I’ve decided to begin a series of blogs about the best and worst of each month; the highest and lowest points I personally had in each month. I think it’ll be interesting. Not much else really to say about it!
Dominican Republic
In the D.R. my team travelled to several villages in the mountains and did village ministry. We walked around the village and met with some of the local people to talk to them about their relationship with Christ, if there was one at all. The last village we went to was about four hours into the mountains. Our team piled into the back of a pickup truck with all of our gear and bounced our way through some of the roughest roads I’ve been on on this whole trip. Besides being rough, it was steep. We held onto each other’s arms and hands in order to not fall out of the truck when driving up a mountain. I found it entertaining but I only speak for myself.
We finally arrived at Gramazo and soon found out that we were going to be sleeping in tents for the night. This was our first time sleeping in tents on the Race, so I was happy about it. Besides that, we were on a hill with mountains all around us. It was an absolutely amazing view! I counted myself blessed to be able to spend the night here!
That night, after we had finished our ministry and we’re going to go to sleep, we prayed. The wind had picked up substantially and because of its force, our tents threatened to fly away. We placed rocks in our tents, positioned our gear inside it as best we could or in my case, tied my tent to the ground. We stood huddled around, talking and praying and for me, it was so good.
At that moment, I had a family. I had people who I knew I could love and I knew wouldn’t fail me. Although it was only month one on the race, I felt a bond between us as we stood out under the stars on a mountain top in the Dominican Republic. That was the best of the D.R. for me.
One of the villages we went to a couple of times was called Cigual. There was a church there that our translator, Manuel, was a pastor of. When we arrived, we found out that we would be sleeping inside the church on the pews, so we stowed our gear in a back room and then looked to the many children who had poured into the church to see the white people.
There came a point when we were spending time with the children that one of us brought out our water bottle to take a drink. Then another one of us bought out our water bottle. As soon as the children saw this, they all began calling out “agau, agua”. Well, we had a jug of water for cooking and so we couldn’t give them that. We had our personal water bottles and we couldn’t give them that because then we wouldn’t have any. So we didn’t. We were left to telling them in our broken Spanish that we couldn’t give them any.
The truth of the matter is that I didn’t want to give them my water. I didn’t want to give up what was mine. True, I only had a water bottle full, but it was precious to me and I didn’t want to give them that. Maybe I didn’t have enough for each of them to have a sip, but then again, maybe I did. Maybe I could have given them each just the tiniest drop. I just know that in that moment, I hated to hear them call out for water and knowing I only had my own and if I gave them it, I wouldn’t have any for myself. That was the worst of the D.R.
