6/2 Monday DR Trip

(I journaled each day about the trip and then decided to post all of the entries upon our return!)

Today we began work on clearing the area behind the church where classrooms were to be built. We woke up and had devotional around 7:30 am. Mandy, Carl, and Andrew were our leaders of the day and they began the devotional and then we ended it with Alice’s testimony. Carl has been leading us in worship songs each day and he is doing an awesome job. Their is a feeling you get from singing praise to God with a room full of other believers that can’t really be matched by anything else. This has been one of my favorite parts of the trip. We ate breakfast, which is the same everyday eggs with ham and cheese, toast, various fruit, juice, and PLENTY o’ café con leche (coffee with milk). We got to the worksite around 9am and went right into working. We pretty much had to move a bunch of rocks with our hands from the place of the original foundation to the roadside in order for them to come and pick it up. Let me tell you it was hard work and everyone on our team had such good attitudes and upbeat moods through it all. We finally were able to score some buckets and shovels after a couple hours which helped the process to go by much faster! It was difficult to not get frustrated at the circumstances of having no construction equipment, but hey we aren’t here to question everything we are here to serve!

After working for a few hours we took a lunch break back at the hotel and ate PB&J with chips. Then it was back to work hauling rocks. This little boy Juaquin followed us to the worksite and we dropped him off at lunch time. He was a pretty funny kid and helped us out at the church. When we got back to working it felt even hotter than before and was a little harder to get moving after a nice filling lunch. We left the worksite around 4:30 and headed back to the hotel for showers. One of my favorite things about the day was just talking with everyone and getting to know my teammates better. While we were moving buckets down line Ana was helping me learn some Spanish phrases such as “Tu eres mui fuerte” or “You are really strong!” and “Yo tango hambre” I am hungry! I’m really inspired to learn Spanish fluently and see how frustrating it is to not be able to communicate with people! These are all of our teammates on our trip:
Mark-our trip leader
Alice and Michael
Lisa
Alice
Andrew T.
Andrew H.
Trish and Brian
Stephanie and Joe
Ben
Will
Mandi and Carl
Ana
Jenna
Lorena
Chad
Ashley and Jeremy (US!)

After showering we all packed in our huge Hyundai vans and headed to Pala Pizza which tasted like regular American pizza, but better after eating beans and rice for a couple of days: ) They surprised Brian with and early birthday cheesecake so that topped off the night perfectly. The cheesecake was made by the Cheescake Factory…how cool is that? It was yuuuummy. Dinner was fun getting to hangout and chat with Brian and Trish, Joe and Stephanie, and Lorena who were all sitting at our end of the table. We even saw a dog on top of a roof across the street.
After dinner we had our devotional where Jeremy, Carl, and Lorena shared their testimonies which were awesome. It was fun getting to hear Jeremy’s testimony because even though I pretty much knew everything about him accepting Christ into his life I still find out new things each time I hear him talk about it. Sharing your testimony is such a deeply personal thing and it has been so amazing hearing each person’s story. Each time I listen to them I feel a little closer in a way to that person. It’s also really neat how I always seem to relate to one aspect of each person’s story. The trip is awesome so far and I feel as though God is softening our hearts through being here, in order to prepare us for the next few months in moving to Nashville.

6/1 Sunday DR Trip

( We journaled all of these entries each day and just decided to upload them all when we got back home: ))
Sunday morning we woke up around 8am and had our morning devotional where Will shared his testimony and Carl led us in worship. Then we headed to our breakfast of eggs with ham, fruit, and toast…oh and lest I forget café con leche! Yummy!
After breakfast, it was beach time and we all piled in the van for the hour ride to the locals’ beach. Pastor Rafael’s brother and his family hung out with us all day. Ana and I built sandcastles with their three girls who were so adorable. We bought a few souvenirs today and some of the guys got their Cuban…umm I mean Dominican cigars. For lunch we had pb and J and chips a la American style. At the beach this younger girl approached Trish, who has blond hair, and asked her if she could see her eyes. She told her that her sister who lives in Alaska has blue eyes just like Trish. She hasn’t been able to see her for two years and really missed her. I thought this was so sweet.

Also, the guys played football with a lot of the local boys in the water which was fun to watch. Everyone was in such a good mood. Lots of local people were there playing in the water and just relaxing. Carl stepped on a sea urchin and got the spikes in his foot. It looked pretty painful and they weren’t sure how to remove them. He was a trooper though and made it through! Later we attended church and met the people we will be building the classrooms for. The worship was awesome and they even sang a few songs in Spanish that we sing back in Atlanta (i.e. “Forever God is faithful, Forever God is strong….forever forever”). Afterwards some of the members approached us and kissed and hugged us which was encouraging. This one little boy, Juan, was hilarious and kept trying to show us his muscles. The only English he knew was “Hello baby” and Trish and I thought that was hilarious. He was so excited for us to get a picture of his muscles. Until tm.!

5/31 Saturday in DR

5/31 DR trip 2008 (I just journaled everyday in a word document and I'm going to paste those entries here!)

