Back home!

This is our group above along with some of the missionaries and the guest house cook Lus.

What an amazing week we had. We are all back home now. It is kind of weird going from one extreme to the other so quickly. I have never felt so content than when I was in DR. I just knew that was what I was supposed to be doing, and it felt good to be in the right place.
Here are the before and after photos of our work.

Saturday October 4th

Thursday October 9th. After we cleaned up, poured a concrete floor, and primered the whole first floor. Looks like a real building now!


Please join us at 6:30pm this Friday at 371 Thompson Road in Oswego,NY. We will be hosting a missions banquet where our team will talk about our trip. Come sample food from the Dominican and hear about what we did and how you can be involved next time. Please call me at 315-532-6866 or email me at Jenna@KainsPhotography.com if you are interested in attending. Dios te bendiga

***This blog will stay up all year so you can refer back to it during the next year. I am hoping to go on another trip next year and the photos from that trip will be at this same blog address.

I love this city.

Today was our last full day in Santo Domingo. I am very excited to get home and be in my own bed and be with my husband, but I will miss this place. We have had a wonderful week, filled with hard work, beautiful weather, and good conversation. To end the week we went to the beach in Boca Chica for a few hours and then went into a shopping market for a while. We ended the night off at a restaurant that featured live music and Dominican dancing. It was a great time!

This is the beach in Boca Chica. It was about an hour drive away from where the guest house is. I scoped out a cute hotel in Boca Chica and when Isaac and I come down next time I want to spend a few days just relaxing at the hotel. The weather was gorgous. A nice 85* and partly sunny. The beach was rather empty also. I could not believe the amount of people that try to sell you things on the beach. Every minute someone new would come up to us and ask us if we wanted manicures, jewerly, sunglasses, etc...

Boca Chica, along with Santo Domingo are on the south side of the Dominican Republic. The water was very calm and clear. John, Brandon, Aryelle, and I took some time and went snorkeling. It was my first time snorkeling. I am still not sure what I think about it, the fish kind of creep me out.

During our beach time, Aryelle & I had a mini-photo shoot. We took about 20 minutes and walked around the beach. Once I get back to the states I will post a longer blog with more photos of our session. She was a great model! I am so happy to add this to my portfolio: Destination portraits.

After the beach we all headed over to what the locals call the "tourist trap". Which indeed is a tourist trap. You walk into this huge building and enter a maze of small shops. At once the vendors try to get you to buy stuff and come into their shop. The weirdest thing is that bartering is expected. For example if they say your item costs $10, you say you will take it for $4. Then they come up to $6 and now you have a good deal. Thanks to Bruce for helping us figure out the bartering system. I know a bunch of never quite got the hang of it.

These are some vendors outside of the market. These vendors offered more fruits, vegetables, spices, meat, etc... We even saw a chicken market. I dont think I have to tell you what happens there. GROSS!

This is a photo of bones I found in a vendor that sold mostly fruits. There were a few skulls and what looks like a spine. On the bottom left hand side of the photo are cocoa plants. I have never seen cocoa in it's original form before. It is a yellow, gord looking, type fruit.

There were so many bags of spices, beans, rice, coffee, etc. It was fun to look at all the kinds of things offered!

This is what a typically street looks like during market hours. A huge change from our pretty little neighborhood the guest house is located in.

Right next to the chicken market I caught this group of men playing Domino's. They had just finished a game so there was a heated conversation going. They were not too pleased with me taking photos of them, so I didn't get any more like I had wanted to.

I found a photo studio/processing lab. How exciting for me!

As we were about to get back on our bus a horse came past us. It is sad to see the conditions the animals work in. It was also very different to see a horse in the street of a busy, tourist, section.

To end of the night we all went out to a nice dinner at a Dominican restaurant. There were dancers and live music. It was a lot of fun! When I was a teenager my family had a few exchange students. One of them was from the Dominican. I learned a lot of dances from her, so I had a great time at this restaurant trying to remember what Elisa taught me.

The group eating dinner. They put us in our own little room. They must have known we would be rowdy!


What an amazing trip. I will make a few posts after I return to the states. I need some time for everything to sink in before I can truely evaluate this trip. Thank you all for your prayers and blessings. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we have a long day of travel ahead of us. Also remember to pray for the church, "Nuevo Renecer", as they start a new chapter in their lives at this new church.

On Friday October 17th at 6:30pm we will be hosting a presentation time at Oswego Alliance Church. All are welcome to come chat with us and see how things turned out. I will be presenting more photos along with video I took from the week.

