Senior Mission Trip 2017

Day 8:

Day 8 and today was Catalina Island day! Catalina Island is a relatively small island just off the coast of the Dominican Republic. We had to wake up early to get over there on time but it was so worth it! We waited on the boat for what seemed like hours but once we got going the excitement level exponentially increased. When we got close to the Island the boat stopped in a somewhat deep area for people to go snorkeling just a little ways from the coast of Catalina Island. Not many people went in at that point but I did along with most of my classmates and it was incredible. It was my first time snorkeling and just seeing all the differently shaped coral and beautifully colored tropical fish was such a great experience that I’m sure glad I took the opportunity to do.

After that, we went to the other side of the island where all the beaches and huts and people were. The water in the shallow parts was a clear teal blue and you could see the white sand at the bottom which was more than likely over 10 meters deep. It was jaw dropping. It was a very sunny day for the most part although it rained ever so slightly while we were snorkeling in the deep part. As we got on the actual Island I was filled with energy as I’m sure all my classmates were as well. The beaches were so nice and clean. Some went swimming some just walked around a bit but as for me, I went straight for looking for cool pieces of coral and shells. Call me lame but it was a fun experience as I had already swum a lot prior to this day and yes I found some pretty cool pieces.

Just as I was getting back to unload all my pieces of coral and small shells it started to rain and hard. I heard thunder as I was walking back but I didn’t think anything of it. Unfortunately, we got rained on pretty hard during lunch but luckily the buffet was under a thatch pavilion hut type thing. The food was decent but I had better at Score where we go for our meals every day. The heavy rain turned into light rain and as a group effort, we all decided to make the most of an unfortunate situation and continue to go cliff jumping as planned. We took a small boat to the edge of the island designated for cliff jumping not too far from the huts and beaches. Mostly everyone went cliff jumping and we had an amazing time enjoying the nice blue warm water and the 15-foot drop into the ocean.

Shortly after our little cliff jumping voyage we went back to the main area and were taken back to the big boat. It was a party on the way back much more entertaining than on the way there. There was so much energy on that little watercraft. There was music, dancing, and singing. It was just a great day, to say the least despite the weather not being on our side. Just seeing all the beautiful views of the Ocean and the large coastal city of La Romana was enough to leave me in awe.

Westlake Senior,

Carlos Gil

Day 7:

On the seventh day of our trip, we started out by visiting a girl’s orphanage. None of us knew what to expect. When we arrived, they all had a hard time warming up to us. We all didn’t quite know what to do, and they weren’t very interactive. After a while, all of the orphans were having a great time with us. I spent time playing volleyball, while others were drawing, and playing jump-rope and parachute. The girls were all sweet and loving, and a lot of fun to play with. A lot of us were choked up when we had to leave and all of the girls came forward and hugged us all and thanked us for coming.

Later, we had lunch with a beautiful view and then moved on to the straw market. At the straw market, we had the opportunity to purchase a large variety of different items. These items ranged from bracelets to jewelry to machetes. Noah and I were haggling for a very large painting of Jesus, and managed to get the price of $35. After giving the merchant the money, his boss walked by and thought the price he sold it to us was absurd, and made us pay another $25 for it. The painting is beautiful though, and I am very excited to take it home.

After that, we walked through a handful of the historical sights of Santo Domingo. It was very interesting to be able to see buildings and walls that were older than the United States of America itself! We had many great photo opportunities and I loved spending time with my dear classmates.

Westlake Senior,

Ethan Casher

 

 

 

Day 5:

The new week has started! This morning we left the house at 7:15 AM for breakfast at SCORE. I think everyone was pretty much dead of energy like a normal Monday, even though we rested up all Sunday. Some of us had nasty sunburns that felt like they gotten worse overnight. Anyway, everything became better once we started our missions work for the day. Much like Friday, we went to Freedom to work with the preschoolers in language immersion. There were less students as before, so some of us had just one child each, and some had a few different children. Generally, though, we all got the same kids as we did on Friday, so the kids still remembered us! Again, we rotated through fourteen different stations, but they were new ones than what we had last week. For me, though, I got to work with only one child, which made things a lot easier and more fun! It was sad to leave them. Juniors, those kids will be first graders when you go on your trip!

After eating lunch at Freedom at noon, we began our last session of construction on the Freedom school for our trip. We mostly worked on starting the block-laying for the walls, which lasted the entire time. Some put up barbed wire, some made the wet slurry (that “slushy cement” from whoever wrote Saturday’s post), and some worked on the actual walls. I don’t remember if there was anything else. The day which started out blazing hot from the sun became gradually cooler, and we even had a small shower! I’m sure some of us enjoyed that. We actually had another group working with us the whole construction time, who were also working with SCORE and had come from California.

After working a little bit of overtime (the other group had left about half an hour earlier) to 4:30, we left to eat dinner at SCORE then went back to the house. We had originally prepared to have group devotions at 6:45 (expecting pizza delivery at about 8 PM), so we all took showers. However, a guy we thought was the pizza man arriving early had come to drive us to SCORE for SCORE night, and we were all showering and/or dressed to stay home the rest of the evening! We rushed off to SCORE and had a worship time with another group of senior students, who were from… Pennsylvania, I think?

We got home and ate pizza. The others are playing with cards as I write this, and it sounds like there’s a storm going on. After a whole day of good, fulfilling work and a great workout, it’s nice to have relaxation and fellowship with each other. Today was overall great, in my opinion. It’s amazing to be a part of giving those Dominican Republic students a great Christian education!

Okay, I wrote way too much. See ya next week with our rippling muscles, poofy bug bites, and luscious tans! Oh, can’t forget those tan lines.

