WHERE IN THE WORLD IS KIRST?!
I am in the town of Lajas de Yaroa, which is a small town up on a mountain in the Dominican Republic. We are with an organization called “H.O.P.E (Helping Others Pursue Eternity) for the DR”. The weather is in the 70’s and let me just tell you about the VIEW! Our ministry host’s home where we are staying has this cement roof that overlooks the valley of the mountains and all you see is green all around you. This is where I have spent most of my mornings spending a bit of alone time with God just letting Him reveal Himself to me through His creation and His beauty.
There are three separate teams of 6 or 7 girls from my World Race squad all staying here. Each team is doing a different kind of ministry and then will switch week to week. So, this week my team spent planning for a two week Vacation Bible School type camp for the children of Lajas. We are having two sessions a day, one in the morning and one in the evening so that the kids who have school in the morning can come to camp in the evening and vise versa. Monday starts the actual camp. My team will be helping with camp all week and then we will switch and will be doing Women’s Ministry putting on a women’s bible study type meeting on Tuesday evenings, and then also spend a lot of time during the week visiting these women’s homes, praying for them, and speaking life into them.
Saturdays are called “Adventure Day”. This gives Racers the opportunity to take a day to explore the country’s culture and favorite sites/hobbies. This Saturday we went to the 27 Waterfalls where we got to climb up the first 7 and then jump off of/slide down them! Hopefully this picture does the beauty at least half the justice it deserves. This is definitely one of the coolest things I’ve done so far. After we finished up there, we spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach. Rough life, right?
Although this first week has been slower than expected, I think it was just what our team needed in order to adjust and get ready to dive into ministry Monday. I can’t wait to update on how Week 1 went with the kiddos and I’m definitely excited to act silly with them!
