During our launch training week in D.R. God already started to do some pretty amazing things…here are a few highlights:
1. While making a team video we ran into a neighborhood of awesome kids and families. We played games, laughed, and talked as they made us feel right at home. While there I met a girl named Anjelina. She’s 22 years old with a daughter named Reina 🙂 She was 16 when she had her first baby and then had another named Darleny but she died a few years ago due to illness. She is absolutely gorgeous and full of life. She helps her older brother Alexander run an empanada spot on the corner and her whole family treated us like royalty.
I praise God He gave me the opportunity to spend time with all of them and in 3 days we all became so close. I chatted with her and was saddened by the situation with young girls in D.R. She told me most girls get married around age 13-14 and start having children around that time as well. When asked where the husbands/fathers were she shrugged her shoulders as if to say “they could care less”. She said adultery was common and women just suck it up.
Unfortunately this has left so many children fatherless and in broken homes and also leaves the women with such low self-esteem. One time I complimented anjelina on her hair and she looked at me in such disbelief…almost as if she had never heard a sincere compliment before in her life besides the cat calls and lustful glances down the street. I pray the Lord will open the door for me to work with more women to encourage them with the word of God and to uplift their self-images.
Before heading to Haiti I stopped by one last time to say goodbye to the family and she wrote me a beautiful letter telling me how grateful she was for our friendship and for our prayers. I will hold it dear to my heart forever.
We were able to pray for the family and I hope to go back there to see them before we fly to Ireland. Please lift up her family in prayer:
Anjelina, Reina, Aleidy, Alexis, Alexander and his whole family.
Haiti Here I come!!
