Over spring break a group of high school students who are members of the Eastview Church program One, traveled to the Dominican Republic. They left on Friday, 21st and didn’t arrive home until Sunday, 30th. They spent the entire week helping others in various different ways. Keegan Majers(11), one of the high school students who attended the trip, gives us some insight into their little over a week long adventure.

Q: Where did you travel to?

A: Santiago, Dominican Republic

Q: How long did it take to get there?

A: We took a bus to New York since that was the only airport with flights that could handle our whole team. After we got there we had to wait 7 hours and then the flight was 3 hours. All in all, it took about 32 hours to get down there.

Q: What was the main purpose for the trip?

A: We went down there to do work for GO Ministries. They are a missions organization that are based in Santiago. Their purpose is to spread God’s presence throughout the Dominican through their outreach programs such as GO Sports and developing and sponsoring schools. They started out very small but have grown out of there facilities and are currently starting to expand with they’re sports ministries and medical facilities. What our group went down there to do was just to help them out. They run mostly off of donations and people coming down to help them build and expand so we went down there to help them do just that. The work they are doing down there is amazing and they deserve all the help they can get.

Q: What did you accomplish during the trip?

A: Our work consisted of construction work; breaking down walls in the church because they outgrew the size of their current Church building, and helping to build a new dorm building to accommodate more people like us that come down to help. We finished everything we set out to do early and by the end of the week some of us were going around asking if we could just serve people in some way. We almost doubled the square footage of the church and helped paint and finish the walls of the dorm. One day of the week, a couple of us ran a Vacation Bible School day in the surrounding area’s schools. We played with kids, sang them songs and did crafts with them. The purpose of this is to spread the love of Jesus and to show kids in terrible situations that there is hope. It was a very successful week.

Q: What was the most memorable experience you had there?

A: Personally my favorite experience was growing closer to people from school that I didn’t know as well in a Christ driven way. There are tons of people that I now call my good friends that I didn’t even know a week and a half ago. God is in this school way more than I realized.

Q: What did you like about the trip?

A: I love missions. I think it is an extremely important aspect of my faith. Serving in that way is a great way for me to grow as a person. Just serving the community down there was my favorite part.

Q: Would you travel back, given the chance?

A: In a heartbeat. When’s the next flight?