AZUA

The third and final location on our national outreach was the hot, hot, hot city of Azua. This city though, however, happened to be my favorite place. Oh, but before I tell out about Azua I need to tell out about this really crazy thing that happened. I don't think I mentioned this but, I almost died. Seriously. So here's what happened: I was doing my laundry outside in the sinks behind the building that I sleep in and I was just washing, washing and then I turned and took a step to put the clothes that I had just washed in a bucket and at that very moment CRASH! a palm branch fell right on the spot that I had just moved from. Now this was no small palm branch, not like the kind you see the little kids carry in on Easter Sunday at church, but it was thick. It was taller then me and when we weighed it, it weighed over 25lbs! That's heavier then a bowling ball! Now imagine that falling on your head. All I could do was laugh, I was a bit stunned. I went and told Sandra and after going over and looking at it a picking it up was just like "oh my gosh, Lauren!" It was pretty crazy. Anyway, so that was that, back to Azua. While in Azua we stayed at the house of the pastor of the church we would be working with and his pregnant wife. She was six months pregnant and while we were there her water actually broke so her, her husband, and Terry (one of a leaders) ended up having to talk her to the capital. So we were on our own for about half the time there. The last I heard was that she is doing fine and the baby is still alive and she hasn't giving birth yet. I don't really know what is all going on exactly but also, suprisingly enough she hopped on a plan and is now in Brazil with her family. If you remeber, she a little Samualito (the baby) could sure use prayer. So that was one thing that made Azua a little interesting. It wasn't an easy place to be. One reason being the heat. It was soo hot and most of the time we didn't have electricity so we couldn't use the fans. We usually had about two programs a day, sometimes three. Usually in the mourning we would go to a school or something like that and then at night we would usually have a street ministry (I liked those the best and you'll hear why) . But in between really, the only thing you could do was just lay there and be hot unless you were lucky enough to escape the hottness by falling asleep for a little bit in which case you would later awake up wet from your own sweat. However, I've had some of the best showers I've ever had in Azua, well they weren't really "showers" exactly, you see the thing was that in this city (and a many parts of the Dominican) there isn't really running water, well kind of. You see, everyone had their regular facets and stuff just like we would for the shower and sinks and everything just here, the city only turns on the water for a certain amount of time once a day. So they have these big pastic garbage can-like containers that they fill up with water and that was your water until the next time that the water came on, it was possible too that they would miss a day of turning on the water, which wasn't very fun. Now this wasn't our drinking water, as I think I mentioned earlier all the water that you drink in the Dominican has to be bought (usually in those culligan jug-looking things) this was was for wash clothes, cooking, dishes, etc. and, the reason I'm telling you all this, showering. So basically was you did was just bucket shower, using the water sparingly of course unless you were lucky enough to being taking a shower when the water was turned on, then you could use as much cold water as you wanted. But even if it was went the water wasn't on, showers were still amazing, because the water was cold you know (I think the only time I've ever REALLY enjoyed a cold shower. It was the one part of the day were you could escape the heat. Well, after telling you all this, you're probably wondering why on earth Azua was my favorite place, remember how I said that? Well, here's why: the people, especially, well mostly, the children. There were so many children there it was great. I think another reason why I liked Azua so much was because it reminded my of Haiti, the children did too, except for here I could actually talk to them a little bit. This town is also kind of used to teams coming in so when the little kids saw us white people there were like "Americana!" It was great. It was the best in front of the church because there would be all these naked little kids just running around and waving at us (I got a video, it's hilarious) they were so cute. The kids in the church were great too, I clicked with them right away. We had so much fun. Here they called me Lorenia because it was easier for there little spanish-speaking months to say. I have a lot of great stories about them. There was one time where we were waiting before church and one little girl just started putting flowers in my hair and then some other ones started doing it too and before you know it, my whole head was covered with flowers. I didn't get a picture when is was completely covered, but the little girl in the pictures here that I do have, her name was Angolina and she was one of my favorites. Also, we would have so much fun dancing during the worship times and the church services I can't even descibe it. It was one of the most wonderful memories I will even have. I guess that's was heaven will probably be like for me (except for the heat, that's was hell's for) Gosh, thought, these children were so great. I really wouldn't mind going back there for longer term. If I was fluent in Spanish, I would maybe have been looking for a home there to live after the DTS was over. Lucky for you all, my spanish is still lacking;) Oh, but this is my favorite