I want to begin by saying that I feel so blessed
to have had the opportunity to go on this trip to La Romana, Dominican
Republic, and would like to say thanks to everyone who helped make it possible
with your prayers and contributions.
Growing up at First Baptist, I’ve been privileged to go on many short-term mission trips over the
summers. This most recent one to the Dominican Republic, I can say, was like no
other trip I have ever been on. One reason I think, is that there were a lot of
firsts for me on this trip. For me, it was the first time I had: been overseas,
even been out of the country, been in an environment where most everyone spoke
a different language than me, been in a community where my ethnicity was in the
minority by a large margin, gotten to see and swim in the Caribbean Ocean, flown
in a passenger plane since I was about two years old, and the first time I had
seen real poverty. I don’t mean American poverty where the “poor” have cell phones, and cable playing on flat-screen TVs. I mean,
no hot water, not even clean drinking water, no electricity poverty.
The reason for this trip was to help spread the
love of Jesus to those in other parts of the world. So each day, after
breakfast, we would divide into two groups. One group would help with the
construction workers in building a concrete retaining wall around a local
church we were working with. The other group would go to different bateys or
barrios each day and host a type of backyard bible club (or VBS) with the kids
there. A batey is a small town, owned by a company, where
the sugar cane field workers lived. A barrio is pretty much a neighborhood just
outside the city.
Typically on these trips, I like to help mostly
with the construction. I like the type of work, getting to build things or make
repairs. I love working with Jason (a leader of the construction crew from our church), and I always learn a few tricks of the
trade to put under my belt. Also, by the end of the week you can step back and
see the finished product of what you have been laboring over the whole week. You
feel a sense of accomplishment, knowing all the hard work that went into the
project. This was not the typical mission trip for me though. Each morning, I
would ask God to show me what He wanted me to do each day. We would split into
the two groups by a show of hands each morning, and I would judge by the number
of people that wanted to do each task. Whichever group had the least amount of
people, I would take that as a sign as to where He wanted me to go that day. So
for the first 3 days, I had the honor of being part of the group that went into
the bateys to help lead the VBS.
I was a little nervous at first seeing as 1) I
don’t speak any Spanish, so I had no clue what to even say to the
kids. 2) The typical thing for me to do on these trips is the construction, so
VBS was something I'm not use to working. 3) I like to claim that I’m not the best with kids. But with all that against me, I believed
it was what God wanted me to do that day. So, I began to gain confidence in
that, and by believing He was with us.
Each day when we would get off the bus at the
different bateys or barrios, we would be swarmed by the kids there. By
communicating with hand motions and very few Spanish words, we would begin play games
with the kids. We would play games like kickball, jump rope, frisbee, baseball,
and a game best described as Dominican hot potato. We played that game alone for about an hour. The kids were happy
to play just about anything.
After playing a while with the kids, we would
bring them into the community church to sing songs and show a puppet skit
about the good Samaritan (that was translated in Spanish). We would then send
them home to break for lunch. After lunch, the kids would come back to the
church, and we would make faith bead bracelets with the older kids. With the
younger kids, we would color coloring pages of a cross, or a scene from the good
Samaritan. When we finished with that, we would hand out snacks and juice, and play
with the kids for another hour or so. We would finally leave and head back to
the mission house around 2 in the afternoon.
Some afternoons we would come back to the
mission house just to relax, hang out, or spend some quiet time and read over
the devotions David or Natalie (student minister and his intern) would hand out each day. One afternoon, we went
to a girl’s orphanage and got to tour the building and visit with the kids
there for a few hours. It's amazing how God opened our hearts to be able make
connections with the kids there in just a couple of hours.
If you want to know what it was like in the city
of La Romana, I haven’t been to a place in America like it to compare.
