Dominican Republic Trip!!

Hello people of Earth!! This is Bayley Kinner writing to you live from cyberspace. Now I'm done, haha, just kidding. This is me writing about the amazingly awesome mission trip I went on with my youth group to thye Domnican Republic. I left July 26th at 4:00 in the moring!!!! And returned to Minnesota on Monday, August 4th at 11:30 p.m, so by the time I actually got to my house, in was Tuesday morning. Let me start out by saying that I praise everyday for sending me on this trip, the people were extremely kind and welcoming, the country is beautiful and some very amazing these happened there. So waht I'm thinking is that I'll give you day-by-day description of what went on while I was there and then there's pictures. And I took over 400 of them, but don't worry, you won't see them all, unless you want to, and then I can bring a disk the next time that I see you. Lights, Camera, Mission Trip!!!!!

Day 1: Saturday, July 26th: I had to wake up at 3:00 a.m so Mom and I could be at the church by 4:00 because that was the decided time to meet. Everyone, myself included, was exhausted because of the 2-5 hrs of sleep we all got, but equally excited to get going. When
everyone had arrived, our group and some parents prayed for the safety of the teens and adults going on the trip then it was off to the airport. we arrived at the Mineapolis/St. Paul International airport at around 5:30 a.m at it took us atleast 2 hrs to check the luggage and get through security. You'd be surprised how people there are at an airport at 5:30 in the morning!! But we made it through with 30 minutes to spare before our 7:40 a.m flight to the Miami airport. The plane ride was fine, the 2 and 1/2 hr flight seemed longer than it was, they played the movie "College Raodtrip," but I didn't watch it.
We arrived in Miami at 10:30 (their time, which is 1 hour adead of Minnesota) and we quickly had to fiqure out how to spend our 7 hour layover time in the Miami airport before we left for Santiago, Dominican Republic, the sight of the airport and the city in which we were staying. so for the next 7 hrs, we went off with our groups and get lunch, played card games, slept, ate more food, slept more, and even called home to talk to the fam 1 more time before we went totally incogneato.
It took around 1 hour and 1/2 to get to the Dominican (DR), we were the last people to arrive at the airpot before they closed for the night, so getting through security took like 5 minutes. We had to wait for about 20 minutes for our ride (which was 3 vans and 1 pick-up truck) to get us from the airport and take us to the house where we would be staying (a.k.a the mission house). The drive there gave a great 1st impression on what I would see for the next 10 days. There were night clubs and bars everywhere, but one thing that actually made me mad was I saw this beautiful Marriot hotel and right across the street was this rundown bar that looked like it had leaves or tall grass for a roof. It looked like the city was trying to hide what the city really looked like from the tourists, but I found out what the city looked like from a citizens perspective pretty quickly.
We finally got to the mission house, was introduced to the Pastor and his family that ran the church that was next door to the mission house and where we would running Vacation Bible School (VBS). We also met some people who work for Merge Ministry, a universal ministry. There was Alex, Scott and Tammy, who the director of the Caribbean part of Merge Ministry. We talked about the ruls and then to bed around 11:30 p.m. WHEW, busy day.

DAY 2: Sunday, July 27th: Time to wake up at 8:00 for breakfast made by Teresa and Jim, the couple that owns the mission house and constantly keeps it running. We had breakfast and had to be at church by 9 for a Bible study some members of the congregation had before church. The study was really a sermon before the real sermon, but it was cool. I felt alittle guitly that everything he said had to be translated into English for us. After church we had time to mingle with the Dominicans, which was extremely hard when only about 5-7 of all 27 of us know enough Spanish to have a conversation with the Dominicans. But we made it work. After lunch we walked about 3 blocks to see the cite where for we would be digging trenchs for the foundation of the new school that the church was building. It was an open area that was all dirt, but full of promising futures. After that we went back to the house and just hung out untilwe had mandatory quiet time at 11:00.

