Student Ministry Dominican Republic
Mission Trip 2026
UPDATES
On April 6th a team of 12 of our High School Students and Leaders will be going to the Dominican Republic to spend Spring Break serving with Second Chance Global. Please be in prayer for the team as they travel and serve. During the week you will be able to read updates from different members of the team on this page! Check back each day to see what the team has done. Thank you for all of your support!
APRIL 6, 2026
TRAVEL DAY
We began our day at 6:15am when we loaded the church bus and headed to the airport. Traffic was super cooperative and TSA was the best we’ve ever had! They got all 12 of us through in 22 minutes! While in the TSA line we were notified our flight was delayed by an hour. That meant we had plenty of time to play some games and socialize, find the non-existent Chipotle (insert frowny face here), and just relax!
Our flight was about 3.5 hours and we made a new friend as soon as we boarded (see picture below)! After landing, we breezed thru customs - except David - funny story there, and loaded our vans to head to our hotel/motel! After arrival, we got settled in our rooms and had a brief orientation time with our team leads, Abby and Tony around the pool that our rooms overlook. Our dinner (and most meals this week) will be provided by a local, Tía Jaqueline, who runs a restaurant and provides catering in the area.
Tonight after dinner Abby shared the story of how Second Chance Global was founded. The founders, Ashley and Jeffrey Pettris, took a trip in 2016 to Haiti (which neighbors the DR) and the Lord placed a burden on their hearts. Second Chance Global was created to empower families and reunify them when they were stuck in a cycle of poverty. While started in Haiti, Second Chance grew and expanded into the DR in 2021. To learn more about Second Chance Global, you can READ MORE HERE!
Following this, we shared highs and lows of our day after a bit of team onboarding and prep for the week ahead. We sorted our VBS supplies for tomorrow, had some Q&A time, and even found the energy to jump rope as we packed for tomorrow! We’re all tucked away ready for a good night’s sleep in our home away from home! Check back tomorrow night for news about our first day in the community!
DAY 2
April 7, 2026
Today was our first day in the communities of the Dominican Republic! We began our morning in Nuevo Renacer with a tour of the community and meeting several locals! We enjoyed ice cream and were able to learn about how the community has changed over the years. Second Chance Global has empowered the locals and supported locals in creating new business endeavors. We saw the port where cruise ships come in too.
Following our morning tour, we returned to our guest house for lunch and a few minutes of cool air before leaving for a more remote community called Maggiolo. Here we briefly toured and were able to see the garbage dump from the community. The poverty level was in Maggiolo was significantly worse than our morning tour. We learned that many people in this community are Haitian and will go to the garbage dump to scavenge for things that might resell or use for their own homes. The structures they live in are built scrap wood and scrap metal. But in this community we also hosted our first VBS with 33 children. We tought a lesson on the Woman at the Well in the midst of a good little rain storm and when we return, you should ask a team member about the water filtration system demonstration we saw today too! But it did not damper our joy to spend time jumping rope, playing baseball, having piggy-back races, and so much more with the children from the community. Their joy was contagious and we enjoyed our time with the people of Maggiolo.
Dinner tonight was pasta and plantains. After dinner we had a mini surprise party to celebrate Olivia’s 17th birthday, with a delicious cake baked especially for Olivia by a local! We’ve been treated to fresh avocados at every meal. Following dinner several of our team members took a dip in the pool at our guest house and some played cards and hungout! We had a night of sharing our highs and lows of the night with creative endeavors like charades and artwork! Our team is tired after a busy day and ready to rest our heads on our comfy pillows!
DAY 3
April 8, 2026
Today we made our first community connections in Muñoz, DR. We were split up into groups of 3 plus a translator and got to visit individual homes. We were given the opportunity to hear families and individual’s stories. Some homes had large families with multiple children, and others were single members living by themselves. Their hospitality shone through each individual team’s visit and truly opened all of our minds by hearing their stories. We will get to return tomorrow to help them around their homes with chores, take them shopping, and continue learning more about them and sharing why we are here.
