TBC Dominican Republic Mission Trip: Back to Work

From Brad who did construction today:

It was another fantastic workday at the Church construction site! Today we were blessed to work beside our brothers and sisters in Christ from Mobile and Jackson, TN. The Church is now completely painted with primer inside and they’ve even started the first coat of the final yellow paint inside. About half of the outside of the church has been primed. Also about five rows of blocks have been laid for the front wall/fence. This was a very interesting effort, as running the wheel borrows of concrete through the gauntlet of stones, holes, scaffolding and sudden turns was a challenge of balance (especially if you wanted to arrive at your destination with most of the concrete still in the wheel barrow :o) ). Other folks ran buckets after buckets of mortar to Dominican craftsmen on scaffolding applying the finishing coats of “stucco”- complete with cool architectural designs. We moved tons (okay maybe not tons) of dirt and rock into areas to help achieve the proper grade for drainage.

Mike K., Susan, Dave, Robert and Bruce moving block

Jeremy directing his helpers moving dirt

Robert & Adina hauling buckets of mortar

Lisette demonstrating a popular position during lunch

Brad, Susan and Lisette helping with the block wall

Jeff, Mike & Bruce making concrete

Mike K. and Robert pouring concrete in the wall and into the wall foundation

From Emma who did medical today:

Wow! What an amazing day for the medical team! After a 45 minute bus ride to Batey 30 (a batey is a small village with many huts and palm trees in the middle of a sugar cane field) we were greeted with so many smiling faces. We set up the clinic in the batey’s church. First, the patients get weighed. Then I got to take their blood pressure. And finally they waited on some of the pews to see the doctors. Our team of doctors is awesome! We have one American pediatric nurse practitioner, one American podiatric who is from the church in Jackson, two local general medical doctors, and one local dentist. People on the team do everything from taking blood pressure, to deciphering prescriptions, to counting pills, to crowd control and handing out coloring sheets to the kids. It takes all of us working together to make the clinic run. The people that we serve are always so appreciative and grateful for our help and our presence in their community. The most striking story to me today was an elderly couple who came near the end of our day. The man, who could not have been over 5 feet tall and about 80 years old, ran into the clinic, carrying his very sick wife. She was also around 80 years old and was so weak that she could not even hold her own head up. The whole team was touched by the husband’s determination to get his wife help and his obvious love for her. His wife saw the doctor and was given medication and then some of our team carried her back to her hut. We were all very encouraged by this beautiful picture of love.

From Carolyn who did VBS today:

It was a beautiful and breezy day in batey 30. VBS started in the usual fashion with a cup of anti-parasitic followed by a game of kickball and some nail painting. Trinity youth acted out the story of Jesus with the children. Andrew Oliver played Jesus and the excited children buried him. The children made backpacks that said “Jesus loves me” and their names. After lunch, we went to the orphanage “Orfanato Nino de Christo”, where we received a tour and the kids sang for us. We returned the favor and sang “How Great is Our God” with Brett accompanying on the guitar. My favorite part of the day was painting the little girls nails in the batey.