5:55am—Wake up
Our whole squad is together this month camping on the property of a Dominican-American couple with a beautiful vision of having a retreat center, camp, and family-based orphanage. Right now it’s just a house and some land, so we’re camping on the side of a mountain. The tricky part is that throughout the night we slide down our tents and have to army crawl back up.
6:15am—Bathroom Line
All 47 of us are sharing one toilet (ok, two, but the second is like two blocks away). So I get as ready as I can in my tent (aka get dressed) then I come up to declare my place in line while I finish getting ready (brush teeth, put in contacts, etc.). We were averaging one roll of toilet paper per hour, so they gave us each a roll to be responsible for.
6:30am—Worship and Sunrise
Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s a devo led by our hostess’ American parents, sometimes it’s just “keep your eyes open with toothpicks” while we wait for breakfast.
7am—Breakfast
Food times are approximate. We’re eating traditional Dominican meals so lunch is the largest meal of the day. Breakfast is usually muffins, bread, oatmeal, cream of wheat/corn, or arroz con leche. There’s also coffee and/or juice most days.
7:30am—Leave for ministry
Two ministry teams are working in Santiago (the nearest Google-able city, an hour away) leave by truck. One team prayer walks through the host’s home neighborhood where their church his now and his family still lives. The other works at a children’s center in an underprivileged community.
8am—On-site ministry starts
One team does a prayer walk through the local town and this property. Another works on grounds digging holes for future bathrooms, running pipelines across the land, building pathways, collecting fruit, building stairs in the mountains, etc. The last group does miscellaneous projects, cooking, and daily housekeeping task.
9-11—English lessons
In the DR, students only go to school for a few hours in the morning on the afternoon. We’ve been hosting English lessons on the ground porch and in the driveway In the morning it’s a lot of young children with no English (and sometimes no school) background so it’s hard to teach them. In the afternoon it’s more youth who have been learning English in school but don’t always know how to apply it. We spend a lot of time correcting what they think they know. “No, Saturday is not the third day of the week” and “Sunday has no O in it even if that’s how your teacher spelled it.”
12-2—Lunch Break
Since lunch is the biggest meal of the day, we have a two hour break for naps too. Except we don’t have time to nap. We use this time for team time instead. We usually have rice and something—spaghetti, sausage, miscellaneous veggies, arepas (aka wontons sans cream cheese).
2-4—Continue Ministry
Fridays are our day off so we go to the beach, hang out at the house, or go hiking. On Saturdays we work with the children in the area hosting a VBS-like day. On Sundays we worship at one of two churches in the area. We also hosted a basketball tournament.
4pm—On-site ministry concludes
If you’re off-site, it concludes too (ish) but it takes an hour back so we don’t expect to see them before 5:30. Those of us on-site often use this time to get a shower in the waterfall, fight ants in our tent, or hang out. No matter what we’re doing, it goes by fast. Every goes fast—toilet paper, water, and food included. We’ve gone through as many as 11 5-gallon jugs of water in one day. Most days we average 6.
6-8pm—Dinner
It’s usually just bread or something else very light which has taken some adjusting. There’s a lot of fried foods too. We do dinner-time devos too.
8pm—Squad Activities
On paper we have the evening free but it always seems there’s something to do. We often end up having team time twice a day to get announcements or make a plan for the following day. Some nights we worship together as a squad. Other nights we attend a worship service put on by some other missionaries in this community. Then because we’re 47 people living with no indoor space (we spend all of our free time on our host’s wrap-around porch, in the pool, or on the trampoline), there’s always someone to talk to. Most days I do actually like this more than I thought I would. It’s been fun to get to know different people.
10pm—Bed… ish
(PS: With a little over a week left in the month, the host decided the 6:30am morning was too early so they moved breakfast to 8. There was much rejoicing).
