Day 2- Painting

Today we were woken up, quite rudely, by a rooster and the blaring horn of a truck. We feasted on scrumptious pancakes and sausages for breakfast and then made our way to Renacer School.

We started the day off sanding and scraping the concrete walls of four classrooms. Dust rained down and got into our eyeballs. Speaking of dustiness in our eyeballs… Dustin was caught in the eyeballs of some of the Renacer girls, ranging from age 8-16. He was hard at work painting, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around and saw an interested girl who asked for his name. He told her, and a minute later, all we could hear was “Dustin! We love you, Dustin!” from a group of 15 girls, blowing kisses to him. Dustin wasn’t the only one getting admiring looks. Braelyn also got a couple of kisses blown at her, but we were told to always stick together so we wouldn’t get married off. Of course, I’m sure some of you wouldn’t mind a son or daughter in law as a souvenir ;)

Around 11:30, we were offered cookies and orange juice. Most of us were unsure if this was lunch or not so we ate about 10 each, only to find out lunch was an hour later. During lunch, Serena, Anna, Josh and Dustin took on a few of the kids in a basketball game, which was entertaining to all.

In the afternoon, we began painting the downstairs classrooms, which is what we plan to continue next week. This caused quite a rift between Josh and Taylor, and Mrs. Scott almost had to stop them from their epic paint war. It got so intense, the paint leaked through Josh’s shirt.

The day wasn’t all play. We did get a lot of work accomplished, by priming four rooms and painting two. James was especially hard-working, as he was complimented every two minutes by a local pastor who was helping out.

We drove home, hot and sweaty, and pretty much as soon as we got back, we jumped into the pool to cool down. We were planning on taking showers afterwards, but, as Taylor said, there is more water coming out of one hole in her shower-head at home than in the showers here. Some of us had to use water-bottles to rinse the shampoo out of our hair, and some of us are still hot and sweaty.

During dinner, we had the opportunity to meet the local pastor who works for COCREF, Mario. He made a wonderful speech and talked to us about the history of the Dominican, and the gospel of presence. We then enjoyed a quiet evening of devotions, games and WIFI.

Unfortunately, we are lacking the technical skill to post pictures. If any of you want to come down and help out, the weather’s really warm!

Please continue to pray for us and other teams, as well as the people of the Dominican Republic. Thanks for all your support. God bless!