Dominican Republic 2026 Day Four
We woke up before the sun at 6:30am, a dark and gloomy morning to start what is yet to be a Christ-filled day. For Devos we did Lectio Divina, which is meditating on God’s word, reading it multiple times, and sitting in His presence. It’s inspired by the early church traditions (when many were illiterate) of hearing the text and listening for what stands out.
As always, our 8am breakfast was scrumptious and glorified by God’s hand (cheesy ham on bread with sunny-side-up eggs, with the usual salami, porridge [still can’t tell if it’s oats or not], cereal, and fruit), but we couldn’t fully enjoy it because we had to eat it in 25 minutes to be ready for work at 8:30am.
When we got to the work-site, we split off into a few teams: painting rusting doors, sifting rocky sand, and carrying buckets (in an efficient conveyor line of people) of the sifted sand to the workers making concrete and smoothing the walls. We thoughtfully swapped out those sifting the sand in the hot sun for those indoors doing the cooler job. It was always an uphill battle for the sifters trying to keep up with the speedy-bucketeers who could carry the sand faster than the sifters could sift it. In general it was a calm morning of work, it wasn’t too hot (probably not too cold though), and it was only somewhat uncomfortable—the water breaks were always well appreciated.
For lunch, it was again scrumptious (and in Tymon’s opinion: even more scrumptious), it consisted of the same bread, cheese and ham as breakfast but turned into grilled cheese, as well as a very delicious soup (the team was split on who hated it and who loved it, Luka loved it, Noah would disagree), and the other usual items.
Just as we stepped out of the cool bus, we were smacked in the face by the deadly wall of afternoon heat, but as always we were eager to serve in the compound in Villa-Altagracia. Some of us sifted again, but the majority were tasked with moving mounds of very rocky dirt (like 99% fist-sized rocks, 1% dirt) into the foundation of a new housing building. During the holy labor, we were all sweating profusely, but the occasional gusts were pleasant, and the water breaks were blessed. Near the end of our time working it began to rain sparsely, but in bigger than average droplets (it almost felt like hail), and we were enjoying it until it began to rain even harder so we became even more overjoyed to be cooled down. Speaking on behalf of the team, we never would’ve stopped shoveling the rocks in the rain, but Felix from the lighthouse staff made us seek shelter in the vocational school a few steps away. After the rain cleared, we went back to work for a short time before someone from the lighthouse staff said that we had to leave in 2 minutes, so, of course, approximately 10 minutes later we left the worksite to gather our stuff to board the bus back to Los-Alcarizos.
The supper that followed was thoroughly enjoyed. It was some very seasoned chicken (which everyone devoured), along with some rice and corn, an egg-potato-corn salad (another team-splitting dish), and some fried sweet potatoes. Then when all of us thought it was over, it was announced to us that there was ice-cream, and so the team quickly flocked to the desert table like sheep to the holy shepherd, and though some were disappointed to discover it was Neapolitan. We all enjoyed the sweet sensation, enhanced by the crunchy Oreos.
We finished off this wonderfully blessed day with hours of swimming, volleyball, and closed with our nightly devos, which were masterfully led by Gabe, talking about our vision of God’s plan for our lives, and we split off in groups of three to pray, spirit-led, for as long as He willed, for each other’s visions and other prayer requests.
This is Noah and Luka, signing off. ✌️
