Dominican Republic Mission Trip Journal - Day 4 Friday, May 30 This morning began early for several of our students. Ethan, Logan, Bethany, Thomas, Shelbi, Sarah, and Maddie left the complex at 5:30 a.m. to visit the beach to watch the sunrise. It was raining this morning, so Ethan captured a rainbow and a sunrise at the same time. French toast, sausage, and fruit made up our breakfast this morning. Following breakfast, we loaded up and headed to the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. We drove through the old town and saw the museum to Christopher Columbus and saw the home of his son. We began at a straw market where we had an hour to shop. The team got to try out their bargaining skills as they poured through more than 50 booths with larimar stones, bags, jewelry, artwork, switchblades, machetes, cigars, sunglasses, carvings, spices, seasonings, and trinkets. We then headed down El Conde Street, the main pedestrian street in Santo Domingo. At the end of the street we reached the Chocolate Museum. We toured the museum and sampled several types of chocolate and chocolate hot tea. After several people finished purchasing coffee items from the Gift Shop, we headed to Cathedral Plaza. Here we encountered tons of pigeons. Felipe brought popcorn and we got to feed the pidgeons. This made for some hilarious photos. :) Next we headed into the Panteon de la Patria church. We then headed to lunch at El Conuco for a Dominican buffet lunch. We ate salad, plantains, seabass, chicken, pork, potatoes, eggplant and much more. Following lunch, the staff performed a traditional Dominican dance that included each member of the couple dancing atop a water bottle. Emily, Ethan, Trent, Andy, and Thomas danced with the staff members, while Sarah, Bethany, Dillon, Ethan, Coach Womack, and Coach Sanfratello played the instruments. Following lunch, we headed back to the Score complex to prepare for our afternoon village visit. We dropped off our souvenirs and picked up the supplies for our afternoon visit. Next we headed for Olivarih, our fifth different village to visit. Olivarih was a remote village of about 300. As we arrived, we saw the small church and concrete basketball court. We picked up children all the way to the local ball field. Several of the boys started a pick up basketball game against the locals, while at the ball field there was more nail painting, hair braiding, jump roping, and ball tossing. In addition to children-on-shoulders racing, we also had children-on-shoulders chicken fighting. This made more a few extra bumps and bruises on the team but was still enjoyed by all. :) After an hour of playing with the children, we gathered in the church for a devotional. The choir students and Coach Womack led the group in Amazing Grace; then Trent and Bethany shared their testimonies. Following this, we distributed bags of food to the locals. Each student gave a bag of food to a family and prayed with them. We spent twenty more minutes playing and loving on the children. We returned to the complex a few minutes before dinner. For dinner we had Spanish rice with chicken, french fries, fried plantains, and salad. After that most of the group played games in the swimming pool until devotional time. We met for our devotional at 9 p.m. and spent time sharing about our experiences over the last two days. We then discussed how we would select the village. In order to be able to visit the village that we selected again before we left, we had to select the village tonight. After two rounds of voting, first selecting two villages to narrow it down to and then selecting the one village that TRA would adopt, the students selected village #3, Los Fundos. We will revisit the village on Sunday and attend church with them.
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 02:35:45 +0000
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