memory. It was after one of our street ministry programes and all the kids usually find out where we are at that night so that came come watch and they know that I will play with them afterwards. Well, first I should describe how crazy these kids are, they, like, swarm you. Sometimes we paint our faces so they'll like us to rub our faces on theirs so they can get some paint on their faces too. You're pretty much surrounded by a croud of kids all the time, and we it's time to leave, you have to fight your ways to get through the kids to the van and then even when you're leaving they chase the van and ranbomly stream our names. It's kid of reminds me of a scene for 28 days later or Dawn of the Dead, when all the zombies are chasing the vehicle that all the people are in. First its a whole sworm of them, then slowly they start to get tired and give up until there are no more. But anyway, for my favorite story, so it was after one of the programs and I was (suprise) hanging out with the kids and then this one little girl gave me a little boquet of flowers tied together with a little piece of wire from the street. I just about melted. It was so sweet. But then another little girl saw how I reacted to the first little girl's gift so she brought me some flowers, then another, then another and then before I knew it, all the little boys and girls were giving me floweres (and did I mention that I LOVE the flowers here) it was really an undescribable moment, really probably one of the best little moments in my life so far. Another little girl even when to get me a cup with water in it to put the fowers in then she arranged them for me and took out the "ugly" ones. Then she wanted to take a picture of just me with the flowers so I took out my camera and gave it to her so she could take the pictures but the thing about most Dominican children is that when they see a camera, they come running. So, needledd to say, I wasn't in the picture by myself, which I was glad for. But the camera drew a lot of kids over, it was like a little mob. It was almost getting dangerous. I felt like a celebrity. Anyway, one of the little bit older girls saw that I was getting mobbed so she took my hand and took me to her house to get away for a sec. Her house had a gate, luckily, so I was able to escape the mob for a little while. She was such a sweet little girl, she when and got me a chair and we hang out and played with her baby brother for a bit. This was a very humble house too. I think I'm kind of getting immune to it but it still breaks my heart sometimes. well, then I desided that they might be looking for me and that I should probably get back. As soon as we left the house we could hear all the kids outside the gate screaming "Lorenia! Lorenia" It was great. When went out and gave them a big hug and we shuffled our way back to the van with kids on every side of me holding on to where ever they could, whether it be my hands, my shirt, my pockets, whatever. Then I get back and Sandra was like "where were you? some little girl came up to me and said that someone took you and locked you in there house and wouldn't let you out!" I guess you of the little kids that was outside the gate was telling my team that. I though it was pretty funny. Gosh, how I love those kids!
So that's why I loved Azua so much, I plan to go back after my DTS for a couple days, I'm excited to see the kids again. Another great thing about Azua too, was what we got to do, I think was the second to last day there, we went and got the van washed. Now, that probably doesn't sound all to exciting in and of itself but where we went and how we did it was great. We took the van down to this little river and we could drive it right into. This littl river also happened to be right next to the beach. Washing the van was great fun. We got eachother completely soaked, which felt SO good. Then, after we got done we went to the beach, it was great. I think it was probably the best beach I've even been to. It was like the kind you see in magazines. That day was really fun, however we had to major downfalls to the day, the first was I ended up pretty sunburn but that wasn't so bad, what was worse is that while we were down at the beach, Sandra got her camera stolen, she left it in the van. She also got her mp3 player stolen. We all felt pretty bad.
Well, that was Azua, I can't don't really want to end on a bad note with Azua so let me think of something lese to say about it....Oh yeah, I can tell you about this, it's not a great but it's kind of funny. So this was after I had been pretty badyly sunburned and we were walking around and just talking with people in the community and we stoped to talk with this one old lady and she invited us in to her little tiny house to talk and have a seat. It was me and Sandra, and we were talking to her for a little bit and I made the mistake of showing her my sunburn. Then she was all like "Oh my goodness girl what have you done!" (it was in spanish of course, but it was something like that, with that amount of concern. So then, this little old lady goes and gets this little jar of, or well what once was, lotion. It was who knows how old and all yellow and separated, and she started rubbing in on my sunburn. I didn't really know what to say or do. At then end she was like "oh, is it better now?" I just smile and said "oh, yes, much better, thanks" then she even offered to give me some for later. It was a really sweet gesture. And even though I'm sure the lotion didn't help, things like that have to be good for your sole or something:)
So that ends Azua and thus ends my national outreach. It was a good outreach. Next we have the Caribbean Conference in Puerta Plata then, it's off to Haiti (actually, where I am right now)