Coming Home Tomorrow

I can't believe it has already been 5 weeks here. Since the Freeman family left, we've been hanging out in Santiago as the summer staff leaves and the new staff arrives, one big meeting in the middle. Throw in three abandoned Haitian babies, and it has been a houseful! We've been staying with a missionary couple in Santiago who host groups in their house as one of their many ministries, so its been a blessing. One of the new staffers and I took a day trip to Santo Domingo, the DR's capital and the first Colonial city in the new world. A key part of the hemisphere's history, so it was neat to see it first hand.

I want to thank everyone for their support, prayers, encouragement, and for actually reading my blog! I hope to post some things when I get back, other reflections, etc. I have some great photos of the babies I want to share but I am unable to post right now.

Tomorrow I will be in Miami around 4pm, and head to San Antonio via Dallas by about 10pm.

Isaac and Jacob

Here are Isaac and Jacob, the twin Haitian boys that were abandoned that Sharla is working to get adopted. They are being cared for apart, but have come to the Makarios House for a holiday together!

Compassion

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humilty, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians 3:12-14

This passage is easy to live out here in the DR. We go into the villages each day and play with kids who are dirty, stinky, hungry, and needy in so many ways and we love them, play with them, feed and clothe them, and give them the attention they so dearly want and need. Makarios is working on providing jobs and educational opportunities to help raise their standard of living. Groups like the one from the Austin Stone have come down and taught hygeine, first aid, toothcare, and other health related topics. But the real question is, will I live this verse out when I return to the states. Will I have compassion for everyone I know and those I don't know at home?

The last two days, we have taken older kids from one of the villages to the beach and the younger kids to the park. They live just miles away from lots of great things, but because of their poverty and lack of opportunity, most of the kids don't get to leave the village, and if they do, its on foot and not very far. So, for them, this was a big deal. Today, when we went back to the village after lunch, the younger kids were waiting for us fully dressed, which they never are during normal village life. They are all in various stages from naked to a shirt and shorts in the village. Today, not only were they wearing clean clothes, but they all were wearing shoes. Clearly, this was going to be a big deal and the mothers had dressed their kids appropriately. When was the last time just going to the park was a big deal? They had such a ball, all loaded in the back of the truck driving through town, swinging and sliding to their heart's content. Then everyone had an ice cream cone. One of the other joys was loading them all back into the Pathfinder and driving 12 kids and 3 adults back the 10 or so miles to chichigua. They were mostly well behaved, although a few got tired and started crying and one was feeling sick.

Well worth it to see the joy on these kids faces, they deserve so much more that what their lot is in life. There were several in the last group who wanted to pack as many of these kids in their suitcases and take them home to the states. Part of me wants to do the same, but then part of me realizes that their life, for better or worse, is in the bateys - that is where their family and friends are, that's the life they know. So instead of taking them to where life is better, we need to be making their lives better where they are.

Who wants a mesh shirt?

These things are all the rave here, so very popular for wearing out on the town, for some shopping, or just lounging around the house. The serve so many purposes, I've thought about bringing back 2 for everyone. (and they're so cheap!)

Seriously, though, what sizes can I bring?

No, seriously, what color does everyone want?

The guy with me is Chris, he was a summer staffer for Makarios in June and we overlapped about a week. The picture is from Dajabon, the market border town I wrote about before.

We have a family from Austin arriving today to spend a week in the villages. They will also be working with some local seminary students. Sharla arrives on Wednesday and we get to see both of the babies. In case you didn't know, twin Haitian boys were abandoned over the course of a couple of months. The weaker one, Isaac, was left at the hopsital and found by a local missionary. The stronger of the two, Jacob, was recently left with the father, who contacted the missionaries and said he didn't want him either. Long story short, they are getting adopted to the states. They are living with separate missionary families, but they will both be in our house next week and we're so excited! For pictures and more information, click on the link to the Makarios Blog (makariosjournal.blogspot.com). The Makarios blog also has some cool stories that more specifically describe the ministry that I've been working for if you want to check it out!

This photo is from one of the Haitian bateys that Makarios works in - Negro Melo. Theirs is a sad situation. The village sits on a hill, surrounded by vast sugar fields. The owners of the fields have not paid to have the sugar cut in the past two years, which gives almost no hope of employment to the men of the village, who are cut off from most other job possibilities. Many of the families have little or nothing to eat each day. The group from the Austin Stone church paid to give all the families in the village rice and beans.

What you are seeing in the photo is what you are thinking - a cock fight. It is a sport that is alive and well in both sides of Hispaniola. I think these guys got their roosters to fight just for us Americans.

