Day 1 – Thursday August 10, 2006 – 9:00 PM

!Hola a todos!

While writing, I realize that we have now been in the DR for 24 hours – and have been going nonstop for most of that time! The last 24 hours have been an adventure for all of us!

5:00 AM Wednesday August 9, 2006

We have all arrived at the airport, bright and early and eager to get on our first plane (and sleep!). We check in, take a group picture, say goodbyes to family, and disappear to US customs and immigration. I can’t say much for their friendliness, but at least they let us through without hassle…(meh, I would be pretty grumpy working at that time too!). Mary gets grilled by security when they find a sewing kit in her carryon, and my laptop gets scrutinized until they find – get this – a piece of lettuce inside! Ummm??? Sneaking produce into the US? Me? Of course not… Tim Horton’s, Burger King, and suddenly we’re on our first flight, enroute to Dallas.

5:00 PM

Ok, so I can’t say much for the room on those planes. Having to do acrobatics to get my bag out from under the seat and onto my lap – not cool. And this guy totally hogged the armrest! But hey – we’re in Miami. One would think that it is Latin America though – the Latin presence here is huge!

8:15 PM

Touchdown in Santiago, early. Lots of legroom on that flight, Gracias a Dios. At this point the excitement mingled with fatigue has made us all drowsy, but when we step into the terminal and realize we’re there, excitement takes over! The yellow team shirts saved us $120 – customs let us pass without purchasing tourist cards because we are missionaries. Praise God – All the luggage arrived – every last bag! And none of us got lost along the way either.

Walking out onto the sidewalk, the bus pulls up. From behind it, they come – old friends, new acquaintances, people we will be spending the next few days with. Obed, Fey, Rod, Hersan, Eddie…it is so good to see them, and in the excitement I forget how to speak Spanish and just smile…

9:30 PM

The joy of air conditioning…never has a bus ride been such a delight! We file in, luggage packed, and Eddie (the DR’s best driver, period) brings us to the ‘Casa Club CVR’ just outside of La Vega. We’re staying in villas!

Second Full Day – Friday, August 11, 2006 – 10 PM

48 hours in La Republica Dominicana! I am glad to have this moment to write; today was a very, very full day and we are very tired. The rest of the team has just crawled into bed in our mountainside villa, leaving myself in the dining room to reflect on these first hours.

Today, we woke at six and shared devotions, prayers, and breakfast at the club’s open-air multipurpose hall. There is the greatest waiter (un camarero) here who is always bringing us strong Dominican coffee at all the right times! The club has all the right amenities; it is great to return here at the end of the day with a meal prepared and jump right into bed without having to cook! There is a member of la guardia who is paid to follow us and keep us safe (with a big shotgun!). At 8:30 we file into the minibus and Eddie (possibly the best driver in all the DR) swerves between motorbikes, stray animals, and crowds, to safely bring us to the barrio Maria Auxiliadora which is 20 minutes away from the club (we are staying in the outskirts of the town of Jarabacoa which is right beside La Vega).

To foreigners, all the roads in La Vega seem the same. There are numerous colmados (corner stores) dotting each side of the street, with houses in between, some made with cement, others with tin from Crisco cans, and a few made with scrap wood. Here and there is a house or two with glass windows and large gates, but for the most part houses are basic and made with whatever was available and inexpensive at the time. Unlike Canada, the DR has a huge split between the lower and upper classes. Instead of a large middle class and small upper and lowers, the DR consists of a large lower class, no middle class, and a small upper class.
Finally, we arrive at La Esquina, the entrance to Maria Auxiliadora. The roads quickly morph from loose smooth gravel to rough dips and crests of mud that have built up due to soil erosion during storms. The travel is slow going on the bus! Fortunately, La Iglesia El Camino is only 12 blocks from La Esquina, and soon we are there, once again passing many colmados, peluqerias (salons), panaderias (bakeries), and bancas (lottery stores). Everywhere there are lots of people relaxing on their porches or at the colmados in white plastic lawn chairs enjoying a bottle of Presidente, the DR’s national cerveza, and playing a good game of dominoes.

