Making a Joyful Noise

 Monday of our 2011 trip was a bit slow... the country had a general strike and we were stuck in the hotel for the most part!



Phil has been helping Lazaro with his website so he got some work done. We combined the Vacation Bible School supplies and started decorating the goodie bags. We spied on a dominoes game happening on the roof below us. It sure felt like a slow start!






Tuesday, though, we hit the ground running.

The rooftop domino game.

Father Hipólito has decided to keep the feeding program open for the children. They were finishing breakfast of chocolate milk and bread when we arrived at Cristo Salvador. What cuties! They were wearing blue polo shirts with a church crest on them. Like all of us, some are morning people and some are not. There were happy smiles and blank stares as we said hello to the kids; but saying hello to the adults was full of nothing but smiles and hugs!


Walking across the street to the children's shelter, we decided what room to decorate with a mural, we reviewed what else might need to be painted in the children's center and we had a fabulous lunch before getting to our afternoon work - VBS!

Josie with one of the kids.

Poly, our rock star guitar-playing priest, will not be with us until Thursday so Martha was song leader of the day. She had the unexpected help of GLENNYS and that made all the difference! A couple rounds of familiar songs had the room ringing with the joyful noise familiar to DR mission veterans.

Pablo is surprised to run into Fr. Jim

With a theme of angels as messengers among us, the first story was of the unusual visitors to Abraham and Sarah who announced the pregnancy of Sarah. We passed out crayons and paper plate angels. The kids set to work and soon we had angels with pipe cleaner halos all over the room!

Just an angel or two!