Carmel Presbyterian Church

WOW! The time seems to be flying by seeing as we are already a week into our mission trip. However, time is also taking its own toll. Today was arguably the most difficult day of the trip, and for each of us, getting out of bed seemed to be a strenuous chore. With pouring rains at night preventing each member of the group from receiving adequate rest, and oppressing humidity and heat during the day, work on Loyda’s casa (home) was significantly slower than usual. We all lacked the vigor today that has defined this mission team, and taking frequent water breaks replaced work.

Although we were all under the weather, we did make some headway. The trench around the home is a few feet short of being completely dug; much cement was mixed for the purpose of filling the trench and creating a sidewalk. A large quantity of sand was moved via bucket line to an area sheltered from the rain, and still more cement was brought to the roof of the home. Dinner tonight was again quite delicioso (delicious), and our nightly large group meeting was skipped due to exhaustion on all of our behalves.

We hope that all is well at home. Please pray for the strength of this mission team as we embark on the final leg of this trip; don’t worry, we have kept all of those in the United States in our prayers. Although today was difficult, manana (tomorrow) will bring better tidings. Hopefully our focus and faith will be restored on the work site. Buenos noches (good night)! Dios les bendiga (God Bless)!

Aaron Benusis

P.S. Love you Mom and Dad! I hope that you are keeping up with the blog!

More to come soon- it takes forever to upload these!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY EVERYONE! Hope you all had a great time celebrating, we know we did! Today was medical clinic day; it was a huge success. We handed out over 800 hygiene kits (thanks for all your donations), and supplied over 200 Dominican families with much needed medicine. You could see the gratitude and thankfulness on the face of each and every patient there. Many jobs were done by the group members today; including runners for the doctors, pharmacists, security/crowd control, and child care. Each job was taken very seriously and done to the peak of perfection. Probably some of the most entertaining times during this trip would be the bus rides to and from the work site. The entire group is always in a good mood, constantly laughing and joking around with each other. It’s amazing how close we have all become.  To celebrate the fourth of July we went out to get ice cream (thank you George!), it was muy delicioso! Group time was inspiring, as always. “Highs” and “lows” were shared and we prayed for strength to be able to continue the mission we set out to complete here (because God knows many of us need it). Tomorrow is our last full day of working on Loyda’s home and we hope to accomplish just as much as we have on previous days of construction.  We hope and pray that all goes well for those who attended today’s clinic, and we ask that God bless all those not here with us who are in need of help as well.  Miss you all very much, and as much as we love being here, can’t wait to see you all Friday J Buenos Noches!

Love, Taylor & Jessica

Ps. Mom/ Dad, any chance you have talked to Tom? He has no idea if we even got here, sorry I have no way to communicate with him, thanks love you!

Hi everyone! I hope everyone is great at home and keeping us in their prayers! Today was day 5 we are half way through our trip I can’t believe it! It is flying by! We got up bright and early once again after a night of crazy thunderstorms, it was the loudest thunder I have heard it shook the whole room!

Today in the morning we had VBS with the children of the community in the area near the school. There were so many children and they greeted us with cheers as we arrived, they were so happy to see us there.  It was an amazing feeling! We started VBS off with some Spanish songs, which was quite amusing.  We really had no idea what we were singing, but hey fake it ‘til you make it.  After the songs we moved on to the skit, which was the story of The Feeding of the Five Thousand. The skit went great- the kids loved it. We then handed out the fish and crayons for the children to make nametags. After the name tags we did a coloring page and sang some more songs.  We did a little better with our Spanish this time. After that we played with bubbles, chalk, and frisbees.  The children loved it. They loved when I let them blow the bubbles themselves and then they would run and catch them. At one point it got a little bit hectic and we attempted to pay duck duck goose but it was difficult to explain with the language barrier.  Chelsea was the only successful one at starting the game with the help of Jose. We all figured out our own way to control the chaos though everything turned out wonderful.

We then left and headed back to get ready for the beach, we were all excited for the much needed rest we were about to get. When we stepped on the beach I was amazed and I think so was everyone else who were first time visitors of the DR, it was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen the sand was clean and almost white and the water was a beautiful blue and unlike the Jersey shore you could actually see the bottom of the ocean. The first thing many of us did right as we arrived was to run right in and begin the swim to the island, let me tell you it looked a lot closer than it actually was. The beginning of the swim we felt strong but as we got closer the current began pushing against us it was like we were staying in place. Then the rocks, coral, and sea urchins came that hurt so bad, which meant attempting to swim in about a foot of water just to avoid putting our feet on the bottom, it probably would have been quite amusing to see; and of course there was a boat of Dominicans laughing at us as we attempted to swim and they easily made their way on a paddle boat. Once we got there it was beautiful, there was another whole ocean past the island. We all arrived but were not looking forward to the rocky journey back, at least on the way back the current was working with us rather than against us. Once we arrived back to the shore our fish that we had ordered arrived, if I had seen this fish at home I probably would have never touched the thing, it was whole fish eyes, fins, everything. But of course I tried it here, we all devoured the fish it was the best I have ever tasted. After the fish we all headed back to the very salty water, I forgot to mention the water is extremely salty. We played a little volleyball and just hung out. Tiring out from the ocean a lot of us headed back to lay down and take a little nap, which wasn’t necessarily a great idea because we all ended up a little burnt, even after applying (in my case) 100 spf sunscreen 4 times! When we woke up our beach day was coming to an end, we went to dip in Agua Viva (Living Water, named for the tiny microscopic creatures living in there) one last time. We headed back and showered to get ready for dinner. We went out as a group tonight to a pizzeria, we were all very excited and very hungry; Kristen had to order us more pizza. I believe Mike, Chelsea, and Aaron tied for eating the most pieces at 6 or 7, did I mention we were all very hungry. That was the end of our nice, relaxing day and we could not wait to head to bed to get rest for the medical clinic tomorrow.