La Iglesia is really quite a sight! It has gradually been built from the ground up to now having three stories, with the upper two serving 200+ primary school students each year and the main floor the church hall. There is a team of 38 people who came from Holland with World Servants to finish all the 3^rd floor construction and prepare the school for a new year with a cafeteria, medical consult, teacher’s lounge, kitchen, and more classrooms. In front of the large double doors to the church is a small hut where water that has been run through the church’s filter system is stored, bottled, and sold to the Dominicans for 10 pesos/5 gallon jug (30 cents!). To the left are a basketball court and a newly installed playground set, with a staircase leading up the side of the church to the school. The Dutch missionaries are hard at work making cement, pulling it up to the 3^rd floor, and placing blocks and rebar for the new walls. We make our way into the church, greeting friends along the way and getting things together in preparation for our first 9 AM start…

Figuring out how to run a clinic involving 1500 pairs of glasses, hundreds of people and a dozen volunteers can be a difficult task! On our first afternoon of clinic the day before, we got familiar with the location and procedures by testing and fitting the TEARS staff and their families. We clustered around each station during testing like a group of medical residents at rounds and gradually got accustomed to the procedure, testing 47 people and dispensing 30 pairs of glasses. Both the joys and challenges of the job quickly revealed themselves! It was rewarding to watch as someone puts on their new glasses for the first time and the whole world comes into clarity! Moreover, we are praying that through the glasses ministry, the joy of newfound eye vision would lead people to seek the joy of new life vision through Christ. Amen!

As we tested, we discovered that some of the Dominicans didn’t have vision problems but just wanted to get a pair of glasses to be seen as chic and wealthy by others, as glasses do carry status here because they are expensive new. Mary and I were testing a young lady for reading glasses and her responses to our testing kept contradicting – nothing seemed to be working! Mary and I thought we would try a ‘plano’ (non-prescription) pair, and guess what – She could see with them! So in her case, we did dispense the glasses to keep her happy, even though she doesn’t need them (although when some people come in and test perfectly but still want glasses, I tell them what a hassle glasses really are! Cleaning, scratches, and discomfort – if you don’t need glasses, it’s much easier without them). In addition, we had our inventory of glasses laid out down the center of the church, so although we had easy access to them, so did the Dominicans! We noticed how people who weren’t supposed to be tested that day snuck in without test and started rooting through the pairs, and realized that we needed to organize a bit different, leading to….

Day 2! After returning to the club on Thursday evening and a very good night’s sleep, we headed back to La Iglesia for the first full day of testing. Today, things worked differently. Joy, who coordinates programming at the TEARS School, has distributed ‘tickets/invites’ throughout the barrio of different colors for each testing day, in order to keep each day’s demand at a reasonable level. From the start, we had some ‘hissy fits’ here and there from those who didn’t have a ticket. Fortunately, we had some more tickets for other days to give to those without a Friday ticket. For the most part, the testing went very smoothly. With one station for distance testing, one for close vision, and two for both, we can test for 10-14 people each hour. Over eight hours later, we had tested 100 people’s eyes and dispensed many pairs of glasses, which we hope will find good use! With 3 ½ more full days of testing, we hope to see 400 more people from the barrio, in addition to those whom we will test in La Travasia, a mountain village about 1 ½ hours from La Vega with ties to TEARS.

If you were a local Dominican here to receive an eye exam, you would come to the church with your ticket and wait in the triage/history taking line. Myself or a teacher from the TEARS school would sit with you and ask you questions about your health and your vision, then you would grab a plastic chair and head to Gloria (a local teacher’s) station for distance testing. Depending on the results, you would go for further distance testing at the dual stations or just close vision testing at the single station. We would guide you through a process of finding your prescription using special testing sticks, each containing a series of small lenses of increasing strength. If you need glasses (meaning your vision is not 20/40 or better), we would search for some matching pairs and then see how they feel, both for prescription and for comfort. If they need adjustment, you would see Julie at the adjustments station. Then we would give you information about protecting your eyes from damage and protecting your glasses. Et voila, c’est fini!

