We had a good initial planning meeting on September 23, and came down to two date options for the 2019 mission trip: #1, June 17-24 (Monday to Monday), and #2, June 22-29 (Saturday to Saturday). The next step is to pick one of these two options.
If you are considering applying to be on the 2019 Go Team and if you have a preference for either of these two dates, please let Julius know by 12 noon on Wednesday, October 3. Julius' contact information is below. We will announce our preferred date in another email message on Thursday, October 4, and in Christ Church's email bulletin on Friday, October 5. Once we confirm the date with the Campamento and with the Diocese of the Dominican Republic, then we can proceed to accept applications for the 2019 Go Team missioners and to purchase flight tickets.
Notes on these options:
1) The Jarabacoa Flower Festival will be on June 20-23, 2019. Both of these options would allow us to attend the festival. Option #1 would allow us to attend the parade through the streets of Jarabacoa on June 20, the traditional beginning of the Flower Festival. If it is raining that day, then we would have other days to attend.
If we decided on Option 2, then we would have only one day to attend the Flower Festival -- the closing day, Sunday, June 23. However, this worked out well in 2018.
2) June 20 is a legal holiday in the Dominican Republic. We could not plan any work on that day where we needed help from the school teachers or villagers, but we could use the day for recreation such as attending the Flower Festival and walking to the waterfall.
3) Padre Canela, the priest in charge of the campamento and school, would prefer that we come on June 17-24 if we plan to do anything with the school children since the children and the teachers will be present in the school that week.
4) At this time, Delta round-trip flight costs are about the same for both departure days - from and back to Valdosta, $1,022; from and back to Atlanta, $830.
Once the dates are set, then we will move on to deciding on whether or not the "Go Team" members in the Valdosta area will start the trip from the Valdosta airport (our pattern in 2017) or whether all team members will start from the Atlanta airport (2018 pattern). Watch for a message about that on Thursday, October 4.
The planning webpage for the 2019 mission trip
is now online here.
All information about the trip will be added to this page just as soon as it is available.
For information about Christ Church's mission work in the Dominican Republic, including a summary report and photographs from the 2018 trip,
click here
.
