Week “zero” in Dominican Republic is now complete. We’ve coined our first week that because of how atypical the first few days were. We had to immediately get used to a purely Spanish-speaking culture, our surrounding geography, the use of pesos and even the fact that we could not drink the tap water.

Our team has had many cross-cultural experiences already. One student named Danny (from Virginia Tech) ordered an a local treat called an empanada for the first time. He asked for it to be stuffed with “pollo” but instead got ham and cheese! ha!

Jenn and I also felt Dominican culture first-hand when on the metro train, the security guard demanded that people give up their seats for us, since we each had one of our sons. While riding the train, a pregnant woman came on and demanded a seat herself, only to see three people get up right away! DR loves to treat parents with kids well!

It’s been an adjustment, but thankfully we know Spanish and come from Spanish-speaking communities, and we love Dominican food. Our students and staff from non-Spanish speaking communities are doing extremely well! Praise JESUS no one has experienced culture shock of any major kind.

Spiritually, we’ve already seen the openness of students on campus. We were able to prayer-walk three different universities in Santo Domingo. On one, a student proactively asked us what we were doing and then began asking what we believe! His name was “Julio-cesar.” We got to share briefly with him until he had to run back to work. Pray we or one of our VIDA (“Cru” in DR) students is able to follow up with him!

This week commences our first full-time week on the campus of “UASD,” University of Santo Domingo, the oldest university in the Americas!

Please pray for us, as we have lots lined up:

• Daily evangelism on campus.
• Men’s and women’s outreaches
• 3 VIDA (Cru) weekly meetings, where I get to bring the word on Tuesday
• Project prayer times, devos and Bible studies

See our full schedule HERE. Please pray!