Love you all see you soon.

Love, Christine Vincent

….more soon from Christine on Day 5 (VBS and Beach!) But for now, pictures!

Day 4

Hey everyone back home! I’m sure all of you are missing us, but honestly we are too busy to be missing you. Just messing around. So the day started out with a nice rain around 6:30am that only lasted till breakfast. No worries people we were able to get to work on time. I actually think that today may have been one of the most productive days. Everyone was constantly working, from sifting sand for make cement, actually mixing and making the cement, passing the tons of buckets of cement, or catching the empty buckets thrown off the roof, everyone played an important role. It’s really cool to see the progress we have made. To realize we are actually helping, and physically leaving something behind that will help others for years to come. The Doc and Abigail are constantly on all of us about drinking our water. Which is good because some people are actually workhorses and never stop for a break.

The food here… delicioso (delicious) Every meal has had fruit and even though I do not always know the type of meat I am putting on my plate it always turns out to taste amazing. You better step up your game mom!

So today instead of going into small groups we not only attended a worship service, but we held one. In our small groups tasks were given out. For example some were to write prayers and other read scripture. Since most of the people there could only speak Spanish, what we were saying needed to be translated. It was very cool to see some of us attempting and succeeding at speaking Spanish. Many of you might not know it, but my sister Danielle is the go to girl when you need to know how to say something or when you need to understand someone. She defiantly does not know everything but she is very resourceful in figuring things out.

Okay back to the service. We had four different churches join us. The four pastors in the area decided to cancel their services for the night and tell their congregation about the service we would be holding. When we arrived there was many people already there, and once music was put on everyone was dancing. Yes I mean everyone; even Gary got caught up in it all. It was truly magical, everyone going crazy and having that much fun with the Dominicans.    Everything went smoothly other then not know all of the words to a song. Danielle and Christine danced while Abigail sang and played the guitar. That, other then dancing was my favorite part of the night. Before heading on the bus for a very hilarious ride home we danced some more.

Seriously today has been such a great day, and in only 20 minutes exactly it will be over. So before I leave, I’ll leave you with a short story of something that happed during the service.

As we stood in front of the Dominican getting ready to sing (keep in mind that it was outside and dark) I was standing in the middle holding the microphone and the paper with the lyrics. Colleen was next to me shining a light onto the paper and the next thing I knew Danielle was grabbing the mike from my hand. I looked at her confused and she said, ”What!? You already have a flashlight and we can’t see.” Haha end of story… I laughed and got the mic back before the song started.

Tomorrows the kids club and our beach day! I need to go rest up. We love and miss you all and cannot wait so share our pictures, tell our stories, and show off our tan lines.

SEE YOU SOON

Love, Chelsea Dyjak

Day 3

Greetings from Carmel’s hard-working, tired, and high-spirited mission team in the Dominican Republic.  We are adjusting well to our communal life, work, Bible study, and worship together.  The first-time members of our group have been very pleasantly surprised at how rapidly they have adjusted to an environment different from home in language, culture, and living conditions.

We are all pleased with how much progress we can see in the building (a residential facility at the school for hearing impaired young people) in just two work days here.  It makes us feel that we are really accomplishing something as we see work on the roof progressing, rooms inside having floors filled in and leveled and walls cemented, a trench for a walkway being dug around the building.  Despite our mostly novice skills at mixing cement, plastering walls inside and outside with a cement covering, etc. , the Dominicans with whom we work are remarkably patient in teaching us.  We do pretty well at carrying water and forming bucket lines to pass sand, cement mix, or concrete blocks, even when hoisting them up a ladder to the roof.

Our project leader on the construction site is 29-year-old Kristin Hamner, a PC-USA mission worker and the Dominican site coordinator of Foundation for Peace.   Kristin directs the construction work in fluent Spanish, translates worship services conducted in Spanish into English for us, will be coordinating the hundreds of people visiting our upcoming medical clinic, and we know from last year will be joyously leading children in songs at our VBS sessions.  Her competence, enthusiasm and joy in her work here, and faith make us proud to be part of supporting PC-USA  Mission work.

Tonight’s small group devotional centered on Psalm 133, which begins, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!”  My own group, “Cementos,” agreed that our diverse group of 18, many of whom did not know each other well and some not at all, has been remarkably united in work, fun, study, and reflection so far.  We ask for your continued prayers that this “blessed unity” will remain with us during the rest of our time doing God’s work in the Dominican Republic.

Paz/Peace,

Submitted by Janet Simon