Dominican Republic: March 2008 Archives
Today is our departure from the 85 degree weather and our new friends. Please pray for traveling mercies as we travel to the coast and fly to NY. The transition at JFK will be tight, we have a 2 hour delay, but that includes customs.
This whole week has been such a blessing. God brought our team together to serve Him and bring glory to the Kingdom. The ability to that is such a wonderful reaffirmation of the Christian faith.
To fill you all in quickly, we finished out our sites on Friday with a bang and a quite a few sunburns. Then we had a banquet on the river where we recieved certificates of appreciation for our partnership with the missionaries here.
Saturday was all play; we went white water rafting...what an experience! It was fabulous to say the least. We had 6 different boats so I can't share all the stories. :)
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support. We felt them; the whole trip we were surrounded by a cloud of protection (safety and health). In less than 24 hrs it's back to TU. Pray that God will still use our time here to grow us and His kingdom here in the DR.
Brooke
This entry is complied by the whole team giving y'all an idea of what we do...
Sports: Yo, Harry, Josh Gates, Jason, Doug, TK
"In the words of Yo, "we enjoyed geting owned by some Dominicans at baseball..." It was obvious who was teaching who on the old field in the middle of the city; none of our team were really baseball players, but all day we participated in drills and makeshift games with kids both elementary and high school. Though the hot sun left us burnt and exhausted by the day's end the experience was unforgettable and definately worth it." -Doug
Education El Cllejon: Carolyn Jones, Mary
"I have been extremely impressed witht he preschool we are helping. They have a small building broken up into two very small rooms for 12 students each. There is also a larger pavillion outdoors from some classwork and lunch as well as a nice playground. The school is well organized with a surprising amount of supplies. It has definitely been a challenge communication with the kids and trying to understand where they are coming from, but it has also been very rewarding as well. It's a great blessing to see the way this preschool is helping the kids with life skills adn a headstart in math and reading which they many never learn later in school." Mary
Education Mata Gorta: Daniel, Katie D
"The preschool is set to give the children from the poor town a chance in public school by giving them a jump start with reading and writing. They have responded well to us and our bubbles and guitar songs. Ihad to keep one entertained so he wouldn't bother the construction team at our site, so I "pulled" off my thumb and moved it around. They was folled by a "double pound-it" started by him. " Daniel
Agriculture Los Higos: Adam, Kelly, Cassie
The first two days working in Los Higos were interesting to say the least. Our activities included knitting, irigating the garden, diggin up sweet potatoes and digging up several hunder pounds of clay to make and oven for a family. there are some things to talk about , but God really showed His hand in one area in particular. On Monday the people of Los Higos rioted in the streets because for years the government has promised to fix the road up to their village, but it still has not been done. So since the road is in such poor condition they made it worse by cutting trees down in the road, burning them and even digging ditches across the road. Fortunately theyt workings of Satan did not keep our team away. God has been faithful and continues to be faithful as we near the end of our time." Adam
3/28/08 Updates...and the long awaited story
Social Work Los Higos: Nadeah, Ashley, Josh Gilbert, Jody
"Hola from Los Higos! We have the privelege of working with Andre in the tiny village of Los Higos in the beautiful mountins outside Jarabacoa. The people here maake roughly $1300 a year, abut $100 a month and double in December. The beautiful thing about this village, outside the amazing scenery, is the people do not seem to recongize their poverty. You'll see the kids walking barefoot or at best in shoes 2 sizes too big that an american most likely from SI brought ot them. But they are so happy to be alive and LOVE Andre and of course us. Everyday we help Andre with his "club" which is basically an after school program for kids in the village. It has been a privilege to help out and pray that God will continue to work through Andre and SI." Ashley
Construction El Callejon: Justin, Zach, Stan
"We are working with a couple of other students from other groups at clearning out an area of land next to the school so they can expand. So far we've cleared the land and are working on putting up a chain link fence and pourign footers for the foundation. All of this may sound simple but when everything must be done by hand with picks,and shovels and cement mixed by hand it takes a long time." Zach
Special Ed/Physical Therapy: Nikki, Steph, Laura, Brooke
Special Ed and Physical Theraphy sites for SI recently got a face lift when they moved from a cramped church basement to a piece of beautiful propery outside of Jarabacoa. The school now has rooms for all the classes, administration, and a yard! The change has enabled everyone envolved to do their job more effectively.
Art/Media: Katy
Katy is busy taking photos for us and SI this week. Due to the incredibly slow internet connection I can't get things to upload in a decent time frame.
And NOW...The Story: Forest Fire
*Just a quick note- "Taylor University, friends, family and the United States of America should be extremely proud of two young men on our team - Zachary Lee and Justin Kyle Rush- who put their lives on thei line to save not only the SI base, not only the beautiful city of Jarabaco, but the entire island of Hispanola and the Dominican people from the hellish flames of a ragin forest fire. that caught the DR unaware. Armed with only simple garden hoses and the shirts on their back they beat back teh blazing flames into utter submission.... T.K. held the hose. Justing and Zach have humbly asked that the Dominican president wait until their mission trip is over to hold the awards assembly and honorary citizenship...
