Monte Plata, first days

July 3, 2011

Today was a day of re-acquaintance. Woken up in the night with the rain pounding the street outside and running down tin roofs. Roosters crowing in a uniquely Dominican way. Church with new friends, alabare, sharing and praising God together. Walking through the town, greeting people and watching their stares turn into beautiful smiles and response. Finding gorgeous colours of paint on homes, clusters of adults and children sitting on porches and under trees. Motorcycles with toddlers hoisted in front of a dad, gramdma sitting side saddle. Limones hanging from trees. Buying limonsillos from the sweetest girls on their front porch, while their little sisters sat on matching rocking chairs, colouring in their exercise books. Remolacha, arrepitas de maiz. Joy for today- walking with Barry, hearing him greet people.

Eliu, Deborah, Deborah's kids, outside of El Templo Biblico

Barry, weighing two year old twins.

Christopher

July 4, 2011

First project day. Today we pulled up to the Templo Biblico in Monte Plata. I was thrilled. I met Eliu and Deborah Prensa. Eliu is a deacon in the church and Deborah, his sister, is the director of the Eva Russell school. I hope to visit the school later and the orphanage. Deborah and Eliu are the grown children of Juana and Ramon Prensa. They know my parents. They were greatly influenced by Eva Russell, and became missionaries. They have an amazing ministry with the school and the orphanage. Deborah thanked Granville Chapel for the years of their support and prayers for the work of the Brethren assemblies in this country.  It was a small clinic day- not many patients. I was sitting around most of the day it felt like. Dentists were busy with lots of extractions. Some of them were surgical extractions that took a long time. We were waiting for the dental staff at the end of the day. I don’t think they even got a decent lunch, they were so busy. What a joy to be with the children. Joy of the day- holding baby Christopher. He just nestled into me and had fun, first with the scale, then looking at the rain.  Such a cutie. Cindy and I were working in the children’s health education. We taught about the importance of washing your hands and brushing your teeth. Most of the kids knew already when to wash hands and brush teeth, but as Milton told me, it’s always good to say it again.  We used a large teeth model and large toothbrush. The kids were so amazed at the size of the toothbrush and helped to brush the teeth on the model. Then we handed out colouring books, today it was Noah and the Ark and Adam and Eve. We read the stories and looked at each picture. There was a brother and sister who had never heard the story of Noah’s ark and they loved looking at the pictures of the animals and naming them. They took time to let the story sink in. Today it was also torrential raining. We kept joking about how it was a rainy day like it was for Noah and his family. It rained for most of the day, torrential downpours. The lights went out and during dinner we ate by candlelight and then had tremendous thunder and lightning storms. The thunder was so loud that it made me jump. I took lots of pictures today and can’t wait to really look at them later. So precious to see Barry weighing babies and adults and helping them get from the registration area to the doctor’s consult area.