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!