Christy Yeung

Day 4:

Personally, this day has been a big and exciting day for me. We started the day by going to a local church, and there is no way you can put that experience into good enough words. The worship in that church blew me away. The room was filled with the voices of those singing, I swear that you could hear it from blocks away. Not to mention it was really cool to hear such familiar songs, but in Spanish obviously. Although I hardly understood any of what was said, I was so into the pastor’s message because he used so much emotion throughout his message. Now, this was the most exciting part of the day for me, the ocean. This was my first time seeing the ocean up close and being able to swim in it, and it was amazing. The view from the shore was beautiful, the horizon seemed too stretched forever. The water was a light turquoise blue color, and it felt amazing. Some of us went out away from the shore, maybe 60 meters or so, maybe a little farther. It was so much fun to jump and play in the waves. When we were getting out we were bombarded by vendors, a few people spent a lot. After the ocean, we went back to Score and swam for a little bit in the pool. Then we went to the Lily House. We looked at their little shops, a lot of us bought some paintings. After the nice relaxing day we went back to our house and had an amazing group time. To me I would say that this day was part of an amazing experience and went beyond amazing.

Westlake Senior

Katelyn Morris

Day 3:

Saturday was another early morning full of labor intensive activities. Once we arrived at Freedom, at about 8:30, we went back out to our construction site to haul slushy cement to the roof. This was 3 hours full of hard work, but also fun and joyful singing together. Around noon we ate lunch and prepared for our VBS. A bunch of missionaries and their families from Freedom joined us in going to a batey (village) to do our program for the kids. On the way there, we stopped to get some sugar cane, and it was deliciously sweet-;) pun pun. Some fathers of the kids at Freedom International worked there so they gave us a lot for free which was awesome. We went to a batey called Cabeza de Toro and set out to find some kids to come with us. Once we got a pretty decent amount to follow us, we went under a pavilion to sing our songs with the kids and perform our skit. It seemed like a lot of them really enjoyed singing and dancing with us, and they seemed very attentive during our skit of the Easter Story. Victoria did an amazing job with the kids doing the object lesson of the 9 different eggs representing different parts of the Easter story. We explained to the kids what Jesus did for us because of his love for us, and Sam gave his testimony about what God’s love has done for him in his life and how he was changed by that love. After this, we went out to the field with them and had face paint and nail polish (which the girls LOVED) and a bunch of different balls and jump ropes, and we played with them for hours. I don’t think I am alone when I say it was sooo hard to leave those kids, and a part of my heart is still with them. We all really love them and loved being with them. Today was a blast, and we all really enjoyed being with the kids of the batey.

Thank you so much for your faithfulness in praying for our team! We are having an amazing time and have really been enjoying seeing God at work here in the Dominican. Please continue to pray for our protection, for unity as a team, and for our hearts to be open to let the Holy Spirit speak and move through us. You are a blessing!

WCA Senior Class

Amy Mongin.

Day 2:

We started off the day today a little later than expected because of our late night last night (we arrived at 2am). We had a late breakfast at SCORE, the missions organization we are staying at. After breakfast we headed over to Freedom, the school with which we help out in the classrooms in the morning and do construction in the afternoon. When we got to Freedom, we got a mini tour of the grounds from Jason, the head of the school. He calls himself the vice president because he says that God is the one really in control of the organization. He told us about how they acquired the land and resources for the school through what can only be God’s provision. The school is expanding rapidly; they have added a whole new building since last year’s seniors were there. It was incredible to see how much God has provided for these people who obviously put His will above anything else.

We had a quick lunch and then got to work on construction. Today they had us split up into two groups to clear out two separate rooms for their use. There were desks and filing cabinets and pieces of wood filling up the rooms. I’m pretty sure I can speak for everyone when I say that I will definitely be sore tomorrow. Manual labor may not be my gift (to put it lightly), but it is great to step out of your comfort zone. It made me think of 2 Corinthians 12 where God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” We may not always do things right, but God helps us use our imperfections to make known His perfection.

Thank you to the people who have made this trip possible for us. We already are growing and learning more about God, and we have been able to witness how beautiful it is to see God at work. We hope that you will continue to pray for us as the week continues! God bless!

Victoria

Day 1:

The team is on their way. Due to weather, their trip has been delayed a bit. Pray that they’re able to get onto a different flight and continue their journey today.

Update: The Seniors are flying to NYC before then flying to the Dominican Republic. They are scheduled to arrive after midnight. Pray that there are no more delays and they all (along with their luggage) arrive safely at their destination.

Update 2: So Day 1 was a very stressful day. When we arrived at O’Hare we had to stand in very a long line which took like an hour to get through. I was super tired because all the excitement of traveling was kicking in. We got on the plane to Atlanta at 6:00am, but when we were a little over half way there we found out that the airport was closed due to bad weather. We thought that the weather was going to get better and allow us to land, but God had other plans. We were not able to land at Atlanta even though we had circled the airport for like 2 hours.

We ended up landing in North Carolina, and from there we had to figure out if we were going to go back to Atlanta to and then catch our next flight to the Dominican Republic, but we couldn’t find any flights that were going back to Atlanta because of the bad weather still. We ended up having to wait in the North Carolina airport for 4 hours. We as a class did not have any tantrums, we instead had binding moments that we all enjoyed, we played cards, talked, walked around in the airport and we ate. If I was to redo this day I would do it in an instant. I loved the time I spent with my class. I want to thank God for keeping us safe while we were in so many planes and for letting us arrive late but well. And thank you to all back home who are praying for our safety and well-being. God bless.

Sam