Wow I can’t believe I am already in month 2 of the World Race. Last month in the Dominican Republic God totally blessed us with an amazing ministry contact. His name is Noky. He’s the pastor of the church we served with this past month.
My team and spent a month in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. We lived in a small town called Arroyo Cano that has probably about 2,000 inhabitants and pretty much all of whom liked to just sit around and stare at us as we walk by on the dirt roads. By the end of the month though we had won most of them over. As we walked around town we each of the six of us had our friends that we would stop in to say hello to. My friends became the two grocery ladies who each have a stand on the street corner. They would shower me with kisses before I could even ask for what I needed to buy. Not going to lie it was really hard to leave at the end of the month. When I signed up for the World Race I knew it was 11 different countries, but I didn’t think about that it also meant 11 different good-byes.
Looking back over the month I decided narrow it down to my 8 highlights:
1. Noky
This guy is a man of God. He is a young 32 years old pastor who lives his life to the fullest with passion in everything he puts his hands to. He is our mentor, friend, entertainment, and pastor of the church we served this month. He taught me about giving my all to the Lord in every little task I put my hands to. He taught me about being a relational leader who constantly empowers the people around me. He is also hilarious! Our team now has what we call “Nokyisms,” which are basically hilarious things Noky says or does that are now forever apart of our lives and the culture of our team. This guy taught me what it means to love and enjoy serving God in ministry.
2. Compassion
Noky’s church has a Compassion International center built into their church. Twice a day, four days a week they serve impoverished children of the city. We worked with the Compassion kids all month singing bible songs, teaching bible lessons through skits, playing with them on the playground, and feeding them a meal each time. We had a blast with our skits including Jonah and the big whale, which got all the kids screaming. Our other skits were about David and Goliath, Noah, not littering, and listening and being polite to your classmates. It was hilarious. Just imagine me in the corner telling the story in Spanish, Tyler bursting out of the bathroom with a loud bang of the tin door and lot and lots of growling mimicking Goliath, and the rest of my team cowering in fear mimicking David and his friends who later went on to kill the big giant with three little stones. The kids ate it up and were screaming, laughing, and learning all at the same time.
3. Teaching English
We taught English twice a week for 2-3 hours each time. One class was in Arroyo Cano and the other class was in Boechio a town about 20 minutes away. I got really attached to three of my students in Boechio. Their names were Caramel, Elizabeth, and Melitza. All six of us piled into the back of a pick up truck for the 20-minute drive to the neighboring mountain town. My girls and I always had a lively English session. Many of the times they would not even want to go to recess when it was time. I will miss them! One thing I always enjoyed was the drive home at night when we would be driving down dark windy roads through the mountains of the Dominican Republic looking at the bright beautiful stars as we sat in the back of the pick up truck. Green mountain scenery by day and bright stars by night, it doesn’t get much better than this.
4. My Birthday
I turned 23 this month and it was such an amazing birthday. I got to talk to Mom and Dad for about 5 minutes on Skype, which was such a blessing! My team and I got to go down the mountain to the city of San Juan to celebrate my birthday. It was about 40 minutes away in the back of a truck. There I translated a sermon in the morning as Noky preached in Spanish. Then in the afternoon I learned the how to dance the traditional Dominican dance called Meringue. Now that was a blast dancing up a storm with my team! Then we went and ate tacos with other world racers from my squad who were living and ministering in San Juan. God totally blessed my birthday with amazing memories, friends, dancing, and food!
5. Nurse for a day!
A part of our ministry this month was hiking out to a tiny mountain town called Los Soborinos. It’s only got about 400 people who live there. They have no church presence there. By that I mean there is a building with four walls that some American built but it was never finished and is not the hang out spot for the town goats. The church floors were all covered in wretched smelling animal feces until our awesome guys spent hours cleaning it all up. After they cleaned it all up we had a prayer service in the building asking the Lord for an open door to establish a church in this town of hardhearted people.
One of the times we hiked out to Los Soborinos we travelled with Marisol, a nurse who attends the church. She set up an immunization clinic when we got there. The clinic basically consisted of someone letting us use their little wood home with a dirt floor. We had one chair and would give people shots as they came in. After watching the nurse give a few shots she suddenly turned to me and said, “you want try” and preceded to hand me the needle for the next shot! Seriously! So I took it and started giving people immunization shots. I love how in America you have to have a license to do anything, and in other third world countries you can literally get away with crazy things like me turning into a nurse in like a day haha! When I was little I wanted to be a medical mission doctor and now look God is letting me get a little taste of what that would have been like!
6. Baptism in the River
This month I got a chance to help baptize three teenagers in the cold rushing river under a beautiful blue sky! I purposely jumped into the river afterward with one of them. We let the strong current just drag us along for a little bit and then grabbed onto a rock and climbed out.
7. Translating all month
My main ministry this month was being my team’s translator. Typically on the world race teams have a translator from that country that does ministry with them and communicates for them. Because I speak Spanish the squad leaders asked me if I would consider translating for the team for the month. I said sure! Honestly I love speaking Spanish but my only fear was translating a sermon from English into Spanish, but I overcame that fear this month! So my role as translator basically looked like me translating all of the sermons into English for my team, translating a few sermons and bible studies into Spanish, teaching the bible lessons to the compassion kids in Spanish, and praying for and talking with the families we went to go visit at their homes and pray for the sick. It also included me just basically the daily conversations of my five teammates when we were out and about. I loved how curious my teammates were so they were constantly learning new words in Spanish so they didn’t have to ask me to translate so often. It was a great month!
7. Crazy Americans running up hills in the dark
My goal this year is to get into shape and learn to work out. I swam for nine years but that was all team workouts. I want to learn to love individual exercise just with the sole purpose of living a healthy life. We are never allowed to go anywhere alone on the World Race. Rebekah and Suzanne on my team both run marathons and they basically die inside if they can’t run everyday. That means though that they have always convince someone to come with them for a run since they can’t go first. So I told Rebekah I would run with her. So at 0’dark 30 Rebekah could come leaning over my church bench to say “good morning.” We would set out at 6:45 in the morning and go running up crazy hills since everywhere in Arroyo Cano is a hill. By the way Dominican’s don’t all have cars so they walk so much that the concept of running for exercise to them in a foreign concept. That translated to use getting a lot of confused stares as we ran by each time. Basically the look on their faces said, “what are those crazy Americans up to now…”? Haha! I love it!
8. Searching for Fruit in the forest
We go to go search for our fruit in the forest. We gathered sweet lemons, China (their sweet oranges), and Avocadoes that were literally half the size of my head! This is the freshest fruit I have ever eaten! Here and I thought farmer’s markets were awesome, all I had to do this month was go pull my fruit off the forest trees!
9. Chasing Tarantula
I have four friends. One of whom was named Bubba! Spiders bigger than my palm lived in our church building/home. We slept on church benches this month and these guys were my little friends. The king daddy spider was the hairy Tarantula that we saw that was literally bigger than my palm and 2-3 inches tall height wise off the ground. When I was ten I told my mom I wanted to be a missionary and then when I would freak out about bugs she would say if you freak out now then how are you going to handle it on the mission field? I used to say, “I don’t know but I’ll let you know when I get there one day.” Well mom this blog is for you. I am officially a missionary and chasing down Tarantula with my shoes. By the way we killed the other three big ones and the Tarantula got away. So my friend is still living somewhere…
All I can say is God is good and I will miss the Dominican Republic!
TO SEE PICTURES OF MY MONTH CLICK HERE
