Preparing for the experiences of a mission trip is hard. The Team from Hope reformed Church in Spencer, IA, get a taste of what their week holds.
Read the blog from day 2 here.

Hello Friends and Family,

We have survived our first full day in Haiti! We are already fluent in the language (we know 4 phrases).

The night before in FL , celebrating a birthday at Steak n Shake

After we arrived yesterday we rode into town and saw the small version of the market and then we went on a super fun walk with some small Haitian children and made lots of friends.

We quickly found out that the food was quite zesty. Some of our favorites were the fried plantains, goat, and Haiti’s version of French fries. We also really enjoy the refreshing Coca Cola that tastes a bit sweeter here! Tampico is another favorite.

This morning at 5 a.m. we arose from our sound slumber by a pack of roosters and small dogs. We began our super-duper day of fun by splitting up into two groups and each group went to a house where we poured cement floors. The groups were categorized into youngens and oldies. We girls’ group including, Sam, Ryan, and Kurt, poured cement floors for a family of eight. The house had three rooms and an outdoor kitchen. The other group had a tad larger of a house but had the same amount of people in the fam bam. We all worked together as a team by making an assembly line to pass the buckets of concrete, gather rocks, and pass back the empty buckets. The project took only a sliver out of our day, a mere three hours.

Working hard together

A little friendly competition Tibens, one of our many faithful concrete workers The ‘Young Group’ after pouring their house The ‘Old Group’ after theirs

Our fastest way of transportation is referred to as a tap-tap ride. It is a small truck where the seats are not only inside the truck, but also in the bed on the truck, oh and there are two seats on the roof of the cab. The roads here are far from luxurious. They aren’t all paved, they are incredibly bumpy, and occasionally if you get enough speed you can get some air from the ruts.

Once we got back to the compound, we visited “Thrive for 5” to see some of the kids that are involved in the program. After we ate lunch, we split up into different groups to accomplish little tasks that needed to be done around the compound.

Enjoying Thrive for 5 with hugs and games

Everyone arriving for Thrive for 5

The men and Samantha, started putting the playground together. The women prepared some things for the Color Blast tomorrow.

Getting started on putting the equipment together Figuring out instructions requires teamwork

Building a see-saw Can’t resist testing it out! Contact! A job well done

Last but certainly not least, we girls painted the school that is on the compound. It was pretty hot outside today, so we tried to stick it out and finish the job the best we could. In fact, we only took one water break. We met a Haitian man who offered to help us with the house.

Painting with new friends

Thanks for tuning into this super great blog written by yours truly,

Rylie, Carli, Brenna, and Abby.