Hasta Manana y Dios te bendiga

El ultimo dia de trabajo.

What an amazing week. We had our last day of work on Thursday. We were working well as a team, things were getting done, and we were having fun. Unfortunately the rain came at about 2:30pm and didn't stop until we left. It was so hard that we couldn't work until it stopped. I had a great chance to chat with some of the local people about our differences in culture, churches, etc. I learned a lot about the Christian culture and I hope I was able show them a little more about our life. We were all very sad when we had to get on the bus to leave. Partially because we didn't completely finish the job, but mostly because we would have to leave this amazing church and people. Before we left the pastor told us they would be having Sunday service in their new church this SUNDAY. How exciting that we got to be the group to get the job to the point of usability.
Today (Friday) we had a good at the beach and shopping. We are so spoiled here. It was nice to be able to experience one day of rest to see the beach and get some goodies. We leave the house at 11:30am Saturday morning. We are supposed to be getting back into Rochester at midnight on Sunday morning, or Saturday night, whichever you choose.
Enjoy the photos!

Here is missionary John Schleh enjoying the work. It was a great to have another missionary join us on the worksite.

This is what Brandon, Aryelle, and I looked like after the three of us painted the church. I got really really dirty because the painter wanted us to use a lot of paint on the rollers. It was fun, and hopefully it'll wash off.

For lunch the church we are helping supplied lunch. It was a classic Dominican meal of Rice, Beans, Chicken, Salad, Avocado. For dessert they brought us hand picked Coconuts. They used a machete to open them up so we could drink out of them. Brandon really liked the milk.

This is Lela. She followed us around from lunchtime to the time we would leave every day. I always loved the different hair accessories she was wearing.

Pastor Wade met a new friend. I asked him what they were talking about and he said, "I just kept asking him what things meant in Spanish." It is true. Kids love being able to tell you their Spanish knowledge.

During the rain storm Wade and Fred decided to take a much needed break.

The rain was so hard that the roof drain provided enough water for many people to "shower" off the cement, paint, dirt, etc... I personally thought it was gross. You never know what is on the roof.

Here is the almost completed roof. We came here knowing we would get as much work done as possible. When the rain came we had to stop, so we didn't finish the roof. What a hard job hauling up over 900 buckets of cement. The guys did a great job.

This is the finished product. The entire first floor has been cemented all of the first floor walls have been painted with primer. What a change from day one.

This is our little group of friends that we talked with a lot. By then end of the time we could communicate what we wanted to say. From left to right. Me, Aryelle, Brandon, Gerson, Louis, & random guy


Everyone has been asking me to provide a photo of our bus trailering the cement mixer. It was so bizarre that we did that!

This is most of our group after the last work day. We were so dirty! Liz & Ann had already gotten in the showers so they were not available for the photo.


What a great time we have had working with Nuevo Renacer. Pastor Eduardo could not have been a nicer guy. I cannot wait to come back and see the finished church. This has been a life changing week and I am so happy I had the opportunity to be a part of something bigger! Tonight I will post photos from Fridays beach excursions! See you soon!
Hasta Luego!

El premier pismo es terminar

*** Just a notice to you: below this post I have also submitted another post for Tuesdays work. I suggest you read Tuesdays post before reading this one to get caught up on our events!***

As I write this the housekeeper of the guest house came to the house and started talking to me. It is 11:30pm on Wednesday night and everyone has been asleep for atleast an hour now. So I am sitting here at the dining room table doing my photos and writing my blog. Lus the housekeeper comes in and asks me if I speak some Spanish. I tell her yes. She smiles and then goes off into long, fast sentences of Spanish. Anyways I kinda of understand her, however I messed up one word. She said something and I went up to the mens bedroom about to ask if there were keys (Llave) were in the mens bathroom. I realized I may be wrong so I came back downstairs to makes sure I knew what was going on. I then realized I was completely wrong. She was trying to tell me how she thought it was raining (llueve) in the mens bathroom and could I see if any man is up so they can go check it out. What I thought she said was totally different. Llave & Llueve sound very similar in the Dominican accent. Anyways the story ends well as Lus wakes up the man of the house, Doug, and he goes and finds out that the mens toilet was running. If it wasn't fixed tonight the whole house would have been out of water tomorrow morning. How it works here is the city fills up cisterns for each house, but it is not predictable when you get more water. So if we did use up all of our water on a running toilet tonight we would be empty and we would have no clue when the cistern would get filled up next. Praise the lord it got figured out.
Before I got into the photos I must also tell you the short version of my other language blunder today. When we are working there is no bathroom, so we all use the bathroom in the pastors house right next door. I went to go use the bathroom and after I got out the pastors wife was there. She asked me If I wanted any "sopa". I had just gotten out of the bathroom and wasn't thinking clearly. So I said "yes, very much so." Because I thought she said soap, because I needed to wash my hands. Anyways "sopa" does not mean soap. It means soup. Now I was obligated to try some of this soup and I know it was a big deal for her to ask me if i wanted some. Anyways I asked her what kind of soup it was and she said, "Fish, with potatoes and noodles." I don't like fish at all but I figured I could push though the taste to make her happy.
I went downstairs to ask one of the missionaries if it was okay to eat it and she unfortunately told me the soup was not only fish soup, but fish head soup. So here I am, not liking fish, but seriously not liking fish heads and I was stuck eating the soup. It was actually pretty good for not being a fish fan, but next time I decided I will think before I say yes to something I am not sure.

