Saturday, July 19, 2014

Greetings from the Dominican Republic!  <<our team landed in Santo Domingo very late on Friday night so we stayed in a local hotel to the airport called Coco Village. <on  Saturday we woke up and ate breakfast together at a nearby restaurant while we discussed plans for the day.  After breakfast we bought water, a necessity since local water is too risky to drink.  Our group departed for Baharona, a city in the DR.  We caravanned in two cars and drove through the city of Santo Domingo, a very busy place.  It is not a place to drive for the faint of heart!  When we arrived in Baharona, after a few hours of driving, we met a missionary at a local feeding mission.  She introduced us to the pastor at the local church in the batay and we talked about what they do there.  The mission is to feed the people in the local area in order to have enough food to eat.  The mission has grown to feed approximately 13,000 to 14,000 people weekly with rice and beans.  We toured the baytay with the missionary and the pastor we met.  The children who came to greet us were extremely friendly and playful.  The area the mission served was well kept with trash picked up and the people cared for themselves well.  After about a two hours visit there, we ate lunch in town with the missionaries.  We got to know the missionaries a little better as they told us how they got started in their ministry and where they were from.  After lunch we drove the rest of the way to Pedernales, where we are staying for the rest of the week.  <on the last few hours of the drive, we saw beautiful mountainsides, impossibly blue ocean waters and a menagerie of God{s creatures along the side of the road, including cows, donkeys, chickens, pigs with their piglets, dogs and others.  When we finally reached <pedernales, the town we are staying in for the week coming up.  Our rooms are adequate yet sparse.  The people are very friendly at the hotel and the restaurant we ate in that night.  The food was outstanding.  Rice with beans and salad and perfectly fried chicken wings.  The food was clearly prepared with love.
I enjoyed seeing the countryside and meeting the people at the mission.  It gives me confidence that God{s love is still at work in the world, even when we don{t see it face to face.
I am looking forward to the rest of the week here and seeing God at work in new places.

Barbara M