnight we said goodnight and everyone went their separate ways. I quite enjoyed just chilling with... friends I guess I can call them. And learning some about their lives in the Dominican. Its funny to think that we're "friends'' when we've really only known each other a few short days, and we don't speak the language very well, but I guess that's not everything to friendship. Friendship can't be based on any ONE thing, it's millions of things. Like spending time together, and sharing, and respecting each other, and being patient while the other stumbles over their tenses or phrasing of a sentence, and being able to laugh at each other in a non-mean way. Or just being there to show that you care about the other person.
And I realized that the more we interacted, and the more we showed that we care about them, the more I saw our friendships budding. And I pray these friendships continue to grow as we work together, play together and laugh together.
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