11/16/14 5pm   Sunday in the DR

Last night was a quiet night! Wow, a little rain and the quiet is deafening! Riding mopeds and partying outside just don't happen in the rain, or at least near my little house!

Today has been fun and is a special day - a group of about 25 folks that wanted to be here for the ground-breaking ceremony arrived from Santo Domingo at lunchtime. Many of these people were involved in the original clinic or have invested a large part of their lives, free time, and funds here in San Juan de La Maguana.  Rod and Sandy are both here - they were the hosts at the guest house for 5 years in the early 2000's and were here when Philip and I first visited. Dr Dillard was here with Dr Canario when the vision and reality of the first clinic came to pass in the late 80's. He is over 85 years old and is very excited to be here. Two of Jim and Doreen Smith's children are here to represent the Smith family - Jim was the missionary that made the existing clinic a reality.  This November Solid Rock celebrates the 25th anniversary of the clinic opening - pretty neat that 25 years to-the-month later we are here to celebrate the ground-breaking of this new facility that will offer many more services, help more of the poorest of the poor and be located away from the chance of flooding. I am so excited that we have a videographer here to capture memories thru video interviews with these folks - will be some pretty cool stuff!  If 60 minutes knew some of the history here, it would be a feel-good story for sure!

We will eat and then attend a church service this evening.

As far as my part in things -

* There are now 11 pipes drilled, so only 114 to go!! The crew will be back tomorrow to continue this process, and I think the productivity might improve somewhat. A larger generator will be here Tuesday which will provide power to more power drills to speed this process. Right now we only have a small generator that can power just two larger drills continuously.

* Excited that our Caterpillar backhoe and generator should be arriving, I hope it arrives tomorrow so that it is on-site for the ground-breaking ceremony.

* After seeing that the workers were good-to-go with everything they need, I took a crazy trip yesterday afternoon down to beach south of  Barahona, about a 2-1/2 hour trip each way.  I did this last minute trip (starting at 2:30 in the afternoon) so I could put my "new" vehicle to the test. Of course, at about 8pm last night on a very deserted mountainous and dark road it occurred to me that this might not have been the smartest thing I've done - but no problems. The beach was beautiful - rocky, but beautiful. The rocks are white smooth stones - very pretty. The landscape was spectacular with mountains diving right into the water along the shore - making the road design also interesting!

* Rosetta Stone and I are getting pretty tight with one another! Everyone is very patient with my spanish, but I gotta be able to communicate better!  

Buenas Noches Amigos!!