Y Squad spent this past month in the mountain town of Lajas, Dominican Republic, with the Dominguez family of HOPE4DR (Helping Others Pursue Christ for Dominican Republic). I cannot explain in words what a blessing this family has been to us-getting to learn from them, serve with them, and live here with their family has been an honor. The property we were staying on is expansive, and the family has a vision for a children’s home and school here, and also eventually a camp and retreat for married couples and pastors. Our job there was working at a children’s school in an impoverished part of the city, doing manual labor there on the ranch, teaching English classes to locals on the mountain, and doing prayer walks and evangelism over the city and mountain. I thought I’d take the opportunity to walk you through what a typical day here in Lajas might look like for us.
The day starts early, with all of us eating breakfast cooked in the outdoor kitchen. Breakfast might be rice pudding, oatmeal, muffins, cream of corn, or bread and butter, with coffee, juice, or hot chocolate.
Next we start ministry. We are divided into our teams for ministry, and we cycle through the different ministry tasks per team. If it was my team’s day to teach English, we would either load into a van or truck and head into the city to teach at a children’s center, or we would stay to teach English classes to the locals who walk here to the ranch to learn. If it was our day for prayer walking, we would either head into the city of Santiago to pray over a neighborhood there and visit with different people in need, or we would stay here and pray over the streets and homes near the ranch. If it was our day for work duty or grounds, we would stay at the ranch and do laundry, cook, and clean for the squad, or we would be doing manual labor around the ranch-things like digging ditches for electrical lines, routing and glueing pipes for plumbing, building stairs, mixing and pouring concrete, harvesting fruit, cleaning the river, making footpaths, moving rocks, etc.
We break for lunch at noon, and have a two hour break before we start work again. Lunch is usually some sort of starch and meat, maybe rice and sardines, or yuca and chicken. Usually during this break, we have team time. This is where we sit together as a team and process what has been going on. We talk about the ministry, what we did well and what we could do better. We discuss personal issues, spiritual issues, share testimonies, and give feedback. We pray together and study scripture together.
After the lunch and team time break, we get back to work! We continue whatever work we had started that morning, and usually work until about 4pm. Then, if we are one of the team in the city, someone will come pick us up and we’ll run any errands necessary for the ranch, then head back up the mountain.
Around 6:30 or 7:00pm, we eat dinner together. Dinner is smaller than lunch, maybe eggs and boiled bananas or bread and butter. We do a devotion together led by one of our hosts, and then whatever we want. Sometimes we have a squad-wide prayer night, or a worship night, and other nights we just talk and play games.
A few other notes on our living situation in Dominican Republic:
– We live in our tents this month. Some people have chosen to stay in large, community tents that the hosts provided, others chose to stay in their personal tents they brought with them.
– We share one bathroom. Technically, the men have a separate bathroom in an abandoned house down the street, but at night the ranch gates get locked, so we all share the women’s bathroom here. The bathroom is a cement room with a single toilet and a shower. I was initially nervous about how this would all work, but it has worked out astonishingly well.
– I have spent about half of my nights here sleeping in my hammock. In Puerto Rico, I spent all but three nights there, and this month on the days it doesn’t rain, it is my bed preference too. A few squadmates have also strung up their hammocks to sleep in, so it’s a pleasant little community out there.
– All laundry is washed by hand and line dried. When 50+ people are doing this, you have to fight for your laundry line space, and not feel embarrassed about everyone seeing your undies!
Thanks for checking in and reading about my life in Dominican Republic! I want to return to this blog in the future and add more photos, but I´m working with a very slow internet cafe right now, so this is the best I could get. I´m in Bolivia now, so keep checking in for updates on our life and ministry here!
