Going Home

Well since I have done posts the last few days that I write through the whole day, I thought I would do that again today :)

I am laying in bed right now waiting to get up, I think I am used to getting up at six and sleeping into eight is just not happening. This morning the whole team is meeting for breakfast at eight, then two of us are leaving at nine and the rest of us are going to jump in the pool one last time before we are in airports for the rest of the day.

I had not thought much about out team before coming here, other than for some reason I assumed everyone was much older than us. I am not sure why I made that assumption, but I was wrong. It has been so much fun getting to know everyone on this trip and am so challenged by the people around me. It is cool to go from complete strangers one week ago to good friends a week later. Having this shared experience is something that just brings you together.

I am trying to figure out in my mind what I am thinking about this trip as more of a summary, there are so many thoughts floating around in my head that I am having trouble figuring out what I am really thinking.

OK, I am off to meet the team for breakfast, swim, quickly pack, and then leave for the airport by eleven this morning. Yup, we are packing it in these last few hours! Hasta Luego

Hola! I am back. We had a great morning in the pool and packing and then in the Santo Domingo Airport for a few hours and are now on our first flight to Miami. I think I like this whole blogging in a plane thing :)

We have had a little airport excitement, one guy on our team was searched going through security, as we were boarding the plane, they called my name over the intercom so that they could search my bag, and then Phil was randomly selected boarding the plane to be searched. I guess we look suspicious! My guess is security is a little higher flying to the US since the flights the other day.

Now that we are on our way home, I am ready to just be there. Sleeping in my own bed, drinking water without thinking about it, my own shower, clean clothes, and seeing my puppies are all things I am looking forward to. It is so good to break out of my comfortable bubble though and see the world around me. It renews my passion for those less fortunate than me, and makes me want to continue to do what I can and use what God has given us to change the world around us. 

While we were there we met a girl from the first orphanage who did not have a sponsor, so for most of the week I thought about her, and last night we decided to sponsor her. It is cool to know that through such a small amount of money you can change a child’s life. This trip has shown me even more, I always knew sponsoring a child was a good thing, but had not seen the difference it actually makes in their lives. The food, education, clothes, and clean water are literally life saving for these children.

I would highly encourage anyone to sponsor a child, it is a great way to do good from where you are at and truly make a huge impact. The child we just sponsored is through Vision Trust and it is $35 a month, but we also have a child through World Vision, another awesome organization. Check out their websites if you want more information!

www.worldvision.org

www.visiontrust.org   

If you do sponsor a child, I would love to know about it!

Over the next few days as I process this trip I am sure I will post more!  

La Repressa

Yes, I know I missed yesterday… I was just so tired last night and to be honest a little confused by language! For most of the week we have been doing our best at speaking Spanish, and I was finding it difficult to switch back to English without always thinking about what I was saying in Spanish. SO to make things more complicated, the last two days we have spent at a deaf school, so everything is double translated, and my head is spinning. I have learned a little sign language and a little Spanish, just enough to make myself confused. I was thinking about posting last night and could not turn my brain off. Phil and I have been laughing about this for days.

Right now we are all in our vans going to a town called La Repressa that is in the jungle. We are not going to be doing any medical work there but will just be playing with the kids and seeing the town. Nelson told us all that it is about an hour drive to this town, but those who have been there before say it is more like an hour and a half drive there. All the driving here is absolutely crazy, so an hour and a half drive is not nice freeways but stopping, starting, huge bumps, crazy traffic, horns…. I appreciate our roads and law enforcement so much more than I ever have before!

Yesterday on our way to the deaf school one of our vans was in a small accident. There was a car that took a corner way to wide and side swiped our van. Thankfully everyone was ok, there was just a little damage to the van. In all the years that teams have been coming down here, this is the first accident that has happened. I am very surprised this does not happen more!

The deaf school was amazing. The children were so sweet and always wanted to know our names and how old we were. For the most part they were extremely well behaved and fun to work with. It was really sad to me that on the whole these children had much worse vision than another place we have been. I hope that these kids can get glasses since their communication depends on it.

We finished much earlier than expected yesterday, so we were able to play with the children for a while and then went back to the hotel and had a relaxing afternoon. Almost the whole team ended up in the pool for hours. It was a blast and much needed relaxation. We were goofing off and played many funny games like a handstand contest, treading water contest, holding our breath contest… It was really fun! 

