It’s kind of a long-running joke in our family that we don’t care too much about cars – at least, as status symbols. My dad has never been too interested in them, and when I inherited his vehicle after getting my driver’s license at the age of sixteen – a 1988 Plymouth Reliant – the first question out of my friends’ mouths was , “Isn’t your dad a doctor?” As he explained to me, while it’s fine to spend your money on a nice car, he simply cared to spend his on other things. I suppose this mentality inadvertently got transferred to me when I chose to spend my college graduation money on a sensible used Hyundai Sonata a few years later. I didn’t think much of the decision until I moved to Santa Monica, California. My street was lined with Lexuses, BMW’s and Mercedes – with my white Sonata sticking out like a string of knock-off pearls in a ballroom full of rubies, diamonds and emeralds. At the time, I chose to laugh off my embarrassment by saying that my ride of choice “kept me humble.” These past two weeks in the DR, I have learned that humility is more than a Hyundai Sonata. My team has been doing ministry with Pastors Manuel and Cecillina, a husband-and-wife team who serve a small farming community called Mijo about 15 minutes outside the city of San Juan. The faces of Mijo are both beautiful and tragic. There is joy in the eyes of the children, but weariness in the creases around those of their parents. They are very poor and most are uneducated. Yet they are not complaining – this is the only life they know. I have no other words to describe these visits other than truly humbling. Families with four kids living in a one bedroom mud hut scramble to round up broken plastic chairs for us to sit on as their guests. Women who don’t have enough food for their families make us corn to take home because they don’t think we’re eating well (the Dominican staple is rice and beans, so when we bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, they think we must be doing worse than they are). Their generosity is amazing. This week we are doing vacation Bible shool for the beautiful kids in the community. Our theme is “Rise Up and Be Courageous for God.” My prayer is that these kids will be a light in their families and that this community may be given renewed hope and strength through Jesus.
My team has spent the last several days doing house visits around the community. We have started to build relationships, have asked if there is anything practical that we can do to help them (i.e. fixing fences, etc.) and have invited them to church. Many of the adults in Mijo don’t go to church but instead send their kids. They have heard about God, or at least about the Virgin Mary, but it’s hard to feel His presence when you don’t have food to put on the table or money to go to the doctor when your child is sick.
I am also praying for God to continuously humble me. After witnessing what we have already here, it’s hard not to be. Still, when I think about how I used to be humbled by my perfectly good Hyundai Sonata – now seemingly a luxury vehicle here – I just shake my head. Humilty is so much more than that.
