Day 4 – Dominican Republic 2013

Blog Post 4 – Written by Noah Lee and Emily Reynolds

This Thanksgiving was a Thanksgiving to remember. The first thing we did at the foundation was play with kids. Kids were playing baseball, doing back flips, and playing horse “caballo” as always. Our whole group did a program for the kids where Noah Que and Emily Hupe shared their testimonies. We also sang three songs to them in Spanish. Today we got out the face paints and painted hearts, baseballs, dinosaurs, and flowers. Face painting became very chaotic when Carlito started to pass out baseball tickets for the kids to eat lunch. At lunch, there was turkey, rice, squash, and more. After, we cleaned up the cage, and played with the kids. Finally we ate and had a little debrief with Mr. Manny Mota. Overall this will be my most memorable Thanksgiving.

This day was very special to me. Many kids asked for more food and water, and Mr. Mota would tell us they are not allowed to have it. This was very hard to obey Mr. Mota, but he knew what was best for them.

Today impacted me because so many kids were so happy with so little. It has also made me realize that everything I want is what I don’t need, and everything the kids wanted was exactly what they needed. I am more grateful for the smaller things, now that I see how much I have and how much I look over them for nothing. This trip has made me grown me and drawn me closer to God.

Anyways Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

– Noah Lee

I am Emily Reynolds and today we fed over 500 children turkey for lunch. At first we were painting faces and playing with the kids, but when we starting giving them food, it started getting very crazy. We would give them a small cup of water, but so many kids were asking for more water and we couldn’t give them any more because we didn’t have enough. After we fed all of the kids we had our own Thanksgiving with all of the workers at the foundation. For most kids at the foundation this is their only meal and it is important to have places like this that kids can go to get food because if most kids didn’t have this foundation, they would starve.

Today while we were feeding the kids lunch, I was filling the water cups and it was really hard because most kids would ask for more water and I would have to tell them that I cant give them anymore because we don’t have enough for everyone. It was really sad to see the looks on their faces when they would ask and I wanted to give them more very badly but I couldn’t. Some kids outside of the fence would hiss at us for our attention and say “AMERICANA, AMERICANA!”. I had to ignore them because we weren’t allowed to give them any water. Once we ran out of water we had to start giving them soda because it is all that we had. They were saving water for us, but I wanted them to give the kids our water because we have waters at the hotel while they don’t have any.

When we were eating lunch, we talked to Manny Mota about our experience. He told us that we have so much and they have nothing so we need to be grateful. Manny also said that we need to share this experience with our friends in hopes that they will come and help out with the kids who don’t have much. This made me realize that we have so much and we complain about the things that we don’t have while the kids at the foundation don’t complain. We need to be grateful for what we have and we aren’t always going to get what we want so we shouldn’t complain for the things we don’t have and be grateful for the things we do have.

-Emily Reynolds