By Jamie Goodwin

There’s a few precious days in life when you jump on a lumpy bus seat and ride to a rural Dominican village, then find yourself swaying to the rhythm of a portable generator while hammering nails into the bridge you’re building, 30 feet above a river tucked into some jungle mountains. On days like this, you keep blinking.  The beauty is too much to be believed the first try. “What? Is this real life?” — “Could this be happening?” Today was one of those days for our team.  The blisters and exhaustion reminded us this day was in fact really happening, but the scene and the people were totes from a dream life. We now have passed halfway on the bridge construction, dug holes and set poles for fencing around the tilapia ponds, and cleaned and prepped a greenhouse.  There were lots of bugs, mice, and even a few grosser things.  We’ve made friends with the kids in the village and the kids at the school too. It was a dream day. There were a few days this past winter that our dishwasher was leaking like crazy and our oven stopped working and I wondered if we made the right choice in bringing our whole little family on this trip.  But when the workday was over today, Andy, Nick, Zeke, Katherine and I hitched a ride home from a friend in the back of his truck.  At some point on that open-air ride, I leaned over to Andy and said, “This is way better than a new dishwasher.”