high school

A few weeks ago, our fourth work team for the year came down to visit.  A team of students and teachers from Illiana Christian High School.  This is the third year that they have come down on their spring break.  I enjoy every team that comes down here to work, each one is special in its own way and all of them help me feel like I have a piece of home here in the DR for a short time, but the Illiana teams have a unique effect on me.  I graduated from Illiana, and when the teams come from Illiana each year, it is more than having a piece of home here, it is like having a piece of my youth brought down as well.  Most of the other teams that have come down have people on them that I either know personally, or who know people that I know.  Friends of friend, friends of cousins etc.  But all of these people are connections to my adult life.  When Illiana comes down it's different because the people that I know personally, and the people that we know mutually, are almost all teachers that were at Illiana when I was there as well.  The connections that are made are to my youth.

Also, the students that come down bring me back even more.  It turns out that kids at Illiana haven't changed all that much in the last 12 years since I graduated.   As I get to know the kids and see their friendships and the way that they joke around and relate to each other, they are just like the kids that I knew all those years ago.  I find myself thinking about how I would have fit into a group like this, which of them I would have been friends with.  I also think about who I was when I was a teenager, how much I have changed, and how much I haven't changed.  I think about the fact that had you told me 12 years ago, when I was finishing my senior year at Illiana that down the road I would be a missionary in the Dominican Republic, married to a Dominican, speaking Spanish and receiving work teams from Illiana, I never would have believed it.  I had no idea what God had planned for me.  It's also exciting for me to know that these kids also have no idea what God has planned for them, and I am so excited for them to discover what that is.

Having not had the chance yet to bring Eddy back to the United States, the Illiana group is also one of the few ways that I have of sharing a little bit of my past with my husband.  He hasn't seen the house that I grew up in, he hasn't gone to my home church with me, he hasn't had Sunday dinner with my family, he hasn't even met most of my aunts and uncles and cousins.  But when Illiana comes down, I get to have a week of remembering and sharing stories with him about my past and what I was like as a teenager.

This year, the team came down when we were also on Spring Break, therefore, we had a lot of time to spend with them.  I had so much fun with them and they got so much work done.  The school went through a complete transformation in the week that they were here.  I also have not laughed as much as I did that week in a long time.  They were an exceptional group and I hope to see all of them again soon, either here or back in the states.