DAY 3: Monday, July 28th: Today was the 1st day of 5 days where we would get up at 7:00 a.m., put on our work clothes, do the personal devotions that our youth pastor set up for us, have breakfast, and would hopefully be off to the work cite by 8:00. The Dominicans who belonged to the church and Pastor GeeJay (its his nickname and that's how its pronounced), his wife Shelley who was raised in Chicago, and their 2 kids names Mark, 7 and Sarah, 8. They had already dug the trenchs abou 1/2 foot deep the day before. And for the next 4 hours we get into different group: people who used a pick-ax to dig up the dirt, people who shoveled up the dirt out of the trenches when the pick-axers had done a fair job and the people who shoveled the excess dirt into wheelbarrows to be taken to a corner of the site that wasn't affected by the project.
By noon, we were done digging for the day, and went back to the mission house to shower, have lunch, and get ready to go to the church to run the VBS at 2:00 p.m. And the atire for VBS was no different than it was for church: Girls had to wear skirts that covered our knees, shirts that showed no cleevage or had writing on it, and nice shoes. Guys had to wear slacks or dress pants, a buttoned or polo shirt and dress shoes. VBS started out as chaos, we weren't as organized as we had thought and weren't prepared for the 40 kids between the ages of 4-14 that came for VBS. But we handled it beautifully and no kids were lost or misplaced. VBS started with songs, all sung in Spanish, which went well, the kids loved to do actions that went with the songs and it was a great time to learn some more Spanish. Then we had a skit, that I directed, it was the story of Saul, who saw the light of God, became Paul, and went to have many God related adventures. It was fun and the kids loved the guy was playing Saul/Paul, and ironically, his real name is Paul. I had the 6-8 yr-old group, and there was 30 kids in that group and 4 leaders (myself included). But they had so much fun and were really easy to handle and get from station to station. There was a crafts station, a music station where they also memorized Bible verses, and a games station that was where gym class is held during the school year. By 4:00, VBS was over and we had the rest of the day to rest, shower (if you haven't already), get ready for VBS the next day, and practice the skit for tomorrow that I had to do because I was the director. And it was fun, I liked it, it's just really hard to give directions to people who are tired and alittle ansy.
Quiet time was at 10:30 this time, which I was thankful to have an excuse to go to bed early.

DAY 4: Tuesday, July 29th: We again woke up at 7:00, I out on the same shirt and pants that I wore to work the day before. And the mandatory atire for work clothes are long pants or jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt that wasn't a tang top, didn't show cleevage or our shoulders. The work was fine an VBS went alot smoother than the day before and more kids came, so we had a successful 1st day of VBS, which made us feel better. And they split up the 6-8 yr-old kids, so there weren't 30 kids in my group this time. The day was pretty much the same as yesterday, but I was REALLY excited that my birthday would be less than 24 hours away.

Day 5: Wednesday, July 30th: IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!! The 1st thing that I did when I woke up was open up the surprise gift the Mom put in my suitcase for me to discover when I got to the DR. Inside there was some cards that my siblings made, a card that sings, and a bracelt with my name on it that Zoe made. By the time we went to the work cite, I had been sung "Happy Birthday" too in seven different languages: including Spanish, English, German, Dutch, and others that I'm forgetting. The rest of the day was the same as the previous two days, we dug trenches and ran the VBS. At dinner, the food was amazing, as usual. And when we all were finished, my youth pastor and another leader brought out 2 cakes while singing "Happy Birthday" is English and Spanish. One was a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting that said "Happy Birthday Bayley" and the other was a HUGE chocolate cake with chocolate frosting with chocolate syrup on it. The chocolate cake was my favorite, but while I was eating my 2 oversized pieces of cake, my youth pastor and the assistant youth pastor walked up behind me and gave me another surprise that is other a traditional Dominican tradition to do on someone's birthday. They came up behind me and poured a gallon of cold water on my head, I was soaked, but I was was having too much fun to care how wet I was. After that I had to run rehearsal again for the VBS skit, which ran very smoothly. And I ended the birthday by just chilling with my youth group before going to bed at 11:00 p.m

Day 6: Thursday, July 31st: The day after my birthday had an interesting start. We all arrived to the work cite to find that our 2 and 1/2 foot trenched had been filled with 2 feet of water. Now, everyday before this, the last people to leave lets the hose run in the trenches to make the dirt softer for the next day. So we're not sure if the hose had been left on all night by accident or someone came aftrwards and turned the hose on all night on purpose because their mad at the church. Either way, we make a bad situation turn great and fun. I and about 7 other people took off our socks and shoes, rolled up our pants and hopped in that mud bath like it was a hot tub in a spa. We quickly fiqured out, after we had walked around to get used to the squishy feeling in between our toes, that the best way to get the mud water out the trenches was to be in the trenches scooping in out ourselves. It took most of that day get the water out and then we had to shovel extremely heavy mud and extremelt heavy dirt. And it was that day that Santiago had it's 1st rain in months!!! We got to wintess the end of a drought, and luckily, it was after VBS. The church had a Thursday night church service, which is basically the same as a Sunday service except that it's at night.