A day in my life

I just wanted to share some differences of daily life in the Dominican Republic to those that we get so accustomed too in the US. For one, the power goes off here every day. Sometimes it goes off more than once a day. These outages can last several minutes or several hours. Usually it goes off in the morning for a spell, what can be frustrating is when you're in the middle of brewing a yummy pot of coffee.

On the subject of running water - most areas have it here, but since we are at the edge of a development and there are a lot of users (legal and illegal), we do not get any water from the city. We pay water trucks to come out every few days and fill a cistern. Yet, the water company still sends us a bill every month. On the subject of bills, there is no mail to the house, so what the companies do is fold or wad up the bill and throw it over the gate. It's a treasure hunt sometimes to find them! So we had a water and power bill and I went to pay them today. At the water company, they still want our money even though we aren't getting their water. Well, I complained to someone and they might be sending an engineer out to look at the problem tomorrow. We'll see, I'm not keeping my fingers crossed or anything.

The roads in and around Puerto Plata are terrible. Road construction is ongoing all over the city and they have huge swaths of streets cut into and gaping open with very few barriers keeping you from entering the sinkhole. At night, they light fires in all the danger zones. So you car will be on fire as it sinks into the earth, great! At every job site I have passed, without fail, there will be two men working and about 8 standing around. Efficiency! While I was in line to pay the electric bill today, there were two booths and a pretty lengthy line. One of the booths suddenly closed, and the guy there proceeded to count money. Customer Service is a bonus not always found here.

I helped Sharla to buy a Nissan Pathfinder for the Makarios ministry here, and yesterday and today have been driving that badboy around town. Now let me tell you that has been an experience! Horn honking and flashing lights are essential forms of communication, but I sure have gotten some mean Dominican stares. And please, if you see me driving in the states when I return, remind me that Americans actually do stop for stop signs and red lights.

Past the halfway point

I realize it has been a while since I've posted an update, and I will try to give a summary of what I've been up to lately. The group from the Austin Stone left on Monday after 12 days here. They were an incredible group, with compassionate hearts to serve the people in the villages as much as they could. They paid for medicine for kids, water for a village, and we provided food for another. Their spirits just went and went, loving on the kids and supporting the people in the villages. On the final day of the trip, they were clearly spent! We spend the last few days in Santiago, visiting the farm of Ruben, who I will talk about more later, visiting an orphanage, attending an American house-church in Santiago, and loving on and feeding special-needs kids.

As in other 3rd world countries, there are not very good resources for special-needs children, so most of the time they are abandoned. We visited one of the orphanages, where most of the kids are in cribs not because of cruelty, but because most of the kids cannot physically move very much. A lot of them have atrophied muscles to the point where they cannot do much of anything on their own. It was a very moving afternoon as our team loved on these kids, helped feed them, and were just otherwise humbled by being around them. The joy on their faces from a smile, encouraging word (in any language), massage, or other attention will melt your heart.

After the group left, another staffer and I spent a couple days and night on Ruben's farm, which is on the outskirts of Santiago. Ruben works with Makarios as a driver, translator, coffee salesman, and otherwise handles all sorts of other projects. He is from the area, grew up with his family in the US, became a monk, then followed God's call to move back to the DR and be poor amongst the poor. He has a sprawling farm, growing loads of fruit with some animals, runs a home for the elderly, and otherwise supports about everyone in his immediate area. His life is one of the most joyful as I have come across, and it consists of his family (two daughters, a step-son, a couple adopted sons, and lots of other children who come to eat), service to the community, working with Makarios, and living a humble life before God. The picture is of Ruben, his older daughter Rosalina with one of his fruit trees. I have to tell a very funny story. Ruben has a room off of his house as a workshop of sorts, for cleaning coffee, tools, and such. The men that work on his farm, and in general, use it to sharpen their machetes. One day when Ruben was away, one of the men was sharpening in there when his daughters, who are 3 and 2, locked him in. He started shouting and raised quite a ruckus and Ruben's wife, who was asleep at the time, had to come to his aid. When asked about the situation, Rosalina, the older daughter, said that the dog had locked him in and she saw him do it. Not to be outdone, Nini, the youngest daughter, said, no, it was the cat that did it! Kids will be kids!

I have so much to share and so little time, but I will post more updates and pictures later! Thanks everyone for your support, prayers, encouraging emails, etc! I can't believe I've been here 3 weeks and just have a couple more, how quickly the time goes.

