Today was a full day, and the Webbs were incredibly helpful in prepping us for it. We began at the Public Children’s Hospital, which they told us would break our hearts, and they were right. Jody was a little boy Chris and Sophia met at the Children’s Hospital. He was an adorable one-year-old. They gave him a coin purse with a mono (Spanish for monkey) on it...and Jody fell in love with his American visitors. They played peek-a-boo, pass the mono, and prayed for him and his mom. I didn’t get to see it (I was watching Trent), but the whole team talked about how precious it was that Jody really didn’t want them to leave! Sarah was another little girl that had an impact. She was a two-month old abandoned Haitian baby with HIV. It was heartbreaking to see. We got to tour almost the entire hospital from the cancer center to the burn ward, and though John was with us, he certainly wasn’t able to translate for all of us, and so we prayed with each child and family that we could. As we talked about the experience tonight, Pastor Chris reflected about how Jesus loves the little children…more than we ever could and even more than we can know. That is an incredible comfort when we see an overwhelming amount of pain and suffering, and suddenly prayer isn’t “the only thing we can do,” it’s the best thing we can do. 

The other thing the Webbs told us was that tonight would be one of the highlights of our trip…and I can honestly say that "they told us so!"  Our group split up and each joined one of four church families for dinner in their homes. There was a lot of amazingly delicious, authentic Dominican food. We all experienced the amazing Dominican hospitality again and learned a lot about their culture. We also learned a lot about what it’s like to be a foreigner. For some of us, there was a lot of Spanglish. For some, an opportunity to witness to unbelieving family members. One thing’s for sure, we all had an incredible time of fellowship. 

It was a full day! Pray for endurance for us, pray for the families going on the retreat, and pray for us tomorrow as we finish up the last details of putting everything together to head to Jarabacoa for the retreat! The church families are excited and so are we!