Day 5, Dominican mission trip
After all of our hard work, this day felt sacred. Not that our work days weren’t beautiful, but we spent this day with kids. We went to Nico’s church, about 20 minutes out of the city and had a service at his church with the kids in the village. We started with singing, led by Samira Krauss and Melissa Sabri and Nico, then a presentation of Joseph and his multi-colored coat by some of the youth on our trip.
The outside of Nico's church
Beautiful kids!
Brie and Christy Stauffer playing with the kids.
After the play, we helped serve the kids lunch. It was beautiful to see the older kids make sure that the younger ones were fed first.
Getting ready to eat some lunch.
Helping serve food.
Pasta, rice, chicken, yum!
After we had served the kids lunch, we got into the bus and drove just up the road to Nico’s house, where we had lunch and chatting with Nico and his family. It was great to play with the kids there and get to know Nico’s family a bit more.
Brie, getting flowers put in her hair.
All of the pretty ladies with flowers.
Adam, Nico and Brie.
After lunch at Nico’s house, we drove about 30 minutes to a church that was being built in a settlement in the country-side. This neighborhood was set up by the Dominican government after an earthquake a few years ago. They built a few houses and started some roads, but the job was never finished, so they were left with no proper roads and no running water or sewer services. And these people who had lost everything were left to build their houses with trash and discarded building materials.
G.O. Ministries had built a large cafeteria and dormitory and the second story will eventually become a church sanctuary. Currently, it is a wide open roof with nothing on it, but a fantastic view of the country-side.
The view from the top of the church/cafeteria.
We were there to play with kids on a “sports day” It was fun! We had whiffleballs and bats, frisbees, footballs, jump ropes and other things to play. Tim and other G.O. leaders said that these kids don’t get much attention from their parents who are trying to make ends meet and so our job was to love these kids and play with them.
We did!
My best friend for the day.
Brie's best friend for the day.
Our group, playing in front of the church/cafeteria/dorm.
We ended our Sports day with the “Gringo relay” where we all put kids on our shoulders and backs, ran to a rope marker, then ran back, picked up another kid and did it again. It all started out orderly like a race, but just ended up in beautiful chaos with lots of laughing kids and adults! It was a blast.
The gringo relay!
I was looking for my family blog my wife does for us (our last name is also beasley). What was odd was I just got back from a mission trip in Haiti last Saturday. God bless you and your family.
Kenny, that is great. I hope that your trip to Haiti went well. Blessings to you for taking that trip.