Home. That is the first word that I thought of as I stepped off the plane when my squad arrived in the Dominican Republic. It is amazing how even after 4 years have passed that this place could feel so familiar. It brings me such a joy and peace to be here. I knew that it was going to be a great month as soon as we met up with our contacts. Ruben and Vicki Dominguez, their family and everyone who serves with HOPE DR have such hearts for the people here as well as our teams. They love pouring in to us and want to see us grow.
It is hard to believe that we are coming up on our second full week of being here. Time is weird. The days are slow, but the weeks are fast. I am enjoying the simple life. Living on this mountain is so peaceful. It is like an oasis. A place where we are pretty sure healing, growing and stretching has and will continue to take place as we get to know each other. The view is breathtaking and I am reminded of the glory of God on a daily basis. We are so blessed to be able to worship together twice a day and just share what the Lord is doing. My team is getting to know each other better and beginning to dig deep into what the Lord is revealing to us for the year.
Our first week here was spent with five out of the seven teams from my squad. We were able to serve together to get the property ready for a teen camp. The first day, we carried bucket after bucket of dirt up a set of steep stairs using an assembly line. This laid the foundation for what is now the girl’s bathroom. It was hard, exhausting work, but it gave our team a ton of time to bond and just listen to worship music. The Lord used it to reveal to me that this month and the next 11 months will be a time that He is going to dig the dirt out of my heart and lay a new foundation grounded in Him. The second day we cleared a field to be used as the camp grounds for the boys that would be staying for camp.
The teens arrived on Sunday, our third day in the DR and left on the following Friday. The first night and full day were rough. The language barrier is really hard and I forgot that. Each day we woke up early to have the girls shower and then have devotions with them. I was a counselor that led a group of what ended up to be 13 teens all around the ages of 12 and 13 to each activity. We called ourselved the “Spicy Rocks”. Our group was the smallest group with the youngest teens at camp. We had team time which consisted of working on a challenge each day such as creating a team name, choreographing a dance, and creating a skit. We ate all of our meals together. In the morning and evening we had group sessions with worship and a message. On Tuesday, it was really impressed on my heart to simply pray hard for chains to be broken in their lives. I prayed all day and in to worship on Tuesday night. It was an amazing experience to watch teens go forward and for me to have the privilege of praying over them even though they could not understand a word I was saying. It made my heart so happy that we got to do teen camp our first week. It did not leave any room for homesickness to set in and left us plenty busy supervising and loving teenagers which made my heart so full!
The rest of my team’s time here will be spent on the mountain teaching English to the local children. We have two sessions. They come either in the morning and afternoon and we just spend the time teaching them as much English as possible and sharing the love of Christ with them.
Thank you all for making this possible and pouring your love in to me so that I could do the same across the nations this year. I am so excited that you are sharing in this journey with me and cannot wait to blog again soon to share what God is doing.
