Dominican Republic 2024 Day One

Dear family and friends, today was a busy day.

Our day started at 4:30 AM if you can believe it. Jacob watched the kayaking Olympics, which we sadly didn’t win, but he was proud of our team anyway. Abby believes she could’ve done better…Jacob doesn’t actually believe it’s a real sport (shade).

Once we were all awake we piled into the vans and drove to the airport through a really bad storm (thunder, lightening, the whole nine yards). Then we got to the airport, unloaded, and headed to our baggage drop off. Once the bags were dropped off, Jacob and Mitchel conversed about crating dogs. Abby doesn’t remember what she did, but was probably just vibing. Abby did get stopped at security and Jacob didn’t, but all went ok in the end (she had no weapons so it was ok). Everyone went to Timmies for breakfast and much needed coffee!

Before we boarded our flight we had a wonderful conversation with our pilot (Steve) about what we were going to be doing in the DR. Then we took our group photo and met a family that had matching Tshirts too! But they were going on a vacation. Super nice. We finally took our seats and to our surprise Steve gave us a shoutout! The whole plane clapped. The flight itself was like a rollercoaster in the beginning, but eventually smoothed out. Jacob and Mitchell (stupidly) watched Marley and Me and cried throughout it (it’s a movie about a dog that dies, don’t watch it) and were bummed for the rest of the flight. We landed safe and sound and then discovered that Jacob had LOST his passport (Get pranked, just making sure you’re all actually paying attention. To clarify, he never lost it he is fine…he has also been very mature. A model student. Abby is also amazing).

We then got picked up by Christian, Felix, Danerys, Christopher, and Angel in their bus! It was airconditioned and spacious! They even got us a pizza lunch. A hop, skip, and a few games of pharisees later, we arrived at the Lighthouse Compound! We had an incredible dinner, courtesy of the amazing staff here and then got all unpacked and informed.

We finished our evening off on devos where we discussed the differences in cultures and had a beautiful conversation about what this will mean for our week. We were reminded to have servant hearts and expect to serve others rather than be served ourselves.

Bye. Goodnight. We want to go swimming, so we’ll chat later!

Abby and Jacob… and Kathryn