Rick is currently in Nagua, Dominican Republic to fill in for a couple who had to come back to Canada for personal reasons.   He returns to Canada on March 23rd. It was a rapid deployment with only a couple of weeks notice, and so he had to coordinate the trip with a couple of other projects he is working on.  Travelling to this part of the world from Regina is a long and at times, ardous process.  First to Edmonton and then long layovers there and in Toronto as many tourists joined the flights on their way to the sun and sand. It took almost twenty four hours from the time he got dropped of at the airport to arrive in Nagua.  It is official, sleeping on planes in not really something possible for Rick. thankfully the trip home is more direct and only takes about 8 hours.  I will switch over to first person now!

Ryan picked me up in Puerto Plata and the drive to Nagua was very pleasant along the north coast.  a short stop for a bowl of delicious Dominican fare and a coffee was priority one.  Ryan and Heather and their two young children live in Nagua and work with the couple who are back in Canada.  Ryan has been doing double duty with half of the team gone and there have been a series of fill in help from other parts of the region over the last month, bringing some welcome relief.  The drive gave Ryan the opportunity to fill me in on the many facets of the ministry they are involved in and it was an exhaustive list.  I am looking forward to seeing how things operate and jump in where I can.

My first day was spent in the office as that was a teaching and admin day for Ryan and provided opportunity for some orientation in some of the plans over the next week or so.   We sat down with Beandy, the admin assistant  and charted out plans and created an outline for a team coming from Canada on March 12 for a week.  It was remarkable how much of the whiteboard exercise I could follow, but don't ask me to repeat it back.  I took a picture of it to help me remember the discussion.

        The first one is chicken, not sure what for, and #4 is when the Canada team comes...I got it!

One priority is getting started on a passion fruit plantation and the team is just in the first stages of it. My plan for March 1 is to read and digest the passion fruit farming course that Ryan has found to get a bit of background on it.  There is a passion fruit farmer here who is an ag consultant and he is the technical expert advising them on this project.  Later this week we head out to the land to see what is next and ready to prepare the land for the seedlings.  The team is expecting this to be a cash crop that will bring in regular income to support the ministry projects.  I will get into more detail on the work they are doing here in subsequent blogs.  

Dominican version of vehicle rodeo

An unexpected bonus was that there is a lady that comes to the house I stay at to clean and if I want, cook some suppers for me.  So I am spoiled here.  We are communicating okay and she is planning to make mashed potatoes, carrots, fried chicken and cabbage salad tomorrow. Luisa stocked up on groceries today so by the looks of it I will not starve.

As it was the day after a long weekend there was a run on the bank and so the parking lot at the office looked a little congested throughout the day as the cars did a slow dance in a limited space.  I remarked to Ryan that there would be crashes and fist fights back in Canada and our pick up trucks would not even be able to turn around in that tiny parking lot.  I kept an eye on the ATM line and when the crowd dwindled I was able to walk over to get some pesos.

More to come...

Rick