June 28

Hey, It's Tessa again. I brought the computer up for some girls to write but they were all asleep. That explains the kind of day we had today. Exhausting yet very powerful!
We started the day by getting up early and heading out to Cotui again to see the completed construction. The roof was done but there was still a bit more to add to the wall surrounding the (soon-to-be) playground. The whole group helped round up as many children as possible and headed to a field to play. A baseball game was started while others played with the younger kids. This also gave us another chance to decide if we could sponsor a child in the community to be enrolled at the Christian school. Again, it was very hard to leave this community for a lot of us as we have all given part of ourselves to them.
We headed back to our house (with a quick stop through Burger King for lunch) to get ready for the orphanage. Jeff, Sam and Carly headed to El Circulo for band practice as they will be playing/singing for part of worship tomorrow night. The rest of us went to an orphanage close to our house. We helped the children make braclets and color bible protectors. Leaving the orphanage, you could feel somewhat of a somber mood on the bus. A lot of us just want to rescue these children from their situations and give them everything we have. But it breaks our hearts knowing we can't.
We were back to the house getting ready for the evening and off we were again. We headed to a local park in the historic area of Santo Domingo. El Circulo was hosting a concert and were inviting the locals to attend. Hard rock music is very popular right now so a lot of us got our fair share of moshing. Quite funny that it was only with our group. I think most of the spectators were enjoying watching us flail around. Sam and I gave our testimonies during the concert. It was amazing for both of us but especially for me as this was somewhat of a fear for me. From the moment I got up there, God allowed the words to flow freely. It truly moved me. When the concert was finished, we had been informed that this is also a local hang out for the homosexual community. We were challenged to go with a translator and to talk with different people. Some great stories came out of it and many were invited to tomorrow nights service at El Circulo. We made it home and dragged ourselves through showers and dinner, and now I'm the last one up typing away.
We are all excited to sleep in tomorrow and it will be a more relaxed day. We'll make sure to have some more people blog tomorrow. Good night and we'll talk soon!!