Hello! I hope everybody is doing well. I got back from the Dominican Republic a few days ago and it was an awesome experience. I decided like a week before the actual mission trip to go because it was so cheap. I'll talk about the team first and what a wonderful team this was. The rest of the group was from Daniel's church in La Habra but I knew most of them before and by the end of the trip I knew them all too well.
So I'll go for a quick left to right. Sam is my dude and I've been on every mission trip w/him so far; Daniel is the pastor of the La Habra church and led the team; Meg is the resident samoneem (Daniel's gf); Connie, who led most of the worship and even did a few songs in spanish; Yuree, the official liaison between our group and Korean pastors/missionaries (if the korean adults ever said a joke, she was the only one that would get it); Then the babies of our group, Sarah and Chris; me; then Tammy the hilarious. This whole team is made up of awesome men and women of God and I really feel like this team was supernaturally put together for this trip because everyone got along so well.
OK so we got hooked up with missionaries over there when we arrived and we stayed at this house basically the whole time. The missionaries did such a good job of planning our schedule out and despite the language barrier (have to get better at Korean!) the communication was really good. Ok I don't have a clear recollection of everything so I'll just jump around our schedule. One of the first days, we went to an orphanage.
There were a lot of scenes like this actually. We spent a lot of time leading services, worship, sermons and testimonies, praying for people. We got to pray for a lot of sicknesses and a lot of people were healed! It was amazing to see God use kids like us (oldest was 24) to bring healing and bring the Kingdom of God to different places. On this particular day, the missionaries that were hosting us told us that we were going to the beach. We were all excited and were expecting sand and ocean but what came far exceeded our expectations.
They took us out to Boca Chica on a private yacht and we spent the rest of the day swimming in 5 foot water and chilling on the yacht. I tried to get the video footage working but its being stubborn so maybe another time.
Here is a night shot of the group. Gangster rappers have used this yacht to film rap music videos. The day after we did some construction work to help build a church. I think at this point I really came to admire our team because everyone wanted to help out.
Ok I will mention one other night too. We had the electricity go out on us 2 services. both times there were actually a lot of people but I'll talk about the second time. So we went to this Haitian church on one of the last days. It was our second to last time ministering to people. So this was a regular Sunday and Connie and Daniel shared. The lights went out when Connie shared but it was actually not too bad even though it got a little louder.
This is actually a picture of the scene when I used flash on my camera. The video is a more accurate depiction of how dark it was. So the only light was this glowstick Sarah happened to have from the Korean Festival at Hollywood Bowl. It was pitch dark so they set up some candles. So after Daniel shared, he told me to get the guitar from the back so I rushed to the back of the room and then, to hear other people tell it, there was a "thud". So I found myself on the ground after tripping on this halfstep and I could hear this big gasp around me. But I got up as fast as I fell down and said "Estoy bien" and got the guitar. I was pretty flushed but it was dark so I'm hoping they mistake me for someone else. But actually that night was probably one of the best nights. We got to pray for a lot of people and there were a lot of testimonies of healing. Circumstances are not greater than God! There was seriously a move of God but even beyond the healings and miracles, His name was our great reward. There's seriously nothing better than Himself.The trip was awesome and this blogging business took way too long. I'm happy to be back in SoCal but I miss the people and the beaches and talking behind the backs of my teammates to the natives. JK but I actually did practice Spanish and it was kind of encouraging just talking to the Domincans. I'll post the rest of my pictures somewhere, somehow. There's a lot more stuff that happened but when we'll talk when we meet up.
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