MAIL ...How I love to receive mail. To open the mailbox that is attached to your home or take a stroll down the street to the super box in your neighbourhood and see what has been delivered. Handwritten notes of encouragement or a birthday card are slowly becoming dinosaurs in our electronic age but the bills always seem to find their way into my box. Since neither of those options are available here, yesterday, Ermis and Jane took a road trip to Santo Domingo to meet the plane from Agape Flights (a missionary mail service). A few times each year we are required to make the 4.5 hour journey to the capital city to pick up the mail for all the Santiago members as part of our co-op duties. Let me say this…it was truly a Dominican adventure.
Bright- eyed and bushy tailed we arrange to leave at 7:30 am, and after checking all the fluids in the truck & stopping at a nearby gas station to fill up we realized that we had forgotten to take the map along. A quick return trip home and we were off again. Across the mountain range on the “tourist” highway we swerved from one pothole to the next never exceeding more than 25 km per hour. A blind man and a crazy, drunk man (at 9 a.m.?)tried to flag us down but we were not to be deterred… we pressed onward even though the 40 km seems to take forever.
We arrived at the mail center in Santiago 1.5 hours later to pick up the outgoing mail and carried on our day. In true Dutch fashion…nothing is ever accomplished as just one errand. A trip to the big city usually includes SHOPPING… even if it is just to a large hardware store to check out prices on doors, lights and other exciting things such as generators. We couldn’t find the plastic cafeteria tables we sought either so our next choice to go was “Price Smart” {Costco). Although my membership card had expired because the last time I was in the big city was more than 1 year ago...looking was free.
Times flies when you are having fun and before we knew it, it was time to carry on to the next leg of our journey. Beautiful sunshine and clear skies made the trip go so much faster, even if the directions we received were a little wonky. In the end we arrived at the Santo Domingo airport right on Dominican time.
As we waited for the plane to arrive and clear customs, we spent some memorable moments getting to know the other missionaries from the Santo Domingo area. God blessed each one of us as we enjoyed a few laughs while listening to stories of other ministry work and prayed for safety for us all. Unfortunately, robberies and the horrors of driving were all too common happenings as we were soon to discover.
The rain began to fall as we loaded 567 lbs of parcels and letters on the back of the truck and securely tucked them under a tarp. We successfully purchased the 12 cafeteria tables at Price Smart in Santo Domingo which when secured on top of the parcels kept the mail dry. Our next hurdle was dealing with rush hour traffic (in a city of 2.5 million people) and a massive traffic jam caused by a taxi cab that was fully engulfed in flames. Thankfully, all the passengers had escaped the car without injury along with many bystanders and stood watching the fire consume the car.
Oh, no…we accidentally missed the turnoff to the highway and had to find a place to turn around. There we sat, trying to crawl forward a few inches at a time with 4 lanes of traffic attempting to squeeze into 2, each vehicle edging into the slimmest of openings while darkness is fast approaching. Anyone who has ever been caught in this situation knows how stressful this can be. The bombero forced its way through the opposing traffic (with 3 smart taxi drivers directly on his tail), extinguished the car fire and promptly left. Finally, we were moving again. Happy trails or so we thought. We encountered several near misses as drivers would approach to pass between our truck and the vehicle in the next lane, only to actually get side swiped by a taxi as we entered the city of Santiago. Fact: 99% of the local drivers do NOT have any form of driver training/defensive driving skills or even have a driver’s license. The consequences of their actions do not seem to faze them at all and as we have been told many times before…no matter what causes the accident…it is always our fault…because we are white and have money to pay the damages. Defensive driving takes on an entirely new meaning in this light. Watching out for motorcycles with no lights at all and being blinded by the favoured high beams of the oncoming traffic our anxiety mounted.
After returning to the mail center in Santiago & unloading the cargo, glad that the rain had stopped, we finally were on our way home carrying the remaining mail for the North Coast members. At 11:30 pm we arrived home exhausted but safe. Thank you Lord for watching over our travels. I was glad to see there was one piece of mail for me…a Better Homes and Garden magazine which I will enjoy reading as I reflect back on our trip of the day, its perils and the joys of meeting fellow missionaries serving our Lord and Saviour. 
Thank you Ermis for being my most capable chauffeur and man of God… who was asked today by a fellow missionary if I was his mom. I would be honoured to call you “son”.