-Written by two team members :)
That's all for now... Brooke
Hola!
It had been longer than I realized since I last wrote about our trip. It's crazy to think that we've hit the half way mark already. Just to catch you up on all the goings on here we've been busy almost 24/7 aside from our sleeping. We have had the opportunity to perform in a church in both the adult service and the children's service which was a great experience for all of us. Church here is what some of us call "Jumping for Jesus" church...not your typical TU stand still clapping service...you move you dance and almost every song has some sort of motions. Sunday afternoon was relaxing and consited of games and surprise fire in our back yard. The valley in which we are staying hasn't had rain for about 3 weeks and it's really dry. Thankfully we had some very fearless guys on our trip who helped put it out (ZL and JR...they wanted to be written about :) ) and according to them "we saved the WHOLE island of Hispanola!"
Sunday night was group mixers because we are staying with a group from Bethel University in Minnesota and a group from CalPoly out in CA. The mixers were a good way to force us to mingle and break some barriers.
Yesterday was our first official day at our ministry sights. Wow, talk about seeing the real DR for many people on our team. The areas in which SI has sights are some of the most deprived areas around Jarabacoa. I want to get specific stories from all the sights, but I'll just give you a brief rundown of a day.
6:45 Devotions with SI staff
7:30-8:15 Quiet Time
8:15-8:50 Breakfast and lunch packing
8:55 - 4 Sites
4-6 Free time
6:-7 Dinner
7-9 Cultural Activities
9-10 Free Time
10 lights out....intense days.
Yesterday was culture night we learned out to Merengue! It was fun and gave us TU kids an excuse to dance.
Today we worked and then went to dinner in the community at a persons house. The people of the DR are so loving and hospitaple. And it certainly was a cultural experience too; as is writing this blog as we switch from city power to generator. So I'm going to quickly wrap up and say adios before I lose power and internet again!
Brooke Jantzen
Hola, and greetings from the DR team!
We are safe and sound in Jarabacoa and have been loving every minute of our time so far. We have some amazing answers to prayer that have happened even since departing Taylor.
On Thursday we left with the Jordan team and stayed the night in the O'Hare area. We all arrived to the O'Hare between the hours of 1:30am and 4 am on Friday morning for our flight. Needless to say we were pretty tired! Our fligh was sceduled to take off just before the massive snow storm hit O'Hare; thankfully we were one of the last planes to leave O'Hare!!!! On the plane most of us spent at least a few minutes checking the weather channel and being thankful that we got out when we did. We arrived at JFK with a few butterflies in our stomachs from the turbulent landing, but we all made and our luggage made it even better! After a very nice flight to the DR we had a 3 hour drive from the coast to the mountain...gorgeous! Our team photographer Katie took 400+ pictures of that drive alone. We finally made it to Jarabacoa and stayed that night in a beautiful mountain retreat on the river Jimenoa. Complete with Semana Santa (Holy Week) parties in the background.
A more exciting note is the fact we have already had one outreach to a community while being here. We had the chance to partner with a house of New Horzions youth (of Escule Caribe) to put on an outreach in the community in which they are building a house. We had over 150 children, just children show up to watch our skits, puppets, and music.
After our outreach we came back to the Student International base to check in, clean up and eat. SI is such an amazing group of men and women of God and love on their teams so well. And we can only hope to reciprocate our love back to them equally as well.
Prayer:
Team Vulerability: openness and honesty to each other
Our outreach tomorrow at a local church were we will be performing for the main service and the children's service!
Continued team unity
Praise:
A team member's brother accepted Christ today! Join our celebration!
A successful first outreach
Health
Safe travels and God's traveling provisions
We have a guitar player this year (Dr. Tyner is extremely thankful for this!)
In Chirst,
Brooke
Wow, it's hard to believe spring break is already here!
Today we are leaving Upland behind to travel north. Wait a second, you're supposed to be going south you may say. And correct you are,but first we have the privilege to "bus"pool with the Jordan team to O'Hare.
Both teams should be leaving campus around 3pm. Once in the O'Hare area we are dropping off the Jordan team to catch their flight. If you want more info on the Jordan team visit their blog www2.taylor.edu/weblogs/springbreak/jordan. (copy and paste link)
Then we're headed off to a hotel for some team bonding, pizza and the ever important ZZZ's. And that's just phase 1!
Phase 2: Depart O'Hare to Jarabacoa!
This phase will start very early in the morning as we shuttle our team to the airport for our 4am check-in. Please pray specifically for traveling mercies, good spirits, and the avoidance of lost luggage! If all goes according to plan we hopefully will reach Jarabacoa around 4 or 5pm if my calculations are correct.
In Christ,
Brooke Jantzen
The DR team is really excited to head out on Thursday for our time in the DR. We are blessed to have 8 returning memeber from last year and we are extremely excited to be heading back. Please pray in the next few days for us as we pack and finish our our week of tests, papers, and classes strong.
Brooke Jantzen
