Callejon Mini-Outreach

We finally were able to go out and work in the community! We finished two skits and a choreography (which I hope to get online), filled up lots of normal and water balloons, and then took the truck and the van to Callejon, a community about halfway between the base and Jarabacoa. We walked around the community, talking to people and inviting them to the activities that we were organizing in the open dirt yard in the middle of the community. We played with kids, got soaking wet from the balloons, and performed the skits and dance. The kids were so excited! I know it wasn’t the first group that had come to them, YWAM and groups that work with them often do projects at Callejon. Some of the smaller girls just clung to Kristen and I; one little girl actually started crying when we had to leave. We had only been there for about 2 hours, and the kids were attached. They are barefoot, some are almost naked, and starved for outside attention. They grow up in this small community with people collecting trash to sell, toilet water running in streams from some of the houses, and dirt floors full of bacteria. I feel frustrated when I leave places like that because even though we bring the message of God’s love, we don’t really fulfill the other needs of the people there.

In addition to the dramas and dances we performed at Callejon, we are in the process of creating a new still picture drama as well as two normal ones (normal meaning fluid motions). Also, 5 of us will have a crash course tomorrow on a dance we are going to teach the rest of the group. The choreographer could only be here for one day, so we will take 5.5 hours out of tomorrow just so the 5 of us can learn that dance. I am going to be exhausted, but I imagine it will be a lot of fun. It reminds me of the E*motion sleepovers when we would stay up late learning a whole dance in one night. Yes, we would purposefully do this – we called it “fun.” Until of course, we were cranky the next morning; that part was always forgotten by the next year, when we did it again. :) It´s nice to have things that remind me of home...