Dominican Republic: Day 3

Waiting with great anticipation!

Hey everyone, it's Sarah McGettrick! For those of you who don't know me, I'm thirteen years old and am Ms. Peffer's student. I am here by myself (my family is not here).
I am here in the DR and love it! The weather is wonderful! It is so beautiful! There are mosquitoes here, I have about five bites. The mission house is really nice (the bathrooms could be better though...) The food here is very good. I am having so much fun!

It's me working hard and passing out love!

Today we had our first distributions. There were two today. The first one was a out of the city. It was inside this tiny, tiny little church building. There were about 125 kids in there. They were sharing chairs, little ones sitting on laps, and some kids had to stand. When we walked in, they were all clapping very loudly. We sang some songs with them and I think they really enjoyed our songs... I hope. We did have to sing This Little Light of Mine in English because we couldn't think of any other songs to sing. They just looked at us funny and smiled. When we were done, we passed out the shoe boxes. When we were almost done passing them out, we realized that we had maybe about five older boys that needed boxes still, but we had no more boxes for boys! So we ripped the labels off and looked inside them to make sure they weren't too girly. I felt so bad! When they opened the shoe boxes, it was amazing! The children were so happy with the toys, clothes, and school supplies they got in their box. They were smiles everywhere and I can't even explain what it was really like! When we were all done, we went outside and were passing out stickers and putting them on the kid's heads and hands. It was so much fun. When we were leaving the site, we saw a lot of them walking home holding their shoe boxes and you could just tell that they were so excited to share what they got with their parents.

Leading songs! Let's hope they understand the explanation of
 of I have the Joy, Joy, Joy in my heart!

On the way back, we saw the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Academy. We had seen it on the way there but hadn't realized soon enough what it was so Ms. Peffer and Mrs. King (who both "like" the Pirates) could take pictures. So we stopped in the entrance gateway and we all thought that we were just going to get the pictures and then leave. John, our driver pulled in and talked to the guard, we ended up getting in to the facility. We got a tour, got to walk on the fields, sit in the dugout, go to the locker rooms and everything. It was so cool!

Crossing a flooded road to get to the church in the
2nd village!

On the second distribution, (after a delicious lunch) was further away. We had to drive through Santo Domingo to get there. But on the way there, we got separated from the truck that had our shoe box cartons on it. So we pulled over onto the side of the road and had to wait for about 45 minutes until we finally found the truck again. Then we pulled into the site and it was outside.The kids were sooooo excited to see us pull in! They were waiting an extra hour for us to get there. They were waving and couldn't stay seated. It was beneath a giant tarp tied between two buildings. We sang again, and everything went well. The kid's reactions were still incredible and the whole day was busy and great.

It's ME!

What's inside???

Pray for Natalya who is feeling sick and keep praying for safety for everyone and the children that receive the shoe boxes and their families. I miss the States very much but love it here too. Good night everyone! Have a great week and I will too.
Love, Sarah McGettrick