Dominican Republic, first week update

Hello from the Dominican Republic, it's actually been over a week since we've been here but nevertheless, Dick and I arrived here safely on saturday the 22. I spent the night in the Miami airport with a 15 hour lay over but I found a pretty comfortable place to get some z's. Dick and I met up in the Santiago airport and Scott (the missionaries' son) and Vaden (whose house I'm staying in with his wife) came to pick us up and drive us up to Sosua where we are staying and working.

We chose Servant's Heart Ministries (SHM) because it gave us the liberty to create our own projects while also participating in the work in which they are already involved. They work in construction, medical missions and local ministries so they do various construction projects (such as medical clinics), have developed these clinics and host medical mission teams and do local ministries in churches and vacation bible schools. For me and Dick, this was a pretty good fit for the variety of things that we are interested in.

The first couple days that we were here we were taught how to get around in public transportation and we met several of the people that we would be working with. Three days we have painted a missionary house in Nazaret that SHM has constructed and will be using to house missionaries as they come and work with four girls from New Finland who picked out some super bright colors for the two bedrooms in the house. Nazaret is a really beautiful town in a lush hilly part where the missionaries have done a lot of work not far from the caost.
We've met up with a lot of people from a church in Cangrejo where we've begun an evangelical mime skit that Dick has done in his church. We are goin to have a special night with music and food, a small sermon or 'talk' and the skit to invite more youth to the church which doesn't have much of a youth base. We met a middle-age couple the other day who does the kids program at the church on sunday mornings. The couple really liked the ideas that Dick mentioined so we will be meeting up with them to help them get their creatives juices going about ministries they can start in their church. I've begun talking with women in various parts near Sosua about starting girls groups to talk about abuse or prostitution and about feeling their value as children of God. I have been looking for women who would be willing to continue this ministry long after I've left.
There is a street here in Sosua which as one of the higest concentrations of prostitution in the country, the missionaries' son went on to say that it's arguably one of the highest concentrations of prostitution in the hemiphere. When we go out at night it is so sad to see these girls, 13, 14 years old with old white men who are here for vacation. Most of the tourism in this area nowadays is prostitution-based tourism and it's absolutely disgusting. The young girls clearly are bored with these old dirty men but they keep doing it to help their families. Of oucrse some of them do it because it's lucrative but some are there because they need to support their families or because they have been abused at home and feel numb to it. One of the girls I lvie with was at a cafe the other day and there was an old man who was talking to a young girl and her losing her virginity the night before. He didn't think that the girl I live with could understand because she's really dark skinned (but speaks perfect english and could obviously understand what the man was saying to the young girl). After listen to this guy for a while, she was so sickened by him that she literally went to the bathroom and threw up. at the nd of the conversation between the man and the girl, he asked her if there was anything else she wanted and she asked for a can of pringles, which is not even much money but it's way out of her price range. It's just so sad to see it happen, i want to yell at these men who take advantage of girl in these situations. I can understand why a girl would become a prostitute (don't interpret taht as having ever considered being one myself) but I cannot understand even for a minute a man taking advantage of a girl in that way, especially when they are 60 years old men with a 13 year old girl, and it's really really common here.
Another thing thats common are girl who have boyfriends at 12 or 13 years old and have a child with him. A fair number of girls are wed before they are 20. We met a woman the other day, a very successful accomplished woman who married at 14 and was having children shortly thereafter. Her brother is already a grandpa, several times. It's jut the way things go around here. They don't necessarily consider it strange to be raising a kid while they are still kids themselves. Girls here, especialy, grow up really fast, they are in charge of their younger siblings, life is hard and they just grow up.
Things between Dick and I have been overall good, it's been hard adjusting to a new place, a new lifestyle and just being together in person is different than our relationship set up for the past year, so there's a lot of adjusting to do. We've been able to talk about a lot of things concerning missions and what we like and do not like about certain styles of mission work. We've been able to really talk about a lot of things about our relationship and where we think it's heading and in that way it's been amazing to be together, even if we don't always agree on everything. Donna, the woman I have been talking to in the months leading up to the trip, hasn't been here in these first two weeks which has made it significantly more difficult for us since she is the heart of the organization. She would've known who to set us up with and would've helped us a little bit with thep acing of starting our ministries. But it's ok, she'll be back to tomorrow though, and we are really excited to meet her. I'll post some pictures later, there are some on facebook right now too.