We went to bed late the night before, not knowing what was ahead. Sunday morning, we woke up early to finish packing, cleaning and closing up our house. We gathered outside on the street with all our stuff waiting for our transportation, praying over the DR and what we had experienced and praying into our next month of ministry in Haiti…
SURPRISE! Transportation is not coming. Today is your first Race Day! GO!
Transportation is ours to find…And we were off, quickly reading through our instructions, putting on packs and carrying everything about 8 blocks to the bus station, where we loaded the bus to Santo Domingo. All teams except two took the 3 hour bus ride to the bus station where we then found and loaded in taxis to take us to the YWAM base…the other two teams got local transportation, which seemed cheaper in the beginning but ending up putting them behind as their luggage took up seats and they got lost in Santo Domingo on the way to the YWAM base…
We were held at the base for an hour or so to hear YWAM instructions before hailing yet another taxi to “tour” us around the city in Race mode. I felt like I was on the Amazing Race. I loved the experience of going and doing…not everyone on the team had the same response, however, as some didn’t care about the race, some just wanted to get it done and over with and others just wanted to take their time. We learnt to work together through stressful situations of locating where we needed to go, spending a designated time at each location, making sure we didn’t spend too much money and then moving on to the next place!
Our race day consisted of a photo scavenger hunt to five places and a traditional Dominican meal! It was exciting. The city was beautiful. Our taxi ride from the YWAM base to our first stop at the Lighthouse was an experience…we had a taxi driver that was paying more attention to the fact that he had 7 women in his taxi than he was to where he was going. We scarcely avoided an accident – thank you Lord – as the water splash from it come into our taxi window. Talk about a close call, but the Lord was watching over us. When we got out, we made sure he left and called our initial taxi driver, Marino, from the bus station to come and chauffeur us around for the day…he was wonderful!
We were surprised at how long it took us to find a place to eat lunch – under budget and that would be traditional Dominican food, not just fast food! We had a lot of fun taking pictures and seeing the best and worst of each other – many stressful, frustrating and tense moments, as well as many prayerful God moments through out the day.
It was a day that will not be forgotten. Lots of lessons learnt. COMMUNICATION being a big one. When we got back to the base, we couldn’t believe that we were the first and only team to be there…it was nice to be able to relax, sleep, shower and build relationships and talk about the day as the other teams arrived!
We ended the day with an amazing YWAM worship session. The spirit of the Lord filled the place and words were spoken to us that we were blessed by. God knew we needed to be there to be a blessing to them and have them bless us in return! We called it an early night, as we had a long bus ride to Haiti the next morning and it had been a long, tiring and adventurous say in the hot sun!
This was the first of many Race Days…stay tuned for Race Day 2…where and when TBD…I don’t even know!