This week in some ways has gone very fast and in some ways very slow. We have experienced so much, learned so much, and been able to hopefully leave an impact. 

 

I wrote that first part early this morning, and it is not eleven at night and I am just getting back to it!

It was very cool to see La Repressa. Apparently it used to be just a poorly built wood building that was extremely small. In the last two years through teams that have come down, they tore down what was and built a very nice cement school. It was very cool to see the others in our team who had seen it before and were seeing it for the first time today. The pastor of this area and his wife have been praying for twenty years for something like this to happen and it is was so amazing to hear their stories of how God is answering their prayers and changing a community.

I think what has blown me away is that the same God who answers my prayers and intercedes in my life back in Minnesota is the same God who is doing miracles down here. So amazing to be serving such an amazing God together.  

After leaving La Repressa, we had been on the road for about half an hour and realized we left two people! Apparently just as we were leaving, a girl in the school fainted, so one of the doctors ran in to help, but no one knew they ran back in, so we left! Thankfully the doctor was with a translator and one of our leaders has a cell phone, otherwise we may have gotten back before we realized that. 

For the afternoon, we changed our pace and did some more tourist things. We went to the old section of Santo Domingo where Christopher Columbus and his family lived. It was very cool to tour their house and hear the rich history of the Dominican Republic. We then walked around for quite a while, but it was extremely hot and humid, and many of us are a little sick already so we ended up sitting in this beautiful church for a while that had air conditioning. 

After that we went to the market to buy things from the vendors there. I really hate bartering, but did ok today! It is fun to be able to bring things back to remind us of this trip. 

For dinner we all got pizza and were able to have a great team meeting. It is so cool to hear what others are processing through and what they have learned. A few on the trip had never been out of the country so seeing this poverty was shocking. Others this was their fifth time here, and what they had to say was cool as well.

Tomorrow we will be leaving here by eleven to get to the airport, however our flight does not leave until three forty five, but many on the team are on our flight as well so we will have people to wait with. I am sure we will keep ourselves occupied! I am sad that this trip is coming to an end, but am also excited to be home. Like I mentioned earlier, I am a little sick from the parasites in the water (even though I have been extremely careful, I still got it…) and it will be good to be home! I am also excited to be able to share what we have seen here and be able to impact the world down here by bringing it back.

OK, that’s all for tonight, I will post pictures tomorrow before we leave! Buenos Noches!    

Remar School Day 2 & Deaf School

Before I start with today, I had something cool happen last night that I wanted to share! Last spring I had a very bad reaction to some dental work that was done, and ended up with all my nerves in my mouth being inflamed and I was in a great amount of pain. It all ended with steroids and much relief, however the left lower side of my mouth has been sensitive since this time. Almost as soon as we arrived here, it started to get much worse, but there is not much we can do from here, so I have ignored it. Last night, I had fallen asleep but woke up about an hour later in excruciating pain in my mouth. I took a lot of pain killer, but after an hour the pain was worse and I felt like I was going crazy. I was laying in bed begging God to help the pain go away and that he would not let this hinder our trip and the reason we were here. Finally I decided that I needed to wake Phil up, so I did and asked him to pray with me. He said such a great prayer, asking God to be in control, to heal my mouth, to ban satans power and to ultimately let Christ be glorified. Seriously, not even a few minutes later the pain was gone and I fell fast asleep. I woke this morning with this sense that God made Himself so present to us last night, and so thankful to serve a God that holds the power to do even a small thing like heal a mouth that is hurting.

SO, today we started at the Remar school again to finish the students we were not able to do today. It went so well, and I am loving communicating with the children. Often they laugh at my Spanish and I am sure I say things I do not mean to, when this happens, often Phil knows it and will tell the children I am “loco” (crazy) or that my Spanish is bad… all very true. It’s fun to laugh with the children and at myself. I would love to be better someday!

Many of the children just want to hug you or touch your hair. Today Emily started to spin them around by their arms, and there instantly was a mob of students wanting a turn, so I started doing this as well. I was SO dizzy by the end, and the children thought that was really funny as well. Before we left, they sang us a song, it was sweet.

For lunch we went to a Dominican chicken restaurant that was completely open. Just before we started eating, it started to downpour and many of us got a little wet! The food is really good though!

