The Unexpected Adventure

Last Wednesday, the professors in charge of our program, Guerrero and Reyes, had a meeting with us about our break, Aug 23-30. Once that was done, Guerrero mentioned that the DR/Haiti team from APU would be arriving in Santo Domingo the following day and he was going to take three students with him. Obviously, everyone in the group wanted to go, and we found out it would only cost about $12 in bus fares for us to get there and back. Reyes, being the generous man that he is, offered to take his car as well, so we could go as a team, free of charge. Sweeeet. We planned to head out at 6am the following morning. It was about a three hour drive, because early morning traffic entering into the city was awful, and becuase Guerrero didn't know where exactly he was going. My car, the one Reyes was driving, found it quite comical that everytime Guerrero stopped to ask someone for directions, they pointed the opposite way than the person before; but we made it!



The missions team from APU raised money to buy medications so they could host free clinics to those who coulndn't afford it. The clinic was set up in a church, with a Pharmacy table in the back, and different stations set up throughout the church. Our job was to translate! Fortunately, there were more of us than there were stations, so i was able to listen to someone else translate. Some of the people from my team played outside with children while their parents waiting inside to be seen. It was great. This was the first time that I felt like I was being used to do ministry here. Even though I personally didn't do much, our team was actually helping people. It gave us a greater purpose of just learning Spanish. And it was great to see some familiar faces. :]

After the clinic, we went back to the hotel and rested. That night, we had a big dinner with the head director of the university we attend here. From what I understand, there are many branches of our university throughout the country, and this guy was the head honcho. There was also other important people there, but I don't really know their titles. They brought in a photographer, videographer, and an interviewer as well. The university is trying to promote this program to other universities around the world, so they wanted to know what our experience had been like so far. I think it made us all feel pretty important. We didnt get our food until about 10:20, and we had had a pretty long day already, so we were exhausted.



Friday morning we went to the beach, Boca Chica. Beautiful. It had small islands of trees that you could practically walk to. The water was only about waist deep for most of the way. Once you got closer to the islands, it was really shallow and rocky, so floating the best way to go. The water was so clear, I saw a good amount of fish.