So that brings me to lesson of the day:
1) SLOW DOWN AND THINK. If you don't understand what someone is thinking, trying to figure it out before you answer is always a good idea.
2) That the Dominicans down here listen to some of the same music, and in English none the less.
3) That cementing a roof is a lot harder than it seems.

Now onto the photo time. I have been having a great time hearing everyones compliments about the blog. I am so grateful to my God for giving me this awesome talent of photography and computers.

This was the first photo of the day. Everyone was just sitting around waiting to get into the current church so we could put our bags in a safe place. I love how excited everyone looks... and may I add, clean!

This is what we saw at the start of day 3. The only thing left to do was the last row on the right hand side and then the entrance. It is so exciting to see this start to look like a usable building. We are so lucky to be here for such a great transformation.

Shawn started to really get into the cement mixer. You turn the wheel on the side and it tilts the mixer so it can unload into the wheelbarrows.

This is our group... still in the middle of the street.

This is Liz trying to have a conversation with the pastor's son, Gerson. He is 21 yrs old and is in college studying computer technology and/or information science. He has been helping us out in the morning. He has school from 3-10pm every night. He doesnt know much English, but between the Spanish I know and the English he knows we can have a pretty good conversation. This is our friend Louis sitting down. I think he was taking a photo of us strange Americans on his cell phone.

It wasn't even an hour into the day and Brandon ripped through his gloves. Maybe next time he should buy better gloves.

This is a photo of me and the pastor of the church we are working on. He is such a kind man. I enjoy talking with him and his church members. His church may be small but they have so much heart. I cannot wait to see what God has for them in the future. This new church building will allow them to expand and reach more people. He is also the president of the Dominican national church (I think so at least). It has been so great to work besides him and see how he is so involved in the process.

Here is Pastor Wade. What a hard worker. Him and Bill have been the two cement runners. I want to say each full barrow weighs 100+ pounds easily.

This is the church once the floor was complete. It needs to dry overnight but tomorrow we will be able to walk on it and paint! How exciting. The pastor said they will meet in the church this Sunday. I wish we were going to be here to see the first service in their new church. I know a bunch of us want to come back and see the finished product.

Shawn brought his guitar so during lunch time we could worship. It was a great time to break from the hard work and just praise God for all of his creations. We even got out a local instrument that looks like a cheese grater and is played with bicicyle spokes. I will take a photo of it for tomorrow.

A few from above. This is our work site. This is our work site with a car driving through it. What an interesting place.

This is the view from the roof of the new church. This is a typical skyline with no more than 5 floors on each building. After we finished pouring the floor of the first floor we moved up to the roof. It sure is hot up in that son.

This is how we got the concrete up to the roof. We mixed the cement, then put it in the wheelbarrow, then shoveled that into buckets, then attached the buckets to this pulley system and lastly hoisted the 40lb bucket up the the roof.

This was a brother and sister walking through our work site. They were on their way to school. Like I mentioned in an earlier post they have multiple time slots for school since there are so many people in the city. Every student,whether private or public school, has to wear a uniform. I think it is a great idea, because everyone looks the same no matter how much money you have. Just from watching the neighbors we can tell that the Dominican men, or boys in this case, really watch out for their ladies. It is sweet.

These kids were watching us crazy Americans. The girl standing up has become my little buddy. She has been hanging around us since we arrived at the site, but today she finally talked to me. A breakthrough! I was so excited to have gained her trust. The boys had made homemade kites out of saran wrap and garbage bags. They actually worked better than any kite I have used in the states.