We then headed back to our guesthouse for lunch and a few minutes of cool down time before we made our next stop. We hopped back in the van and we visited Madame Lolo who recently lost her husband who was the pastor in Padre Granero which we will be visiting tomorrow. We were given the opportunity to pray over her and her children through their community loss.
After our pitstop in Padre Granero, we headed to Villa Acención, for another day of VBS that we were able to add into our schedule. We were given the opportunity to yet again teach the children about the Lord through David’s teaching about the woman at the well. The kids loved to play and you could see the joy radiate from all 100+ kids! We returned to the guesthouse after for some dinner and a team meeting to debrief our day! We are all ready for some sleep but excited for our last full day serving tomorrow!!
—-This post was written and shared by Olivia & Caroline!
DAY 4
April 9, 2026
We woke up to a delicious breakfast and a devotional given by Will. Then we left our guest house and drove to Munoz for the second day of community connections. Each group was placed with the same family as yesterday, and we all spent time helping with anything they needed; whether it was washing dishes or doing the laundry. The translators were given money for each family to shop with. We were told each family would take longer than normal to shop because they have never had that high of an amount of money to spend on groceries. We helped the families prepare a meal, and while some of us were peeling beans, others were learning how to clean a chicken - it was an enlightening experience. After the families asked any final questions they might have had, we asked for prayer requests then spent some time praying over the families.
We returned to the guest house for some fire sandwiches and a few minutes of reflection on our community connections. Next we to traveled to Padre Ganero for our final VBS of the trip. Once we got to the community, we walked through to the church and Tony (the tiger), our fearless leader in the DR, lead us out back to share stories about the church and its late pastor. He shared about the life of late Pastor Lolo, the current programs, and how the new church they are raising funds for will help the impact in the community. The children were able to learn about the woman at the well (represented by Katherine) and how Jesus (represented by Henry) helped her. The kids in the community also played the role of the disciples.
As we ended our day today, we had to say goodbye to two of our translators, Papito and Elson, and we were so grateful for everything they had done for us this week. After a long and rewarding day, all the peeps enjoyed some barbecue chicken and a few heated rounds of card games before our time to recap our day and share our experiences with one another.
Emily and Katherine
DAY 5
April 10, 2026
Today we had an amazing breakfast from Tia Jackie, with omelets, pancakes, bacon, fresh fruit, and limeade. After breakfast, we prepared for our first part of the day - a tour of Munoz and a more in-depth explanation of the many ministries that Second Chance is a part of. We had the opportunity to meet Pastor Lamonde of the local church, and then Tony led us on a tour of the community, stopping and taling about various topics such as the history of the town (the original homes that many people still live in were barrakcs that people working the sugar cane fields would live in, but sugar cane is no longer a big export of the DR).
We also had the opportunity to discuss some of the steps forward in Munoz regarding bathroom access, including the many communal bathrooms throughout Munoz that Second Chance has installed since most homes in the area don’t have their own bathrooms. Near the second set of communal bathrooms, a group of kids merged into our group, and walked, rode on our backs, and ran along with us for the remainder of the day. We finished our tour at the church, and sat down with a few students from the nearby english program. After some good conversation with them, we prayed, worshiped with them, and then taught some of the children that had tagged along with us the church clap. We then headed back to the guest house for sandwiches and chips for lunch, and prepared for our afternoon at the beach. After a short drive, we reached the beach where we set up at a large table outside of the beach bar. Most of us used the first few minutes to relax and try and get a tan, before going for a swim in the comfortably cool ocean. In the ocean, we all ended up trying aquatic gymnastics, and we all improved our skills, including some impressive double backflip attempts. We had a lovely dinner with cheese, pepperoni, meat lovers, and dominican style pizza. After we finished eating, we went back to the water for a few minutes before driving back to the guest house for our final decompression session of the trip, where we wrote letters to ourselves we’ll receive in the future, discussed our trip, wrote words of encouragement to each other, and then wrapped up in prayer, discussing how we can continue on the progress we’ve made this week, back at home. Our leaders gave us guidance on how to apply the lessons we learned from this week. We can’t wait to see all of our family and friends back home and tell them all about our experiences together!
-Written by Henry and Will
