2005 Dominican Republic Trip: Thursday, August 18

I was back at the job site. We made more of the rebar columns – this time Annie and Allie bent quite a bit of rebar. Then we fastened them to the straight pieces with heavy wire to form the column. I spent a lot of time playing with the children. I was able to carry five more concrete blocks, but mostly focused on making sure everyone drank enough water, and took pictures. We were told before the trip to make sure we had permission to take pictures, but that hasn’t been an issue. Most of the time, the children are asking us to take their pictures! They’ll gather in a group, and point to themselves and say “Photo? Photo?”

Medical clinic was only in the morning, as the doctors were meeting with the health care workers of the community in the afternoon. I’m told that went well.

VBS was the story of Jesus being laid in the tomb. Jonathan was “Jesus” for that day, and Rick and Noranne were disciples. From one side of the door, Rick decided to put a stone in front of the door to represent the stone in front of the tomb. Meanwhile, Noranne decided that the door should be slammed to give the sound effects for closing the tomb, not realizing that the door did not have a stop. She slammed the door from one side as Rick was bending over from the other side. She came through the door, and almost fell on Rick, who by now was trying not to laugh and spoil the story for the children. He had to turn his back and walk toward the altar to keep the children from knowing he was laughing. We were all glad he wasn’t hurt.

After VBS, we had an outing with the sponsored children. The idea was for all the sponsored children to join us after VBS finished, and get their letters and offer them an opportunity to write a letter or color a picture for their sponsors. It was rather chaotic! However, I did get to have another nice visit with Mary. She had written a letter for Fred, and the following day, Andres translated it for me.