Welcome to the Dominican Republic!

My squad arrived to the Dominican Republic after a 24 hour travel day, two flights, and a 3am bus ride up the mountains to a little town called Lajas De Yaroa! 

Here’s a list of all the life updates:

1. We are partnering with a ministry called Hope Mountain! There is a family that founded the ministry and lives here on base with us. The husband, Ruben, is from the Dominican and the wife, Vicki, is from the states. They met in the Dominican Republic when Vicki came to learn Spanish, and ended up getting married and raising a family of eight kids in the states. Ruben was a pastor in the states, but felt the call to pastor and start churches in the Dominican, so they moved their whole family here and started Hope Mountain. Their two youngest girls, ages 13 and 16, are still living at home on the base and they are the coolest. 
2. I now live in a room with 20 other girls (every other girl on my squad). Pray for me as the sentence “living in community” takes on a whole new meaning.
3. Last Saturday I hiked to a river a little down the mountain we live on to hand wash all my clothes. The river cleaned my clothes better than any other washer machine or hand washing station that I have used on my entire race, so believe me when I say I am beyond thankful. 
4. There is a women who cooks us traditional Dominican food for every meal. So far we’ve been served some sort of plantain mash, a lot mystery meat, rice pudding, seasoned pasta, homemade yogurt and oatmeal, salad mix with vinegar dressing, bread, boiled eggs, and yuca. 
5. The view here from base is unspeakably breathtaking. I can’t even describe it with words. I keep praying that I never take this place for granted. 
6. For ministry, the four teams on our squad will be split up and doing different tasks each week. This week, my team, is doing outreach! So far this has looked like prayer walking and planning a one-day retreat for youth in the community who want to be discipled. We also will be praying for words and writing notes that will eventually be given to women in the community who have been apart of the sex trafficking industry. Other teams this week are doing manual labor, helping our host with admin tasks, preparing content like plays and skits for youth at church, and creating social media content to advertise Hope Mountain ministry to the younger generations. 
7. We have ministry from Tuesday’s-Saturday’s. Sunday is our sabbath and Monday will be an opportunity to adventure if we want!
8. The closest city to the base, Santiago, is 40 minutes away. Last Monday 3 of my teammates and I taxi’d there and quickly learned how much we stood out as white people. Santiago is not touristy at all and it’s overwhelmingly busy, but it’s a gorgeous city. And we found McDonald’s (some of the closest to America food we have had for a few months now).  
9. Dominican Spanish is practically a whole new language. They talk really fast and use a lot of slang, so it sounds so much different than the Spanish we heard in Costa Rica. 
10. I found Jif peanut butter that is not over $10 a jar! 

There’s not a lot of words that I can use to describe the newness of it all. I want to leave everything I have left here on these grounds. I want to give all that God has given me and nothing less. And I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I can’t wait to find out.