Bright- eyed and bushy tailed we arrange to leave at 7:30 am, and after checking all the fluids in the truck & stopping at a nearby gas station to fill up we realized that we had forgotten to take the map along. A quick return trip home and we were off again. Across the mountain range on the “tourist” highway we swerved from one pothole to the next never exceeding more than 25 km per hour. A blind man and a crazy, drunk man (at 9 a.m.?)tried to flag us down but we were not to be deterred… we pressed onward even though the 40 km seems to take forever.We arrived at the mail center in Santiago 1.5 hours later to pick up the outgoing mail and carried on our day. In true Dutch fashion…nothing is ever accomplished as just one errand. A trip to the big city usually includes SHOPPING… even if it is just to a large hardware store to check out prices on doors, lights and other exciting things such as generators. We couldn’t find the plastic cafeteria tables we sought either so our next choice to go was “Price Smart” {Costco). Although my membership card had expired because the last time I was in the big city was more than 1 year ago...looking was free.
Times flies when you are having fun and before we knew it, it was time to carry on to the next leg of our journey. Beautiful sunshine and clear skies made the trip go so much faster, even if the directions we received were a little wonky. In the end we arrived at the Santo Domingo airport right on Dominican time.
As we waited for the plane to arrive and clear customs, we spent some memorable moments getting to know the other missionaries from the Santo Domingo area. God blessed each one of us as we enjoyed a few laughs while listening to stories of other ministry work and prayed for safety for us all. Unfortunately, robberies and the horrors of driving were all too common happenings as we were soon to discover.
The rain began to fall as we loaded 567 lbs of parcels and letters on the back of the truck and securely tucked them under a tarp. We successfully purchased the 12 cafeteria tables at Price Smart in Santo Domingo which when secured on top of the parcels kept the mail dry. Our next hurdle was dealing with rush hour traffic (in a city of 2.5 million people) and a massive traffic jam caused by a taxi cab that was fully engulfed in flames. Thankfully, all the passengers had escaped the car without injury along with many bystanders and stood watching the fire consume the car.
Oh, no…we accidentally missed the turnoff to the highway and had to find a place to turn around. There we sat, trying to crawl forward a few inches at a time with 4 lanes of traffic attempting to squeeze into 2, each vehicle edging into the slimmest of openings while darkness is fast approaching. Anyone who has ever been caught in this situation knows how stressful this can be. The bombero forced its way through the opposing traffic (with 3 smart taxi drivers directly on his tail), extinguished the car fire and promptly left. Finally, we were moving again. Happy trails or so we thought. We encountered several near misses as drivers would approach to pass between our truck and the vehicle in the next lane, only to actually get side swiped by a taxi as we entered the city of Santiago. Fact: 99% of the local drivers do NOT have any form of driver training/defensive driving skills or even have a driver’s license. The consequences of their actions do not seem to faze them at all and as we have been told many times before…no matter what causes the accident…it is always our fault…because we are white and have money to pay the damages. Defensive driving takes on an entirely new meaning in this light. Watching out for motorcycles with no lights at all and being blinded by the favoured high beams of the oncoming traffic our anxiety mounted. After returning to the mail center in Santiago & unloading the cargo, glad that the rain had stopped, we finally were on our way home carrying the remaining mail for the North Coast members. At 11:30 pm we arrived home exhausted but safe. Thank you Lord for watching over our travels. I was glad to see there was one piece of mail for me…a Better Homes and Garden magazine which I will enjoy reading as I reflect back on our trip of the day, its perils and the joys of meeting fellow missionaries serving our Lord and Saviour. Thank you Ermis for being my most capable chauffeur and man of God… who was asked today by a fellow missionary if I was his mom. I would be honoured to call you “son”. 
God was with them throughout their trials and difficulties of even getting to Port-au-Prince but the team was eager to serve and did whatever was necessary to make a difference in the lives of many Haitan children. They were involved in door to door ministry in the tent city and working through the church to feed many hungry children.
We received this note of encouragement and thanks from them.
The team would also like to thank-you for giving them the ability to feed 250 children on a daily basis. The parents of these youth cannot believe the transformation in them
This was truly a miracle to happen so quickly as the mounds of red tape usually delay a containers release by weeks and sometimes even months. A short box approximately 20’ long was packed so tightly not even a mouse could have found a place to rest in there. Loaded with tables, chairs, file cabinets and school supplies. 
John and his right hand man Ermis assist with unloading
4 hospital beds, IV poles & a very heavy dental chair for the clinics, items needed to set up the beauty trade school, tools for the wood working shop and lots of brand new toys including boxes and boxes of small Lego kits too numerous to count which will make many children happy this Christmas.
All the purple boxes are lego kits...can you believe it? In front of them are hundreds of cases of "Nourish" donated by Campbells Soup which provide a person complete nutrition for an entire day.Thank you so very much to all the donors, and especially to Cam Rothwell for co-coordinating the loading and shipping of the containers from Rotary which has furnished most of the schools, clinics and trade schools set up needs.
