I made it here safely! What a long day... or couple of long days if you include the all-nighter I pulled last night. I left Detroit at 7:00a.m. today and arrived in Santo Domingo, DR around 8:00 pm tonight. We leave for San Juan tomorrow morning and we're going to stop at church somewhere in between.

I've had a ton of thoughts spinning through my mind so, I'm going to try to narrow down what I write to a few specific stories. On my first flight this morning I sat next to a man from Toronto Canada who was headed down to Haiti on a mission trip. We talked for about an hour discussing the major shift in the way missions is being handled in the westernized church. What a paradyme shift with all the short termers traveling to differant countries this summer. Kinda cool to see the individuals within the corporate body of Christ having a better first hand experience/idea of missions. However, there seems to be a lot of superficial help being offered by the groups at the same time. I don't know where we got the idea of serving God short-term or part time.

As I traveled I noticed a ton of mission teams throughout the airports. I'm sure the flight from Detroit was comprised of at least 50% mission teams headed all over Latin America. I talked to three teams going to Haiti, two teams going to Honduras, two teams going to Dominican Republic, and a plethera of other countries.

I met up with the group from Ohio Northern after I arrived at the hotel tonight. Strangely enough, I met them at the bar and they invited me to go to the cigar lounge and the casino next door. Seems like a very... "interesting" group. It will be good to spend more time with them tomorrow.

Funny story. I met up with the photographer, John, who will be working with our team next week. Turns out he's my roommate. We spent a lot of time talking tonight about, religion, hypocrisy, philosophy, and cameras. It's also funny how fast God can change your focus of ministering to the "nationals" and redirect it on those who are in your group. The Ohio Northern group seems very "charity" minded. I don't know if there's a real connection with showing the people they're helping physically know the real physical and spiritual healer. Pray for John and the Ohio Northern team that they might learn more about Jesus this week as the work amongst the sick. Pray that there might be a connection between the mind and the heart.

Well, I should go, seeing as it's 12:30 and I've had minimal sleep. More to come!

Peter

Here we are! This is one of the dramas that we will be doing in the Dominican Republic this August. The music is not finished yet but you can hear a little of it in the background.