New group, new adventures

A group of 13 arrived in stages last week from the Austin Stone and we have been quite busy! Some of the team were here last summer, but all of them are jumping into the ministry here, loving on kids, doing VBS stories and games, playing with the kids of all ages, visiting the sick in the villages, and otherwise having a great time. One of the great things about this group is that they have a spirit not only to minister to the people here, but to find ways of fixing their problems. We have a nurse who has been handling lots of medical issues all week. We have lots of people who are always thinking about ways to solve problems - bringing water to one village, feeding another one, etc. I'm really enjoying this team and the time is sure flying by. I hope to be able to post more thoughts soon, but I wanted to leave you with this picture. There are lots of poor, poor people in the villages we serve. All of them have clothes for their kids, but sometimes either they don't make them wear them or the kids take them off. Either way, there are always naked kids, and this one is quite adorable.

Dajabon

Yesterday, the summer staff went to the town of Dajabon, which sits on the Dominican-Haitian border. Every Monday and Friday, the city shuts down about 20 square blocks and becomes a market unlike any I have ever seen. Most of what is sold are things you could buy in the states at your local Target and HEB - clothing, toiletrees, all kinds of fruits, vegetables, rice, and other groceries, etc. There are stands where people have their wares and then lots of people (a lot of kids) walking around selling stuff. The women pictured here are typical, carrying what they are selling on their heads while shopping themselves.

Shoppers come from around the DR for deals, and thousands flock across the bridge from Haiti as well. We sat at the bridge that connects these two countries for a while and marveled at how much stuff people were carrying back across, mostly on their heads or in wornout wheelbarrows. If you don't know much of the history of Hispaniola or of the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I can recommend some fascinating books. The river under the bridge is named the Massacre River, and it is along this which the Dominican dictator Trujillo had tens of thousands of Haitians killed in the fall of 1937. I find it quite ironic that thousands of Haitians cross the same river for shopping that led to thousands of their ancestor's deaths. You'll note in the photo of the bridge, the yellow paint denotes the DR and the blue Haiti. There are armed guards from the UN standing in the middle of the bridge, and also UN troops all over the market.

As we rode back, there were numerous military checkpoints and the bus was stopped and boarded by guards each time. There were 4 Haitins with passports who were asked each time to show proof of their being in the country legally. On border days, any Haitian can come across, but they are rounded up in the early afternoon and sent back across.

Another photo from Chi Chi Gua. I wish I had a photo of the field that we played soccer with the kids. It was littered with manure, rocks, holes, power lines and other random equipment, and had sticks marking the goals. What a game we had, though!

Cute kid from Chi Chi Gua

This guy loves sporting the sunglasses and just had to have my pair, and it made for a great photo!

Saturday Update

I realize alot has happened since my update from Puerto Rico and I will try to summarize. I did arrive safely Wednesday in Puerto Plata and was met by Rueben at the airport. Rueben is a Dominican who Makarios works with (he drives, farms, translates, gets things done, and is otherwise comical relief. He was a Franciscan Monk among other things in his life and his English accent makes him sound like Mr. Bean) That was the good, the bad was that my luggade did not arrive on Wednesday. Me thinks it spent some extra time in Puerto Rico enjoying the sights. So not only did I spend two days in the same clothes, but had a third in someone elses. I met the group from Illinois who was down this week and the other staff on wednesday.

Thursday we went into two of the villages I will be working this summer, Pancho Mateo and Chi Chi Gua. I hope to post some photos soon. The group did puppets and songs for the kids in Pancho Mateo and we played games with the kids (a fierce game of futbol) and handed out school supplies in Chi Chi Gua.

On Friday we headed out to Cabarete, one of the biggest tourist beaches in the area. The beach house where I stayed when I came several years back was outside Cabarete and we visited this beach. This area is frequented by lots of Europeans, so there is the German bakery that we love, nothing like German pastries with cafe con leche! Amazing! Then you stroll down the beach to Jose O'Shays (you want to take a guess, you betcha, an Irish Pub right here in the DR!) I watched the end of the Germany world cup match in another bar with lots of happy Germans. There are lots of shops around the beach (pricier than other places) and lots of people who will come right up to you on the beach and sell you their wares "for you, my friend, I give best price" and "this is cheapy-cheapy" are two of my favorite expressions heard.

Today, the group from Illinois headed out to the airport as did two of the summer staff, Constance and Kristen. Brian and Bethany, who have been here for two years running the show, are currently packing and leaving tomorrow, which leaves four of us transition staff before the new permanent staff arrive later this month. We've done a lot of planning for next week and are pretty prepared. As prepared as you can be here.

Other things I have enjoyed as of late - drinking out of a coconut, being real friendly with sugar ants, crusing to the beach with Ruben listening to Mozart and Merengue, and a healthy diet of rice, beans, and chicken.