Before I get into the trip- which I might add was beyond words amazing- I want to share how God showed Himself to me prior to the trip.
As some of you may have known, my grandmother has been very sick and a few weeks ago, her hospice nurses didn't believe she would be with us much longer. They said maybe a week or two at most. Wanting to make sure I was able to spend some more time with her prior to her Homegoing, she was Heaven bound, I went to see her on Wednesday the 22nd of June. That Saturday was my cousins wedding, and most of my family was praying that she wouldn't pass prior to the wedding. Myself on the other hand, in selfishness and knowing that my trip was soon approaching, was praying that she would go sooner so that I would be her in the States with my family when it happened. My cousins wedding was beautiful on Saturday the 25th and my grandmother passed on Sunday the 26th. The arrangements were made and the wake would be Thursday the 31st and the funeral and burial was to be on Friday the 1st, the day I was supposed to leave. I was saddened, thinking that I wasn't going to make the funeral, knowing that I had to be at the church in Wallingford at 1pm on Friday. I was making plans to get a ride to the church on Tuesday when I was reminded that we, the mission team, was flying out of Newark, NJ airport and that the cemetary was only like 20 minutes from Newark airport. To make the long story short, I was able to go to my grandmothers funeral and burial, and then met the team at the airport. Even in my selfishness, God proved His timing to be impeccable. I was very greatful to Him.
I can't say it was easy to go from the funeral to the airport, and to preparing my heart and mind to one ready for service, but God again was faithful and provided the necessary comfort needed during that time.
I arrived at the airport at 4pm, the time the team was supposed to arrived. However, they got stuck in 4th of July weekend traffic and didn't arrived until 5:30pm. While I waited, Kezia insisted on taking pictures of me, excited for my adventure.
So when the team arrived, it was just mass craziness, trying to get 82 late passengers to check two bags each and get through security for a 7:05pm flight. To say the least, that didn't happen. One of the airline workers delayed the flight till 7:30pm so we could all make it. Once we were all at the gate and boarded, we sat on the plane for about two hours because of mechanical difficulties with the plane, which resulted in us switching planes and eventually not leaving until 10:30pm. We arrived in SantoDomingo at 2:55 on Saturday morning and then after going through immigration and baggage claim, we boarded buses for a 2 hour drive to LaRomana. We arrived as the sun was coming up at about 5:58 am, only to sleep for an hour and then wake up for our first work day at 7:30am. I maybe got a total of 4 hours of sleep. I slept about two hours on the plane and then on the whole bus ride to La Romana. I was very thankful that I was able to sleep some. I also got about one hour of sleep when we did arrive.
That was our crazy travel day.
We were all exhausted, but God gave us each the strength and endurance to make it through. A quote from my journal "'His strength is perfect when our strength is gone.' I know the Lord will take us through this day. We don't know why things went this way, but our God, who is always in control, does." I was very thankful we arrived safely.
You can check out our website of the trip at http://drmissionteam.org/DR2011/DR_2011/Home.html
There is the schedule of the week, a photo journal and blog of other members of the team.
Enjoy!
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