Dominican Republic 2024 Day Two

Constructing Relationships:

We did our first devotion today on the roof, reading Psalm 105:1-11 and filling out our daily devotional. Afterwards was breakfast which consisted of oatmeal, boiled eggs, meat and cheese, toast, and fruit. It was quite the smorgasbord! Around 8:30am we took a last look at our clean clothes and packed into the van to drive 30 minutes to Villa Altagracia to start construction on the second floor of the vocational school. They are planning on using the school to teach mechanics, electrical, ESL, French as a second language, and home economics.

While there, we had one team mixing concrete in the mixer with cement powder, sand, gravel, and water. The other team would take the cement made and bring it upstairs to Felix who would pour it down the column forms to create a good foundation for the second level wall. Nick got selected to paint a door for a storage room as well as a side quest. The last thing we did was move a lot of cement blocks to the second floor for the brick layers. When moving the blocks from their stack, there were a ton of lizards (that some of us caught) and cockroaches! We took lots of water breaks as it was a scorcher today, but nobody got too badly burned.

At around 12:00pm we headed back to the compound for lunch and a much-needed break, playing colours in the pool and some people doing flips off of shoulders. Lunch was a delicious pasta dish of some kind, more rice, and plantain! Once we were ready, we put our construction clothes back on and headed back to the construction site for the afternoon.

We continued with the same tasks, but we decided to make an assembly line this time so that we didn’t have to carry buckets of concrete all the way up the stairs. This made things go a lot easier and supported teamwork. While on a break, Mitch, Jacob and Cash were having a dance battle with the local kids that were watching. Soon Tymon and Abby joined in to perform the Macarena.

After working until 5, we came back to the compound for dinner and had chicken (some more dry than others), rice and beans, and salad. Oh, and fresh mango! Following dinner a few of us played president while the others went swimming again. In president everyone had different rules so there was some fighting, but we still ended up bonding as a team.

The last thing on our schedule was our night devotional which was John 13:35 and we discussed how we can show our faith by our relationships with each other and our acts of service. We talked about how we should rely on God and respect others in order to show Christ working through us in all that we do.

So until next time remember, God made you special and He loves you very much!

Mitch, Nick, and Laura