Sunday was our day to sleep in, take a walk, do whatever until church at 3:30. We had team time plus elyse and jamie while on our 3 mile walk. Church was really neat. On some of the songs we all sang in spanish, but only if we could remember the words because there wasnt a hymnal, overhead, or anything to help us out. One other songs, the dominicans would sing in spanish and we would sing in english at the same time. The message was really good too...it was about "feeding" our spiritual lives so that worldly activities become less of a desire in our lives.
Day 8: today we set up at Juanchy's church which was an hour uphill on a rocky road, way into the mountains, but at least it was cooler up there. Another doctor from Puerto Rico came to help out today and bring us some new medicine. The bathroom consisted of 4 pieces of metal sheeting and a rock with a hole in it...i was brave enough to try; Jen however...
Day 9: Today we folded gauze for 10 dominican minutes...A.K.A. 2 hours!!! Then we went into Jarabacoa to eat lunch where we met a man that Alba usually gives her leftovers to after lunch at the clinic. I felt so bad for him. The rest of the day we helped Alba organize her messy office and package up some supplies to leave at Casa Tranquila. We also had a really fun team time tonight just playing games and lauging our heads of. Jen, welcome to the "spuh" club.
Day 10: Jen and Jamie were sick today, so it was me and alison doing the work. We had to take blood pressure the old fashion way b/c the electronic cuff was too
slow:( That night we had the children's outreach which was a lot of fun. A little girl named Angeli clung to me all night like a leech...I wish i could have taken her back to the U.S. with me! Isaac was our clown and he was hilarious...see jen for the video! Kaitlyn and i did a Gospel skit and we ended with some more games. A pretty fun night minus the awful mosquitos.
Day 11: today at the site was a day of many new culture experiences...thats all i will say about that...today's Bible study was about humility and i was trying to think of a way to show humility at the Medical site today...God sure answered that prayer. First you need to understand something about me....I DETEST feet...ugh, hate them...and guess what my job was today. I had the priviledge of washing all the people's feet as they came to the site. Not only washing though, cleaning dirt (among other things) out of the toenails, clipping the toenails and scrubbing away anything else on the feet. These people walk around without shoes most of the time in this community and many of the people have toe fungus and toenail fungus. Pretty picture eh? Yes, and i washed them...quite a stretching experience, but i was glad i got to apply the lesson of the day to my work site. Tonight we all shared our tesimonies in our room. I felt so close to all the girls/women in our room after we all shared...we just had this deep spiritual bond between all of us and i began to realize how much i would miss elyse and jamie and the closeness the ladies in our room shared.
Day 12: We had a late start getting to the site today because we had to stop at the hospital for 1/2 an hour only to figure out that we had to go down to the pharmacy to get medicine later in the day. We got to Rescate and there weren't too many people there, but soon enough they piled in. I handed out soap to the people there, but we didnt have enough. There were at least 30 people on the front porch of the house and anytime they saw one of us Americans, we were hounded with questions on how to cure this and when can we see the doctor...it was madness...Alba and i saw a record 40 people in only two hours WITHOUT cammy who was busy taking care of a girl who had been sick from JMU for over a week. Unfortunately we had to leave before we could see everyone...at least 10 people waited over an hour and never got to see Alba. We had to rush to the pharmacy to get medicine for Amanda (then we played a very funny joke on Alba) and then we headed back to the base. Tonight after the banquet i kept tearing up on the way back to the base. I did NOT want to leave the DR...Comming on this trip made me sure that God has a plan for me that includes missions...whether or not it will be full-time i don't know yet...The idea scares me and excites me at the same time...right now i am just waiting patiently for a definite answer.
Don't I look tough (check out the muscles!)? Probably tougher than our team has been looking lately...7-48 last night...ouch. Well boys, you have next friday to prove yourselves...we still believe in you! So this is a picture of my first time EVER painting-up for a football game! It was quite exciting i must say. However, about 30 min. into the game, Lindsey and I were freezing so at half time we decided to de-paint ourselves and put a sweatshirt on. This picture isn't the finished product though because LJ and I spray-painted our shirts and put "wave" on them with sponge letters. It was soooo fun! After the game we got our groove on at the dance which was not the best one we've had, i'm sorry to say. But i suppose these after-game dances are as fun as you make them.
