Day 4

Today we spent most of our day, in our adopted village, Algodon. In the early part of the day, we continued our ditch digging project in front of the school and church. Others of us began our ProVector flower project. We walked around the village and gave out plastic flowers that hold mosquito bate in them. The idea of these flowers is that they kill down the mosquito population and there for less bugs in the bateys. Because we had more people than tools, another team walked around the community and picked up trash that quite often builds up on the side of the roads. We then buried it into the earth. Another bug focus of our day was finding our adopted children. All of our team members were able to track down their child(ren)! We were so excited to finally be able to make face to face connections, tour their homes and meet their families. 

In the second part of our day in the village, we continued work on our drainage project. It was quite an event pouring, mixing and smoothing the concrete we made (by hand) to create a walkway through the drain. This effort was a little different from how it has been the last few days.Tons of nationals came out of their homes to help us. They at first seemed curious to see what we were doing. Then, soon after they grabbed a tool and joined in on the fun.

Our hearts are definetely being softened. We have seen absolute poverty in this village. Algodon is the poorest batey that the Dominican Republic has. These kids barely have clothing, and their parents can't give them enough to eat. We are very aware of how blessed we are for the things we have and even where we live.