Day 7: Friday, August 1st: The last day of digging trenches and VBS. I was sad to see it go, but mainly becasue I knew this amazing trip would almost be over. We finished digging at the normal time and left it about 4 feet deep and 3 feet wide. It rained again before VBS, and this time we weren't so happy to see it. You see, on this day, we were planning on having a VBS carnival inside of the usual stuff we do. And we wanted to have it outside so it wouldn't be so crowded, but because of the rain, we had to cram inside the church. But the carnival turned out to be alot of fun; we had some of the regular carnival games (hoop toss, bean-bag toss, knocking cups over), face paints, a craft, balloon animals, and guarenteed candy everywhere you went. It didn't rain during the carnival and we had 80 kids come, which is the biggest number all week!!! All the kids had alot of fun, and we did too.
After VBS, we all crowed into 2 vans and drove into the city of Santiago to do some site seeing that the Merge staff planned. We ended stopping to get out and see a momument thats in the middle of the city. It's a building/momument that was built after the dictatorship in the Dominican Republic ended in the 1960's. There were bronze statues of the main men and women who helped to stop the dictatorship, and sculptures of different animals or people all over the momument. There was also a beeautiful view of what the city looked like, and it's BIG!!!! It lookes like a flourishing and successful city with modern cars and stoplights, but the best part was the mountains. The city is in a valley, so you get the best view of mountainis everywhere you look. After that we hung around the mission house until bed time.

Day 8: Saturday, August 2nd: It was on this day that all us and the pastor's family drove through the mountains to go to the coast to have some fun. The ride there was about an hour long and I go some great pics of the mountains and got to see what life was like outside of the city. When we arrived, it ended up being a tourist resort, with a glof course and a American casino. But the beach and salt water was there, so we were happy. The first time I ran in those waves, I was reminded on how terrible salt water tastes and how the taste doesn't go away. Pretty soon after we had our fun, we all went our seperate ways to get some lunch or do alittle shopping. But because we weren't guests of the resort, we weren't allowed to shop in the stores inside the hotel. So we had to but from men and women whos job it was to walk up and down the beach selling whatever they were given to sell. Because it's an American resort, everyone who worked there spoke English, and I got some great stuff for the family. Necklaces for Mom, Zoe and Emma, a baseball cap for Brax and a cross necklace that was originally for my Dad, but it didn't fit him so now it's mine. It was so much fun swimming in the ocean with my youth group and the pastor's 2 kids. I had a blast, but the sand getting everywhere wasn't too enjoyable.
After the beach it became cold and rainy and I was very happy to have a shower when we got back so I could warm up and get the sand off.



DAY 9: Sunday, August 3rd: Our last full day in the Dominican Republic, we went to church and the sermon was about suffering. Me and 2 other girls gave our testimonies to the congregation, and the whole service lasted 2 hours. Sunday evening the church gave us a "Thanks for everything, we'll miss you" party. There was food, games, music, and even a slideshow of the church members and our youth group working together on the work sight and VBS. The best part was before and after the party, when I got to play with the kids one last time, we played catch, tag (outside of course), and gave a lot of rides on my back. The whole thing was a ton of fun, the people there couldn't of been any sweeter and patient whil we attempted Spanish. They were so welcoming to us being there I was sad to be leaving the next day.



DAY 10: Monday, August 4th: Time to pack up and head back to the states. We spend most of the morning packing our luggage, getting ourselves organized for international travel, and cleaning up the mission house. Afterwards, we had some time, so we went back to the work site to have a look at what we had created and to pray for the successful process of the building of this school and that the church and this community stay strong, happy, faithful to God and their nieghbors, and healthy. Afterwards, we went back to the house, packed our luggage on the truck and it was bye-bye to the community we had been living in for the past week-and-a-half. We drove the airport and 2 hours later we were in the air flying back to the Miami airport.

We were in Miami for 3 hours, but most of it was taken up in luggage claim, getting our luggage on the Minneapolis plane, and going through security...AGAIN!!! But it lifted everyones spirt when we saw a Burger King in the airport, there'sjust something about an American cheeseburger that everyone missed. We were in the plane to Minneapolis around 8:30 p.m for the 2 and 1/2 hour flight back home. The airport was fairly empty when we got home, but I was so excited that in less in an hour I would be in my own bed. There were designated people/parents from church waiting to drive us back to the church where the rest of the parents would be eagerly waiting to take us home. We got to church around midnighgt where my Dad and Brax waiting at church to bring me home. There were hugs and "I missed yous" all over the place, I stayed up to talk to Mom at home because she waited up for me until I got home and went to bed at 1:15 a.m


This trip was exactly what I needed for my faith with God, I learned some important lessons about God and learned some things about my youth group. We all connected on a different level with each other. This trip is defiently the best thing I did this summer, I can't wait to see all of you so we can talk more about this amazing, wonderful, awesome mission trip I went on.


+ posted by Bayley