Dominican Republic Day 9 - Friday (Nov 7)

Finally after a busy holiday season I am finding some time to finish up my stories about our mission trip. Friday was our last full day in DR! Before starting for the day we went out to the beach for sunrise devotions. It was cloudy, but it was still a beautiful setting to see the start of the day. 

Sunrise devotion

Roy before the big wave

Roy after the big wave. The pocket with his camera is the only inch of him that stayed dry.

Kike with his gift and Roy

In anticipation of our leaving soon we gave some gifts that my dad made to our translators. In total we had 5 translators, Felix and Kike (brothers), McNelly (the only girl), Hector and Daniel. We didn't always have the same ones each day, but we really appreciated each of them. From my western point of view, the translators helped us to do our ministry. But more than that, it felt like we were facilitating their ministry. We were the attraction to bring the people so that they would have the chance to build broader and deeper relationships. In reality we were both working together for God's ministry!

McNelly with her gift

Today we headed into the capitol city of Santo Domingo. We first picked up Dr. Marcel from the San Pedro vet school. Then at the vet school the doctors and professors were very eager to show us their school. They seemed pretty well equipped. I was happy to see that they had supplies such as x-ray processing chemicals tanks of oxygen which the San Pedro clinic lacked. Then we went into the agriculture and crops department. We saw greenhouses and sprouts to look at germination rates, some of their research and equipment. This was truly Roy's domain and he enjoyed learning what they were doing and finally he was hearing names of plant diseases that he was familiar with!

One of the greenhouses at the university

Then we were ushered into a conference room and  the dean of the agricultural college met with us. We learned that this school was 476 years old! We introduced ourselves and had a nice conversation...most of which I've forgotten.  We hadn't expected to meet with the dean. In DR when you meet with authority you always dress in pants not shorts. (You can do everything else in shorts.) We were all in shorts and we felt a little out of place but the dean didn't seem to mind. (We were thankful that he was in jeans.) We learned that DR is first in the world for exporting organic bananas and cacao. He invited us to work with the students, to come and teach a class sometime or to send them some American vet students to work with them.

visiting with the dean of the agricultural college at the University in Santo Domingo

After the vet school we were way behind our schedule and continued on. Our next stop was the clinic where Dr. Marcel first worked. It was a five doctor practice and was equipped pretty much the same as the average vet clinic of the same size in the US. They even had the same brands of dog food! (This absolutely floored me after living in Ethiopia where we could only occasionally find manufactured dog food at one store in the whole country!)

a treatment area in the vet clinic

the vet clinic with lots of options of dog food

Next stop lunch: we ate at El Conoco, a buffet with traditional Dominican dishes which was rumored to be the best restaurant in the country. It was good, and then they had traditional dancing where they even danced and spun on a bottle. Roy and I even got roped into dancing a little.

traditional dancing at the restaurant--spinning on the bottle

With our bellies full we went shopping at the "straw market" for a half hour that turned into an hour. This is basically a tourist market with all sorts of vendors where bartering was encouraged and expected, although Roy and I noticed that they all seemed to have very similar bottom prices for the same things.

Our team at the straw market

We were ready to head home, but there was still one more stop on our agenda. We stopped at Pasitos de Jesus. This was a girls' home that was a SCORE ministry. As with most of their ministries it was started with a Dominican whose house was already a place of ministry. SCORE came alongside and now they are able to help a lot more girls. Some girls are orphans and others are victims of abuse. They told a story of one girl who was rescued by her uncle from her abusers only to be abused by him in unspeakable ways. She was able to be rescued now has a safe home in the house. We started touring the place and saw houses for various age groups. The rooms were neat and brightly colored. I could only see so many rooms and then I wandered outside and found some girls hitting a volleyball and I joined in.  Some older girls joined in and then they started dancing and trying to teach me salsa dancing. Thankfully there is no video proof of this! There's always something fun about giggling with a group of girls! I noticed the young girls had gone back to playing with the ball so slipped away from dancing and joined back to playing ball.

The girls playing at Pasitos de Jesus

While there Roy gave away the last of our children's coloring books and candy stash. We also met up with Pastor Craig, the missionary from San Juan, our first village. He gave good reports on how his rabbits were improving with their mite treatments, and how other animals were recovering well from their surgeries. Unfortunately a couple cattle that we treated had been stolen--very disheartening and sad news to hear.

Finally, we headed home for supper. Then Jeff did a great job debriefing us to be ready to head back home. I really enjoyed hearing what impacted everyone the most. For me it was being able to serve together with my husband and getting the opportunity to hear stories of others on the team. Roy's highlight was getting to use some of his practical skills to serve and pairing them together with ministry. He'd never had the chance to do that before on his previous mission opportunities.

We said goodbye to teammates as we would leave on a bus the next day, confirmed that we were booked on a bus made sure we had a ride to Haiti for the next leg of our journey. At 10:30 pm we finally got back to our rooms to pack our bags.