TIME FRAME: Monday, September 9th through Tuesday, September 17th
WHY: To see friends from PWI, visit an amazing country, see the daily life of missionaries, and be inspired.
THE STORY BEHIND THE JOURNEY:
The story of my adventures in the DR starts 3 weeks before I flew there. I was sitting in Chili's (A restaurant) with my mom discussion my upcoming trip to Tennessee and I randomly said, "You know what I would really like to do? Go to the DR before Rachael leaves." Background: Rachael, who lives in the DR, is going to be a part of a DTS (discipleship training school) with YWAM (Youth with a Mission) in Switzerland and will be gone for 6 months. I have known Rachael, for 3 years now, and her sister Beka, for 2 years, and they are amazing. We have been talking about me coming down to the DR for years, but it has never happened until now. So after randomly mentioning it, my mom said, "That would be so fun!" The fact that she answered like it was possibility was enough to make me pursue it. She said I would need to leave some time for Rachael to get ready and say goodbye to people at home, and so she asked what the second Monday in September was, and I said the 9th. Then she said I would need 21 days from the day I bought the ticket to when I left, and it was exactly 21 days from the next morning to the day I flew out. God moment number one. So then I opened the Expedia app and looked up the prices for a roundtrip ticket from ATL to the Santiago airport in the DR, and the tickets were $417.50 (First of all, is that not the most random price ever?). I knew that Rachael has told me that the average prices for tickets were from $600-$700, so this was God moment number two. So my mom mentioned me that I needed to message Rachael and see if it was actually a possibility. So I messaged for her to call me, and a few minutes later she Skyped me. Fun fact: She was supposed to be at a christian concert, but someone was running late so she asked to get on her friends wifi just as I was messaging her. It is likely that the tickets would have sold out or the prices would have changed if she didn't message me till the next morning or late that evening. I asked, "So if I were to show up in the DR in 3 weeks could you pick me up from the airport and let me stay at your house?" She responded with various "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!" and "IS A JOKE RIGHT?". I assured her that I wasn't joking. She called her mom and messaged me within 5 minutes, saying, "SHE SAID BUY THE TICKET!!!" So I did. I called my grandma asking if I could put the ticket on her credit card for a few weeks till my check came in (The check I am referring to is a refund check for $900 that God had provided the week before). She told me that I could and within two hours of first mentioning it I clicked the finalize button, and bought my plane ticket to the DR. God worked it all out in a matter of hours for me to go there, and even though I thought it was crazy, and so did everyone else, I was beyond excited.
So there you have it, the crazy God moment after crazy God moment that is me getting to go to the DR. I love being spontaneous, but this is probably the most spontaneous moment I have ever had that was a big thing. I hope you enjoyed reading the story behind my journey, and I hope you will come back to read the rest of my adventure.
FUTURE POST DISCLAIMER: I am not going to share every single detail of my trip, I would not want to bore you with a run down of my afternoon naps and bagel eating. I will be sharing an overview of each day I was there, with highlights, stories, and photos.