Havanna-Day 2

We began the day with breakfast at the hotel and a team devotional.We were then greeted by Pastor Derys, along with our 2 drivers, ready to take us on a tour of this foreign city. Derys is a pastor at Iglesia Evangelical Pentecostal Church in Santo Domingo. He became a Christian in 1995 and later married his beautiful wife, whom he met at a church he was speaking in. He and his wife now have a young son and daughter. He said he felt a call on his heart by God to become fluent in English so he could serve as a translator for visitors to his country. We all hit it off with him right away! He is quite the jokester and knew how to roll with our American humor. We even taught him typical hand gestures and sayings, like "y'all." We thank God that he was so willing to spend the week with us because without him, I do not know how we would have gotten through it all!



He knew an immense amount about the city and it's culture and was able to educate us on our tour. As we were walking through downtown, I was really amazed at the structure of the buildings. They all had a uniqueness about them. Not buildings that you would find in many parts of the U.S. because our country is so young. These buildings have character. Different colors of paint, some without paint, run down and some pristine. They just looked old but that is what I appreciated about them. We also saw tons of cars from the 1950's. They had old Chevys and Fords. AMAZING! They still have mechanics who keep those cars running in this present day. Most of their cars are European and few are Asian since the U.S.A. will not export to them. We did see one F150 and a Nissan SUV. I wonder how they got those into the country??





We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Barrio China, where there are no Asians. Huan was pretty much the token Asian through out our entire trip. He was quite a hit. In fact, the locals nicknamed him Jackie Chan! Everywhere we went, people loved to make comments about him. After lunch, Pastor Derys took us to the seminary headquarters. This place trains pastors and missionaries, as well as teaches people how to use computers. They have a huge ministry that sends missionaries throughout the country, as well as provide resources for pastors to start churches. Pastor Park, a pastor in Houston, began this ministry in the country. He started with a vision and it has grown immensely! He comes 3 times a year to visit and is always there to congratulate the graduates from LIT. This is something our team would like to be involved in supporting.

The rest of the day was devoted to dinner at Pizza Nova and more touristy stops in the city. We ended the day with a cannon ball shoot off. They do this every night at 9pm. The city officials used to set off the cannon every night to tell everyone to be at home and in bed. Kind of like a city curfew. Tons of tourists attend this nightly event so the locals were selling their jewelry, figurines, art work, food and drinks. One guy bartered with Karen and I about some bracelets and we did not even ask him to! 2 bracelets for 3 CUCs(equivalent to roughly $3, give or take a few). This girl can't pass up a good deal so I happily bought my two!

There was so much more to see in this city but with limited time we could not see it all. We all enjoyed the day so much and I would like to one day be able to see the city in it's entirety. It was truly amazing. I cannot possibly compare it to any place I have visited before. A city I cannot forget!