Hey guys!
I wanted to give you a little synopsis of what a typical week has looked like here in the DR. It started off a little slow since our hosts were preoccupied by their childrens illnesses, so we weren’t given much instruction from the get-go, but we embraced it and kept moving forward.
This month, my squad and I are serving with HOPE Mountain DR. We are in the thick of the jungle on top of a mountain and it is absolutely GORGEOUS! We live in dorms where some of us are sleeping in bunk beds and others are on pieces of plywood balanced on cinder blocks atop of foam mattresses. We are blessed with having a beautiful open/covered roof where most of us hang out and have meetings and worship sessions.
So, those who know me will really appreciate what I’m about to do lol.
Here’s a detailed schedule of what a typical day looks like 🙂
0630-0700: wake up
0700-0800: quiet time with the Lord (typically I find an Eno on the roof to lay in)
0800-0830: community prayer (Vicki and Ruben had asked us to set aside times every day to come together as a squad and pray for the DR, their family’s healing, their church plants, our teammates, and whatever the Lord has put on our hearts)
0830-0900: breakfast
Some of the meals have included cornmeal, oatmeal, pancakes, cereal, spongecake muffins, hard boiled eggs, and COFFEE!
0900-1200: ministry (each team rotates between 5 different tasks each week)
Property: The grounds of HOPE Mountain needs maintenance in order to continue hosting teams and serving their community. Therefore, we help Ruben with random tasks like shoveling dirt out of their waterfall, mixing concrete to repave the kitchen, making stairs on the side of the mountain to create a safe way to tend to their livestock, picking up trash and decaying mangos, gardening, cleaning out and organizing a storage unit, re-piping to make them 3 inches instead of 2, and I think we’ll be painting something soon, too.
Admin: Here, we are helping Vicki make and edit websites to help spread the word about what they are doing and how their ministry is growing the Kingdom.
Property/admin: This is pretty much a day where we are used wherever we’re needed. More often than not, we’re doing some type of manual labor and helping out the property team.
Community: We want to spread the Good News of Jesus into the surrounding community, so this is a day where we can do just that. This past week, teams are helping a close friend of the Dominguez’s, who is an unbeliever, build a house. Teams also head out to the local basketball court to interact with the kids and strike up conversations.
Housekeeping: This is a day where we clean everything; the Dominguez’s house, our laundry, the dorms, the bathrooms, dishes after each meal, and whatever else Vicki asks of us.
1200-1230: lunch
Some of the meals have included rice and beans, mystery meat (I think it’s a type of sausage that’s boiled or fried), bread, chicken, fried or masked plantains, cooked eggs, oh and did I mention rice and beans?
1230-1400: free time
For me, this looks like getting to know my squadmates who I don’t know super well, taking a nap, getting some me time down by the waterfall or playground, walking into town to get a snack, showering, swimming in the pool, and/or organizing my exploding bags so I don’t have to jump into bed at the end of the day (no joke, I literally have to jump).
1400-1430: community prayer
1430-1830: continued ministry assignments
If teams get done early, some choose to do team time before dinner.
1830: dinner
Some of the meals have included boiled or mashed plantains, spaghetti or penne pasta, bread with very sweet hot chocolate, slaw with meat and rice, and hot dogs. We even had nachos one night! Oh and I almost forgot rice and beans lol.
1900-1930: community prayer
1930-whenever I go to bed: free time
Sometimes, we do team time if we didn’t earlier in the day, worship, go through the book of Mark, and/or have meetings. I, more often than not, am in bed no later than 9:30.
And here’s what a typical week looks like 🙂
Sunday: a team goes to church with the Dominguez family while the rest of us choose a ministry to help in
Monday: off day
Tuesday: ministry day (one of the five listed above)
Wednesday: ministry day
Thursday: adventure day (this month, we have the pleasure of going to the beach, snorkeling, waterfall jumping, visiting an island, going into Santiago to hit up a supermarket to get all the goodies, or resting back at the compound)
Friday: ministry day
Saturday: ministry day
And repeat.
There you are folks! I hope you now have a better understanding and visual of what my day-to-day life has looked like.
Love you guys,
~A
