We Have Arrived

Hey everyone! Its Jeff,

We have made it! We spent our first full day in the Dominican today. Yesterday was a pretty crazy day of traveling. We all flew out together from LAX to Florida, than we had to split into two teams in Florida to the D.R. The first team got out just fine and arrived in the Dominican on time. However the Second team had many many lay overs in Florida. We were scheduled to fly out at 6:30pm and didn't not take off till around 11:45pm (Florida time). So the second group almost had 24 hours of traveling. The good news is we all made it and we are doing very well!

Hi everyone, it's Tessa. I am the first up to blog so I wanted to let everyone know how I am doing and what I have experienced thus far. Like Jeff said, traveling was crazy. I was on the second team so I got the full extent of the lay overs. We were first delayed for 2 hours which we though, 'ok, this is fine'. They finally boarded us around 8:45pm, but then a large thunder and lightning storm came through that kept us on the ground for another 3 hours. We were finally in the air at 11:45. Although on the plane we met this man who was interested in our trip as he was over hearing us talking about it. It turns out his mother, who was with him, is a pastor of a church here in Santo Domingo. They know the people of El Circulo church. It was great to have family in Christ with us. As we were being delayed, his mother actually went on the intercom and prayed. She then returned to her seat and began singing 'Hallelujah'. We joined in and maybe a minute later, the captain came on the speaker and told us we had the go ahead to take off. It was a wonderful way to see God work through a tough start. I am in absolute awe of the country here. It is beautiful in so many ways yet eye opening in so many other ways. It is truly showing me how much that we have even though at times we may think we have so little. This morning we had a great start, had breakfast as a team. We also had a debriefing of the things we will be doing throughout the week. The team packed into the churches van and took off for a tour of Santo Domingo. It was a great introduction to the city and we were able to see some spectacular sights. We headed back to the house for a quick nap and was awoken to an intense tropical storm. It rained so hard that the streets became rivers in a matter of 10 minutes. Lighting and thunder were clapping left and right. We were like kids in a candy store, our noses pressed to the windows with amazement. Once it stopped raining, we practially floated ourselves to lunch at a place that the team from last year fell in love with. I can't remember the name but it had amazing chicken. We stuffed ourselves but still had room to grab some ice cream from Bon. This evening we headed over to El Circulo for church service. We all experienced our first 'brown out'. As a team with El Circulo staff, we circled up and prayed that God would be with us and that we would be able to move forward with our service for the evening. Power did return and we had an amazing service. We were more guests of honor for tonight, the service was amazing. There was a guest speaker who is a journalist for a newspaper. He talked about how his job is challenging as being a Christian in a dark world. It was amazing hearing from someone who is in a controversial line of work and who is continually faced with judgements of being a Christian yet writing about the news and not letting emotions, opinions, or beliefs be an overpowering influence. But he did say that if you read his columns that he writes in a way that still mimics the life of Christ and is an inspiration to people. Fausto, who is the pastor of El Circulo, finished up the evening with a quick sermon about how we appear as Christians and being able to take our fire and passion of Christ outside of the church. It is our responsibility as Christians to inspire other people and to bring them to the church. He was also saying that a lot of times we get so caught up in what we can do for other Christians when our focus should be more about what we can do for other people. Giving our selves and not always looking at what we can gain. After church, we mingled with a lot of the people. I don't know much Spanish so it was a great opportunity for me to start picking some up. They always get together at the local McDonald's after church so as a team we headed down there to continue conversations with these amazing people, some of which have already volunteered to help us out with some construction we are doing in the next few days. We were finally finished for the evening and headed back here (to the house) to pack and get ready for the next few days. I'm not sure if they'll let me type again since I go on so long =) but we are all safe, healthy and having a great time!!!

Hey Guys its Jeff again. We will be taking off in the morning to go into Cotui and start our building project. Please pray for us for good weather and that God will work in many ways. We will most likely not have internet access during the next 3 days. So if we do not post anything dont worry we are fine we just dont have internet. God bless we love you.