July 2, 2010.

And here we are, our first full day here in the Domincian Republic. Words can't really descirbe the culture and how things are here. Hopefully pictures can, once we can start taking them. They don't want us using our cameras yet, becuase there are literally hardly ANY americans (or white people here) at all. We are in Santa Domingo, and it is a city where NO tourists come. The city is well large, but very run down and poor. There are certain wealthy places, but overall, there is much poverty here. The first day being here i did not think i wouldmake it with all the heat here. The heat and humidty put together is somehting that i have never experienced in my life, i mean come on, i live in idaho where is snows and we wear sweatshirts all the time :) But its day 2, and the heat is a LITTLE bit better. its still exrtemely difficult to sleep at night, becuase of hot extrnemly hot it is, even at 11pm. Today we had the opportunity to go to a church (well, outside of the church on the street) to go out and help serve lunch to homeless people. this church has a program where they serve lunch to these people every single day for lunch. There were about 40 men, and about 10 children. Almost everyone here speaks spanish. During high school and middle school, i took 4 eyars of spanihs. i learned alot, but never really had anywher to put it in practice. It has been over a year and a half since i have spoken in spanish, so most of it has left my memory. Today i wanted to see how much ir eally remember and began a converation with a man in his 30's, just talking about anything and everything i could rememember to say. At first, it was very difficult to communicate to him, becuse words and phrases were still coming back to me, but after being with him for 45 minutes, he said to me "your spanihs is perfect) haha but i think he meant it as me being white, and how much I knew. God is blessing me so much with bringing back all of my spansih that i have learned in my past, and using it as a tool to be able to communicate to these people. Seriosuly, the poeple here are soo beautufl. Some of the poeple have a deep olive color to their skin, where others are very very black. But overall, the poeple are just overall in general, very good looking people. We are going to be going out and doing ministry i think everyday that we are here. We leave July 8th to head to Haiti (a ten hour drive) and we will be there 6 weeks then after that we will be coming back ehre to Santa Domingo at teh YWAM base where we are staying to help serve once more. I hope to be able to take pictures soon, to be able to share with all of you. It is killing me not to be able to have my camera, but I know it;s ok and we will haev them soon :-) I will post more blogs as time goes on. God is so good :)