D.R.E.A.M.S.

It’s my second week back from the Dominican Republic.  Me and group from school went down to the Mountains of the DR…well I guess up, depends on how you want to look at it to help build homes.  The program, D.R.E.A.M.S., (Dominican Republic Education and Medical Supplies) is in its 16^th year and has built close to 50 homes.  Having four older siblings who have recently gone on the trip, I had a good idea of what to expect:  poverty just about everywhere, no electricity, no running water, etc…just about everything you would expect from a developing country.  And the school presentations, every year the students from the trip go around to feeder schools and tell about their experience.  I knew the program so well that I was even asked to go and present to one school, but tell the experience from a point of view of someone who is looking forward to going on DREAMS.  Now that I have gone on it for myself, I understand how eye-opening the trip truly is…sounds cliché, I know.  I mean everyone has that moment when you say “wow, this is really life changing for me”.  I was waiting for that moment all week, but it didn’t occur to me until I left the village I was in.  Usually when the group leaves, the girls are crying and the kids are chasing after the truck waving goodbye.  However, when I left something caught my eye.  There were three young boys, all around the age of 10.  They were your typical 10 year old boy.  They were 100% all boy.  They had been with us every day at the work site and so after the week, me and a couple of the guys gave our work glasses away to them.  These were tented glasses, so they looked like sunglasses more than anything and when we were leaving I saw one of the boys wiping away tears from his eyes, trying to hide the fact that he was crying.  That was my life changing moment.  After I had thought about it, it came to me, what these kids will do after we leave.  They would continue their regular schedule, which didn’t include too much since they didn’t have much to do.  And that’s when it hit me, that these kids will miss us more than we will miss them.  We offer so little of our little time and everyone there is so appreciative.  It will definitely be an experience to remember.