Tomorrow, we hope to make a few more tweaks to the testing process. We’d like to get the people waiting for the exam captive in order to teach them care for glasses and eyes. We hope to further streamline the process so people are admitted, tested, fitted, and discharged as quickly as possible without loss of quality of the procedure. And we’d like to take more time to pray with people for whatever is on their hearts and for their eyes and their vision. Please pray that our Lord would enable these changes and all those necessary for us to be the best servants possible.

After a very full day of testing, we returned to the club for dinner and a quick swim. Rod’s daughter Shekinah came with us for a quick visit, which was fun. After some phone calls and a visit over ice cream in La Vega’s downtown, we sped back to the club and played some Dutch Blitz, which drained the rest of our energy and sent us all off to bed to rest for another big day!

Days 3 & 4 – Saturday and Sunday

Hola again! It is my pleasure to share with you what has come to pass in the last two days. After waking up (groggily) on Saturday, we got ready, shared devos, and set off to la iglesia. At the church today things were much more organized. Delia, a TEARS school teacher, handled admitting for us. She was the admitting queen. There were no exceptions if you didn’t have a ticket. You couldn’t be tested that day. No questions asked – and she stuck to the rules! Because of this, the workload in the morning was light – there were not huge crowds of people hovering for a test that might never happen because of the huge demand…instead the waiting room was constantly turning over and the process was going very efficiently! We actually got an early start at lunch, instead of running late and having 15 minutes to eat!

In the afternoon, things changed. People came in hordes. Lots and lots of older people. Older people with cataracts. Suddenly each test was taking an hour to complete…and we were falling far behind. Pat and I spent close to an hour with one woman for whom nothing seemed to be improving her vision. By 2:45, we stopped admitting people, and managed to finish testing those who were waiting by 3:45. During this time, Norma, a local pediatrician, brought some of her medical students to share with those waiting for exams about tuberculosis and how treatment and drugs are free if you have TB. Her students shared about mites, parasites, and water problems in the barrio that can be easily minimized through proper hygiene and habits.

By four, all the equipment had been packed up and the team headed back to the Casa Club. I stayed behind and visited with some friends, and at one point, I sat on Obed’s roof and used Tracy’s wireless Internet connection, which was sweet!

Eddie came back at eight with everyone else, well fed and ready for youth church. It was awesome. Obed played the guitar and sang, and three other women from the church sang. Bautista (with Travis Marcos translating) delivered a stirring message about treasures in heaven and about the refiner’s fire, and about how there is no such thing as a ‘half Christian’: that we can’t give up only part of our worldly lives to Christ, we have to give Him our ALL. Near the end, Bau called everyone forward to pray and share joy in our salvation through Christ. It was very cool.

Day 4

Sunday! The day of rest…and church! Gracias a Dios, we were able to sleep in today! We took our time…and shared devotions at 8:30 instead of seven. Pues, it was off to Haitian church! Pastor Hector Julio (see attached picture) leads the church of about 60 in a town beside La Vega called Soto. They are a cool group – and it is apparent when fellowshipping with them how they worship differently than the Dominicans. They treat worship like a formal event and always dress formal, so it was an expectation for us to come there dressed formally. The service was quite an experience! We sat, stood, sat, stood, and did it again! There is an order of worship, yet there is also spontaneity. Moreover, they seem to like breaking into random English hymns translated into French and Creole! But the thing that stood out to me the most was their passion in worship. Each person seemed so dedicated, so involved in what was going on, that there was a real energy to the church. It is humbling to see those in much more difficult circumstances than our own stand and celebrate the joy they have in the Lord, even through their circumstances.

After the service, I met with a good old friend named Felix. He studies at La Vega University and rides his bicycle an hour each way to get there. It was cool to reconnect with him.

We headed back to the Casa Club for lunch, where we all had good naps, then to the supermercado to buy some stuff for ourselves and Dominican friends. Eddie then brought us into the barrio where we had a visit with Milagro, one of the TEARS School teachers.

To be continued…