Day 2 - Bonao

Thursday, June 5, 2008
A day in the Dominican Republic – awesome. A day in the Dominican Republic with friends – priceless! The day started out by visiting Pastor Elvis and seeing the work that was needed in his backyard. We are actually adding a room on to the back of his house that is about the size of the Yellow Room at church. The clean up and preparation was completed within a couple of hours by a local group of men out of work. The concrete work will start tomorrow and Pastor Carlos’ brother had all the equipment and skill that we needed to start the project.

The rest of the day was spent in Santa Domingo trying to recover four bags that customs wouldn’t let though as well as filling up 20 bags of groceries for the families in the church. Customs stopped us from bringing into the country four of the bags of clothing and shoes last night. We brought a total of 600 pounds of clothing (not counting Lisa’s suitcase) We were afraid and very frustrated that they would search the luggage and take what they wanted. We prayed.

Yesterday my devotional reading was in Acts 4 when Peter and John were put in prison for one night for teaching. This morning while I was journaling I thought how our luggage had been put in prison over night. When Peter and John woke up the next morning in prison, Peter preached one of his best sermons and thousands were added to the church. So I thought if God do that with two men why not use the luggage some way.

This afternoon when we arrived at the airport we went to customs and talked with the head of customs in Santa Domingo. Pastor Carlos told him what we were doing, he asked, “With what church?” Carlos told him the Church of God (Anderson). The customs director was a Christian, knew of the Church of God – gave us his direct number to call him in the future and promised that we will never have a problem with customs again. He blessed us for our work. He apologized for the inconvenience and welcomed us to the island. Praise the Lord! So with the four bags we went to the grocery store – loaded up the cart with twenty of everything (rice, beans, etc…) and returned to begin the sorting. God has been good and we are seeing His hand move already. Tonight we plan on eating at my favorite restaurant. The end of a great day. Writing about the experience – fun. Writing about the experience with you reading it – priceless! Grace and Peace to you.