I hope you have had a chance to read the post below this as I have posted them the same night. God is great and he is really showing me things while I am here. Since Isaac and I got together I have had a love for missions, but this trip has really cemented the call to do some sort of missions work. I have no clue what it will be, or when it will happen, but I am so excited to see what God has for me, and for the rest of my team.
Tonight we had two missionary couples come over for dinner. They were so funny. They went around the table talking about language "blunders", like when they were preaching or leading a group and they said the wrong word, which ended up being a bad word, just because they didn't know Spanish perfect.
We also exchanged ideas about how they could use my photography skills. They had many ideas for me. In additon to my actual photography services one missionary mentioned how I could offer photography classes and photoshop classes that the missionary's could hold and then use that as an outreach for the Dominicans. I dont care how God uses me, I just want him to!
We have only a few more nights here. I miss my husband a lot, but I am sad to leave. I feel at peace here, like this is what I am supposed to do. Anyways thank you so much for reading this. Please let me know what you think at Jenna@KainsPhotography.com
Dios te Bendiga

el Dia de trabajo: Dos

*** Sorry this post is a day late I got a very bad migraine Tuesday night and couldn't stay awake long enough to get the photos in order.

Tuesday was our second work day. We continue to grow as a team. Our communication is getting better and we are getting to know each other better. All of our Spanish is getting better as well. I continue to enjoy my conversations with the Dominicans that hang around the church.
We had a missionary couple over for dinner tonight. It is such a treat getting to know the missionaries in their territory. These people are fun!

What we learned today:
1) Always have a plan B.
2) Mas Espanol
3) How to get water out of an underground cistern.

Now onto the photos:
This was what we saw in the morning. I am standing in the altar looking towards the door. On Monday we laid the cement runners which helped us keep the cement we poured level.


Aryelle trying to have a conversation with our new friend Louis (spelling?) We use a lot of hands while talking since we have to act out almost everything we are trying to say. I think we are entertaining to the Dominicans. Louis is 18 and is started the University in January. He is studying Engineering. He does attend this church and is so excited about the new, much bigger church. He keeps telling us he doesn't know much English, but since we have gotten here his English has already improved. He tells us that he learned English from an institute, which I think is a class you attend on your own time. He was so excited to have a photo of him up on this blog!

The men at work! They were moving back the sand pile. We are working in the middle of a road. The road is not paved, so we usually forget we are on a road until a car needs to pass. The truck that dumped off the sand decided it would be a good idea to put it right in the middle of the road!

I still can't get over the random chickens that walk around the streets. We have to make sure they don't get into the wet cement in the church like they did on Monday.

This is Fred & Wade on our first batch of cement. We have been trailering this cement mixer behind our bus. I need to take a photo of that, I have never seen a bus trailer anything before! Anyways to make the cement we us 1 90lb bag of cement and 21 scoops of rock and 42 scoops of sand... and then some random amount of water (Bruce knows). It is not hard work, but after doing it for a few hours your back and arms get tired. Again I would like to point out that Fred is throwing rock over a road into the mixer. This would not work so well in the U.S.

Working over a road. I hear the church will be getting stucco on the front someday soon. That will be exciting!

Bikes, cars, buses, people, chickens, etc... often go right in the middle of our work site. I guess that is what we get for working in the road.

We have gotten our teamwork down well. Fred, Barnie, & Brandon are splitting the 90lb cement bag in half so it is easier to carry into the mixer.

Pastor Wade and Bill are waiting for the cement to finish mixing so they can fill their wheelbarrows up. 1 batch of cement fills 4-5 wheel barrows. It is a much slower process than in the U.S. when we use the big cement trucks with troughs. They are quite clean in this photo so they must have not started with the cement yet. By the end of the day both men were covered in cement from head to toe.

This is the progress we made on day 2. A little more than half of the floor was filled. It is such a transformation from what we started with. I cannot wait to see the finished floor!


Well my camera died half way through the day so I didn't get many photos today. God has been so good to us. We are enjoying our time here and feel so blessed to be able to help out a church in need. All of us keep commenting how easy everything is going.
Tonight we had a missionary couple come over for dinner. They have a 3 yr old boy and an 8 month old girl (I think those are the ages). It was cute to see the little boy mix up his English and Spanish. He is much better at Spanish than I am!
Thank you for reading this.
Dios te bendiga!