So, I will try my best to describe the area we were in. The buildings were very
close together, most weren’t much taller than 2 stories. The streets looked
as if they hadn't been repaved since they were first out there. The traffic
consisted mostly of motorbikes, mopeds, and a few cars. The air in the city
streets smelled of exhaust from all the motorbikes. There were rain showers
most every night we were there. The temperature was about in its 80’s, and the humidity level was high. None of the buildings we went
in had air conditioning, aside from the Jumbo (pronounced Joombo, which was
like a Super Target or Walmart) and a frozen yogurt shop. There was almost
always a breeze outside to cool everything off. The windows in most of the
churches were metal shutters that opened and closed to let air flow through.
The churches in the city had ceiling fans running to cool everyone off. There
were frequent blackouts in the city right around midnight. A few of the
buildings in the city, including the mission house, had their own backup
generators. The bateys we went to were a little different at each site. They
all seemed to have a church building. The houses looked like shacks built with
cinder blocks that had metal roofs. The walkways or roads all around the houses
were made of dirt and gravel. Some of the water sources came from either a water tower
that stored all the water, or a well with a faucet. The bathrooms were
outhouses, some made of wood, others out of cinder blocks.
There are definitely still needs there.
According to wikipedia their average salary is $5,000 a year. If you went to
stores like the Jumbo, prices weren’t much different than in America. You can get
cheaper foods from the local shops and market but the quality wouldn't be up to
our standards. For example, the butcher shops we saw didn’t seem to have A/C and were open to the streets. They would have meat
laying out on counters, and hanging out in the open. So, it wouldn’t be very sanitary for us if you were to buy the cheaper produce.
The kids there mostly wore flip flops or no shoes at all, and were running
around on rocks and gravel. Babies had no diapers. You could see that some of
the children had ringworms from unclean water sources. There is a need there,
and they live in poverty. But you wouldn’t be able to tell just from talking to the
people or playing with the kids. There was a sense that God was taking care of
them, and they knew that.
Of all these things I witnessed, and the many things
I experienced and learned, one thing stuck out to me, and it’s this: Persistence with a pure heart comes blessing. By that I
mean, when we pray persistently with a pure heart about something and give it
to God, He blesses us for it. There is a parable in Luke 18 about the
persistent widow. She brought her problems before the judge continually and
wouldn’t give up. The judge in this parable is said to be unfair, and yet
even he still granted her request in the end. We know that our God is just and
fair, and by this parable we learn how much more God will grant our pleas and
request if we are persistent. I said persistence with a “pure” heart, because this does not mean our God is a genie. We don’t give him our Christmas and birthday wish list, full of stuff.
Our motives must be pure and not greedy, focused on God’s will and not being selfish.
For a couple of months before the trip, I would
pray about God preparing the way for us at the Dominican, and softening our
hearts for the people there. At my work logging into the computer, and
performing some other functions, requires a password. I changed my password to
Dominican13 (which has changed again, so you can't sneak in and use it) so that every time I had to type it, I would be reminded to pray
for the trip. Every time I used that password, I would pray the same prayer
right at that moment so that I wouldn’t forget. I feel I was prepared more for this
trip than any of the others I have been on. Not prepared by anything that I
studied or knew, because I still didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. But, I was prepared
because God opened me to be willing to do whatever He would have me do that
day, and I knew that God was with us the whole time, guiding us, and preparing the
way. God definitely blessed us all on this trip, and anyone who went would
agree.
We were blessed: to see the kid’s smiling faces, to see them so content and happy just passing
around a ball in a circle with complete strangers who looked different than
them, to be taken care of by the people at the mission house where they cooked
breakfast lunch and dinner for us every day, to see
how the churches worshiped for hours at a time each night through the blackouts
and without A/C, and to see God’s beautiful creation at the ocean or the hills
in the distance of the sugar cane fields. God willing, these memories will be
with me for the rest of my life.
God softened my heart for the people there, and
prepared the way for us. Jesus said we will receive what we ask for if we are persistent in Luke 18. That parable
proved true for me, and I have experienced it first hand from this trip.