After waking up a little late, Jeremy and I got ready to head to the airport. We were suppose to meet our team there by 8:15am in order to get checked in and have time to get through security. We had been watching Hines, our friends’ dog, for a few days so we had to drop him off at Kevin and Lindsey’s condo before heading to Marta. As we waited for the taxi outside of their place we noticed Jenna, one of our teammates, hauling her luggage across the parking lot. How random that she lives in Kevin and Lindsey’s complex and we ran into her. She was able to hitch a ride with us to MARTA. We got to the airport on time and waited for Mark to arrive with the plane tickets. Thankfully, they were able to change my name on my ticket from my Byars to Clarke since I have not legally changed my last name on all my documentation (note to self…do that pronto upon return!).
The flight was 3 hours long and J and I sat next to Chad in the front row…plenty of leg room…score! They played “Bucketlist” as the movie, but I kept getting distracted by the amazing view from my window. As we flew over the ocean we could see all these various islands that looked completely uninhabited…how cool is that! After three hours we finally landed in Punt Cana and were able to stretch our legs. Then we waited for about an hour while Mark found us vehicles to make the 50minute ride over to Higguay.

On the way our the spare tire under our van that is in this sort of cage type thing came off and it sounded as if our muffler fell out. God stopped us in the right place though…right in front of a bus mechanics shop and the guys there were very generous in helping us to get the tire back into the cage underneath the car. Jeremy was a big help as well as he actually pushed the tire back in and fixed the cage. We ended up paying the guy about 10 bucks to help us, but it was worth it. Since we lost Mark who was driving the van in front of us we didn’t really have a clear idea how to get to our hotel in Higuey. All we knew was that our hotel name was Hotel Don Carlos near the Basilica, the local Catholic Church. Finally we arrived an hour later at our hotel and changed for our evening devotional. Then we headed down to our dinner of beans, rice, chicken, and fried plantains…definitely different, but satisfying after a long day of traveling. Then we headed to bed for the night!

We are here!

We are finally in the DR!!! After a plane ride and a car trip with a few troubles we are here safely. My battery is going to die on my computer any minute, but I just wanted to give a quick update.

We are staying at the Hotel Don Carlos and the Esso station across the street has an internet connection. Today we had a morning devotional where Will shared his testimony and then we headed off to the beach. Tonight we are going to a church service and then we begin work tommorow!

I'll write more later, but so far we have been very humbled by the circumstances here. It's been so much fun already and we can't wait to get started on building the classsrooms tm.!

Chow!

Goals accomplished!

We just found out that our team has reached 103% of our financial goal! This is awesome because at our last meeting (a week ago) we were only at 63% of our financial goal. We are so excited and impressed (and humbled) with everyone's giving.

This past weekend was Ashley's 23rd birthday and it was such a great time spent with lots of friends and family. We said to eachother Monday night we are so blessed to have so many people who love us in our lives and we hope we make others feel just as loved! We always are so thankful for your love and support (and home-cooked food...haha).

This week we are having one final meeting with our team on Wed. We are looking forward to the barbeque at the Hutchersons and having one last get together before we leave on Saturday.

Our flight leaves at 10:40am on Saturday May 31st and we will come back the following Saturday at 6:00pm. WE CANNOT WAIT!!!
Now it's off to start getting some packing done...

Challenges

In preparing for the DR trip with our team, we have thoroughly discussed challenges that will arise to prevent us from going on this trip. We have had several of these challenges to overcome already (mainly our own fear of the unknown) and several other could-be-obstacles furthermore. These past couple of weeks have been stressful with deciding to move, work schedules, surprise class scheduling changes (Jeremy will still graduate and be able to go on the trip...yeah!), and the ever present financial obligations. Through all of this it has been our first instinct to want to go to a place of worry and doubt, but we have resisted that place and instead God has taken us into his arms. Ever since we have been seriously dating, we have this thing that we do whenever we start to get anxious about something. We say to each other (well, Jeremy usually reminds me) why don't we just wait and see if God gives us a sign (WHAT A NOVEL IDEA...duh). Anyway, of course He always does and it is better than anything we could have planned. Yesterday we saw a sign ( a literal one) that read "Instead of worrying, WAIT."

Simple. But it quickly reminded us that we are not in control of this journey, God is! Until next time we will just be waiting to see where God takes us!

P.S. A HUGE thanks to our support team who responded to our letters the past couple of weeks! We appreciate your prayer and financial donations very much! We couldn't do this without you :)

Winshape Retreat

"And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me-the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace."
-Acts 20:22-24

Hello! Sorry we have not updated our blog in such a long time! We will try to post more often over the next few weeks leading up to the trip (Only 40 more days...woohoo!!!). Our meetings have been great and it has been fun getting to know all of our fellow team members. We really see God working through our team to prepare us for the DR, especially after our team bonding at the Winshape retreat this last Saturday. The retreat was at Berry College and consisted of several team building activities as well as fun ropes course challenges. We really felt more unified as a team after Saturday and are even more excited to be working along such awesome servants!

Here is the link to our teams' website with pics. from our retreat and of our fellow DR team members:
www.newtourera.com/globalxdr