Dominican Republic 2026 Day Nine

Howdy Dowdy parents and other adults. It is the bestest of all the restest (aka the goats Chloe, Liam and Aiden). Today we started off with some of us insane ones waking up for the sunrise at 6:00am. Then all the rest of the sleepy heads were up by 7 for the morning devotions. Today at morning devotions we talked about doing a “360” moment which is where you look around at your surroundings and think about your five senses and wrapped it up with journaling. After that we went flying downstairs (Chloe literally flew down the stairs) to have one of the best meals of the trip; the fried eggs, fresh fruit and other things that we can’t remember and they were sooooo good.

Then we hip hopped on the bus to go to work. We got there and got straight to the dirty work. Then some of the A team went to get bricks to finish the wall. Then we put some bricks and some bricks and some more bricks down and to top it all off we laid just a couple more bricks. There was also a group of us shoveling rocks and hucking them into the foundation of a new guest house. I have to say it is the most unrelaxing job we do here, but also so much fun. There were super stinky cows everywhere and pigs with baby pigs oinking and kids were hitting absolute bombs in baseball just next to where we worked.  We did that for the rest of the morning. For lunch we had some Oreos, ham and cheese sandwiches, and pb and jammies, and all had our fair amount of coke.

After the most deliciousously good lunch of all we went back to working like a dog. Some of us switched jobs but we all found the jobs that we liked the most. It was a hot, humid day however a lot of us came out with great looking tans. It felt like the day was dragging on foreverrrrr. We were also given false hope that we were leaving at 2…then 2:30…then 3… then finally we stopped working at 3:30pm and got on the bus.  

When we got back to the compound some of us started packing, some showered, some napped, and some sprinted to the pool. Then before we knew it, it was dinner time. For dinner we had garlic rolls and some other food like rice, beans, beef and veggies. When we were full, we cleaned up our plates and then some of us headed out to play some baseball. That was short lived and ended up with Chloe, Aiden, Ben, Lucy and Liam doing some pitching and batting practice. After that we got into small groups and shared our testimonies to share how God has worked through our lives. The purpose of this was for us to learn how to share our testimony as a way of sharing the gospel. Finally, we ended the day off with swimming until the lightning kicked us all out.

Toodles to my homies and others, signing off,

Aiden, Chloe, and Liam