October or December?

With the sun shining and poinsettias in bloom, we can't tell if it is October or December. From the way the stores are decorated, you could be easily fooled, as well!

Haina Beach

Haina Beach was our targeted area for clean up during the annual Church Helping Hands beach clean up campaign. Haina Beach is very close to Santo Domingo. It is not a beach frequented by tourists, though some of the locals were swimming and boarding here. We gathered tons of garbage, all of which had to be documented by law on paper, then weighed before it could be removed from the beach area. Plastics are the main culprit here--foam food containers in a myriad of pieces, plastic sacks, drink bottles and caps--all things that would take a hundred million years to disintegrate. There is no such thing as recycling here.

I have so much compassion for this Mother dog. Those pups are about ready to take on a life of their own--and she will never be the same, either. I speak from experience! Mother dog lives at Bonao at the Church Camp. The missionaries there leave to go home tomorrow. Who is going to look after Mother dog?

Tooth of the Dog golf course, one of the world's top ten courses, had just finished their annual upkeep when Hurricane Irene decided to move in. When we strolled unchecked across this beautiful golf course in La Romana, we were amazed at its beauty--every blade of grass was neatly clipped and every stray leaf was quickly gathered up. It must be a mess now with all Irene's wind and rain!

Sometimes I can't access this blog! I need a bridge like this to take me where I need to go!
I couldn't get my camera out quick enough to catch the first of two identical bridges that cross an insignificant river in eastern Dominicana. This second one should speak for itself, though, a very fancy, expensive bridge in the middle of nothing on the way to La Romana.
It sort of exemplifies the disparity in this country--excessiveness vs beggarness.

It seems half the people in the Dominican Republic are involved in security issues. Here we have barbed wire being added to a block wall around the back of the Mission Office.
There are guards everywhere at every apartment building, bank, public offices and in the parks. It's the culture of "if I see something I need, I should (and can!) take it". It reminds me of the Book of Mormon phrase that things become "slippery" as the culture decays.

Monuments to peace seem to abound almost as frequently as monuments to Christopher Columbus. This one overlooks the coastline in Santo Domingo and encompasses the world globe at its base and is in the center of a very busy traffic pattern. Not many people feel "peaceful" here as might be expected. Worse, though, is the uneasy feeling that seems to permeate that globe right now over the state of world economics. Why is living within a budget such a hard principle to understand?