Today we started with devotions at 6:30am. It was encouraging to be able to start the day with a little bible study together. Renaldo, the pastor’s brother, picked us up at the hotel around 8am. Surprisingly, he was early picking us up. Being on time isn’t as emphasized in the Dominican culture as it is in ours…so I’m told. Renaldo drove us to the church where we met his mother who had some coffee made for us. Coffee is a big part of their culture. We would have coffee when we arrived and then after lunch in the afternoons, sometimes a couple times in between also. They didn’t serve the big cups that we do though, just some small 4 oz cups of coffee or so.
Renaldo had spent some time living in Europe and traveled the states a bit, but it was still a bit surprising that the first thing he wanted to do when we got there was to write out a schedule for the week. Maybe he was just trying accommodate our culture a bit, maybe he really did like being on time and having schedules. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the times we got to spend with him.
We started painting the kitchen that they had been working on for the last few months. The kitchen is a separate building on the church property that they are going to be using to provide cheap meals to the poorer people living around the church. It is a great idea and the people in the community are excited for it to open in another month or so.
Ramond helped us with the painting during the day. He was a great guy to get to know. He is 18 years old and one of the members of the church. It was great for us to work alongside him, practicing our Spanish while he practiced his English. I think we met about 200 people named Ramond, Raymon, Ramone, or some other variation of the name that week…must be popular.
Renaldo had spent some time living in Europe and traveled the states a bit, but it was still a bit surprising that the first thing he wanted to do when we got there was to write out a schedule for the week. Maybe he was just trying accommodate our culture a bit, maybe he really did like being on time and having schedules. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the times we got to spend with him.
We started painting the kitchen that they had been working on for the last few months. The kitchen is a separate building on the church property that they are going to be using to provide cheap meals to the poorer people living around the church. It is a great idea and the people in the community are excited for it to open in another month or so.
Ramond helped us with the painting during the day. He was a great guy to get to know. He is 18 years old and one of the members of the church. It was great for us to work alongside him, practicing our Spanish while he practiced his English. I think we met about 200 people named Ramond, Raymon, Ramone, or some other variation of the name that week…must be popular.
At night we went to church. They have 3 services, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Saturday is a youth service, so it’s only the people that are generally below 30 yrs old. The other services are attended by everyone that can make it. The church has about 400 members and is the largest church in the area. The building itself is made of block walls, concrete floor, and a tent roof. The walls had several window openings, but no windows in them, letting a nice breeze through the church. It was nice to be in a climate that made it possible to worship in an open building like this one.
The service was all in Spanish, but I have retained enough of my Spanish over the years to be able to understand what was going on. The church did have someone translating the message for us too, which was helped a lot too.
This is the inside of the kitchen we were painting, well, some of us were painting.
This is the church where it all goes down
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