This afternoon we started at a school for deaf children. This school was almost shut down eight months ago when the place they were meeting at kicked them out. One of the administrators knew of an abandoned government building, and got permission to use it temporarily. Apparently the building was in horrible condition and barely livable, however since they had not where else to go, they fixed up what they could and made it work. A government worker came by one day to see how they were using the building and was so impressed with how the school was being run and how they had done so much with nothing, she was able to have the government give the building to the school, temporarily move them and pay for the rent while they completely renovated. The building now looks so good. Very clean, nicely pained and an overall great space for these children. It was so amazing to hear that story and so clearly see God’s hand working and taking care of his children.

Doing medical assessments was a double challenge because we had to have a English to Spanish translator and then Spanish to sign language. This slowed down the process a great deal. I missed the interaction with the children, but it was still great to be with them. I was very surprised to find that of all the children we have assessed so far, the vision at the deaf school was the worst. Sad considering their eye sight is how they communicate. I hope that the children we found who need glasses will be able to get them.

Some really precious moments happened despite the language barrier. The first was a little girl in a wheel chair taught Emily her name in sign language. She was so excited, and would go around and introduce herself to them all. Also, Phil was standing in front of a bunch of children waiting for their assessments and we noticed they were all pointing at Phil and his muscles. Phil went over to them and they all wanted to touch him. I told him to flex, and all these little boys were completely mesmerized by him. It was SO cute!

Tomorrow we are going back to the deaf school and will finish all assessments there, I believe there are about one-hundred children left to do. Tonight I am excited to possible be sleeping before ten… I better hurry and get some pictures up! Good night!

Swinging the children around

Remar Schools & Remar HIV Home

Since I did not blog yesterday, I am going to start with that, and then do another posting for today to keep them separate!

Yesterday we started at a school called Remar. This school is where a few different homes of children all come to school together. There are all grades (k-12)at this school and all of varying backgrounds, health status’ and abilities. Remar is the name of the area that all these children are from.

We were in a great space for the health assessments with good airflow, something we do not take for granted. If there is not good air flow, you are ether in sweltering heat or there is terrible smell, sometimes both. So having an open air place to do assessments with lots of space was great! The health of the children yesterday was fairly good.

 For lunch we went to a park along the Atlantic Ocean where we made PB&J sandwiches and were able to enjoy the “beach” for a little while. The beach is not typical at all, it was very rocky with steep edges to the water. There were many blow holes in the rock where big streams of water would splash up. Though we were not there long it was so beautiful we greatly enjoyed our time.

Next we went to the aids home where a few of the children were since they had not been in school that morning. As soon as we walked into the home, the smell of urine and sewage was overwhelming. I could not imagine living in a place like this, much less children with a disease and very sensitive immune systems. Makes me so sad for them. However, despite the smell, it is obvious that the children are well cared for and their needs met. There was a full pharmacy with all their meds, a room for a dentist office, and a room for a doctor’s office. The children here were also in much better health condition than others. So despite their HIV status and the smell, it seems they are doing well. It is hard to imagine that these children have such a tragic disease though.

 When we went to the home, we were under the impression there were thirty children to see, however we found once we got there we only had about ten, so we finished early and were able to head back to the hotel and have a little more time to rest. There is a beautiful pool here that almost the whole team jumped into and prayed Frisbee and goofed around. I was super tired, so I swam for a while and then ended of laying by the pool and taking a nap. It was much needed R&R for everyone. 

After dinner last night a few of us ended up sitting in the hotel hallway and talking. It was really fun to get to know a few better and just have time to process. One funny thing that happened was we were all on our way back from dinner and the van that half the team in it happened to be the “younger” part of the group. We are all in our mid twenties with the oldest thirty two, and Wes (the 32 year old) said as soon as we got into the car, “oh no, we don’t have any adults with us,” we all laughed so hard because despite the fact we are all adults, on this trip, we are the kids. It was funny to feel  like the kids again!

OK, that’s yesterday!

Outside the Remar School

Mom singing and playing with the children

Little girl doing her vision screening.

Emily with a little girl named Emily :)

Ok, nasty, i know! BUT look at how swollen my feet are! My hands are the same, Iguess it has to do with the heat an humidity! I look like a monster!

At the beach with a few translators

This boy had a fairly large cut on the top of his foot that Wes was cleaning out.

These children were following Hillary around.