"The Journey" by Emma Decker and Zach Carlson
After 4 solid hours of sleep, we woke up on Wednesday and had a delicious breakfast of eggs, ham, cheese, spicy hot chocolate, and the best pineapple ever. Next, we jumped on the bus and drove to the GO Ministries compound where we went to a bible study with a group of the local boys on the baseball team.
When we entered the study room, we got placed into separate groups and had to act out the scene with Jesus sleeping on the boat during the storm and the disciples panicking. We were amazed to see the amount of energy each group put into their play; and even though we could not understand a lot of their conversations, the boys still wanted to get us involved. After the plays, we got a tour of the campus, which had only recently been built, consisting of the classrooms, baseball fields, soccer fields and basketball courts. After that we went back to pack up our stuff for a night away from home base and had another amazing meal of chicken, rice and beans.
We started on the trek to a little village called Batey Nueve. Along the way we stopped along the side of the road in Bani (which is a town home to over 400 different kinds of mango) to get some mangoes for breakfast.
We observed the beautiful scenery through the Cibao valley and played many different games including umbrella, name games, and green glass doors. We made another stop a little ways down the road at a restaurant called Pollo Ray which had delicious fried chicken, fries and tostones (fried plantains). After about 5 hours we finally arrived at our destination after driving down a dirt road in the middle of a sugar cane field. We unpacked and met with pastor Williams who introduced us to the town, himself and his ministry there.