With or Without You 1/6/12

So I just arrived at the airport about a half hour before my teammates, the airport looks better since we left for Haiti but the scars are still there. My team showed up and we waited in line at the American Airlines desks for an hour just like last time. I don't understand why they tell us to be there three hours ahead of time and the workers aren't there till two hours. One of the TSA workers told us that there was an earthquake in the Dominican Republic last night but when we arrived, none of the locals seem alarmed so I figure it wasn't a big deal. We got on the plane to Miami without a hitch and then after a sandwich and what felt like a 15 minute wait in Miami we boarded the plane for the Dominican.  The flight was great and I got some beautiful footage of the ocean and a few islands and archipelagos.

Hispaniola has a distinct smell. When I was in Haiti I thought it was a combination of diesel, manure, and trash but here in the DR it smells exactly the same. This part of the island has less manure and trash so I guess it's the island it's self. We came out of the plane through the tunnel this time instead of on the tarmac like in Haiti, though part of the airport looked severely damaged. The smell hit me as soon as I got to the terminal and all the memories of Haiti came rushing back. After baggage claim, I switched my money out for Dominican pesos, $30 is just short of 1000 pesos... I didn't know this and I think I may have too much but it's ok I like foreign currency.

The DR seems less mountainous than Haiti and there are infinitely more trees.  The people seem slightly less friendly but I guess that is what more money and affluence does. There are the same awesome off road vehicles with more cars and one or two awesome dune buggies.  Once out in the beautiful Dominican sun we met up with our guide Kiko and the guy who runs the sports complex were staying at named Gus.  We also loaded up in what might be the exact same Toyota Coaster that we had in Haiti and a little Nissan van thing that I need to find the name of. I think it was a Nissan Sunny.  Naturally I avoided the Coaster in favor of the smaller more fun vehicle hoping for some off road fun but we only got in a little light off-roading on a flat dirt road.  Kiko also brought along two medical missionaries from Alabama and Georgia who I talked to for a bit. They saw my Passion wristband and apparently both had gone last year.

I'll talk about Passion in a separate post because there's too much to say here but basically the theme was Freedom and the fact that there are 27million slaves in the world today (the most in human history) be they sex slaves, indentured servants, or what have you. With that fresh on my mind it was hard not to notice the one or two women in, let's say revealing clothes on the side of a road as we went to the sports facility.

When we got here I was astounded. There are 3 beautiful baseball diamonds with perfect (albeit a bit hard) dirt, soft Bermuda grass, and consistent lips. There's a weight room, a soccer field, a basketball court, two tennis courts and a pool.  All of this just outside Santo Domingo which in the poverty department is just a couple notches above Port Au Prince.

We had a little practice on one of the fields to kind of get ready for our game tomorrow.  I'm not sure if I'm ready but we're gonna find out.  It felt really good to get to play some ball again and although I'm a little out of shape I think I did pretty well for not playing in months.

We had dinner after practice which was a metric ton of spaghetti. Evidently the sports complex decided we were carb loading before our game tomorrow which is probably not a terrible idea. Before, during, and after dinner there was some kind of service going on in an assembly hall thing opposite the cafeteria. Robbie and I decided to go over and check it out. It turned out to be a church service for what looked like about 75-100 high school students. Seeing the Hispanic version of church camp was pretty cool, they were singing songs that I understood most of the words to and the feel was pretty contemporary despite the fact that it was "cowboy night" and they all dressed the part.  The rest of the team followed us a few minutes later and eventually the whole team was standing in the back. Obviously the people who were running the thing took notice of the 25 Americans in the back of the room and invited us to sit down, they even provided 4 translators for us. I kept up with the worship team but when the pastor started going he went so fast I lost him every other thought. Luckily the translators caught me up. He gave a message that Tom had given before about living a life that is worth writing about or a life that's worth making a movie about, living for something bigger than one's self. It seemed like it was the last night of the camp because at the end the pastor asked the kids if any of them wanted to accept Christ, but they may do camp differently down here.  A lot of them stood up so apparently the message got to them. I'm glad to see the affirmation that God is working down here with or without us and we are just coming along for the ride.

Sorry for this being late but I don't have internet access here. It's only 9:10 here now, 7:10 back home but I'm bushed we get up at 7 tomorrow so hopefully 10 hrs of sleep will do me good. I can't wait to see what God does tomorrow.