A Day of DTS

Friday was a perfectly wonderful day. Got up at 6:15 to feed to chickens and ducks, discovering that the female duck was not actually dead but just sitting on eggs in a dark corner. After grabbing my first cup of coffee, it’s time to practice Spanish for a bit (El elefante come una fresa. Las fresas son muy ricas.) Then it’s off to a nice breakfast of baked oatmeal, which after a few weeks of trial and error is finally cooked through.

By now, it’s 8:00 and the schedule for several complicated reasons has once again shifted. Time for class an hour earlier than normal! But that’s all good and class is over at 10:30, leaving time for a second cup of coffee before afternoon activities that got moved to the morning. Because following a schedule is for whimps and North Americans.

Ok, 12:30 lunch time, except twenty minutes late because someone forgot to get our awesome and over-worked cook a helper for the morning. So after helping serve, I scarf my food and head downstairs for some much needed introvert time. But on the stairs, I encounter my leader’s 12-year-old daughter, who’s having a really hard day and just needs to talk for a bit. I can do that! Until I see my friend sitting on a bench looking like she just wants to cry. We talk until it starts to rain, heading inside so I can change my clothes to work in the garden for a couple hours.

Chore time for me is from 2:00-4:00pm, with rotating chores every month. This month I get to be in the garden with two lovely ladies, making time to talk over the day as we pump water into the aquaponics system. Of course, one girl only speaks a little English, and it can be a bit difficult to communicate exactly what our leader told us to do for that day. But all good! Communication practice is always useful.

After thinning out cilantro in the multistory garden, my friends and I head back to the main house to change. I’m excited to do my laundry and spend some time watching a bit of tv, but I notice that my Spanish-speaking buddy is practically in tears. So I follow her into the bathroom and then sit with her as she cries silently for an hour. Not much I could do except provide a constant supply of hugs and Kleenex.

Ok, now its 5:00 and time for my one-on-one with an older volunteer on the base. With all that’s going on, I have decided I need as much guidance as I can get. She’s been working with YWAM for years, so we discuss what my priorities are as a DTS student and how to hold me accountable.

Finally dinner at 5:30. Time to eat and socialize. It’s not until 6:30 that I finish a nice chat with my DTS leader and head downstairs, hoping for some actual quiet. Thankfully, no one particularly wants to talk to me, so I get to read for 30 minutes. For once.

But the day is far from over. Next the whole group piles into the van, filling it to the brim with 16 people, and head off to the base leader’s house for some bonding. Popcorn, coconut pie, and chatting filled the next three hours, leaving us to fall into our beds at 10:00. Supposedly, but of course the 8 girls sharing my room need to chatter for a while before sleeping.

Then my alarm shakes me awake at 6:15 to go feed those chickens and start a new day of adventures. Welcome to YWAM.