In the Dominican Republic we worked with the Dominguez family,(www.hope4drnow.org) doing community outreaches, offering English classes, and preparing their newly purchased land to fufill their vision; for a Christian retreat center, Orphanage and a garden with fruit trees that would help sustain all the ministries. We slept in our tents, showered in a waterfall, and ate a ton of yucca. It was like living on the set from Jurassic Park…minus the Dinosaurs! We got to experience beautiful sunrises and extraodinary starry nights Everywhere we walked or looked, creation seemed to be shouting the glory and majesty of our Creator.
The family we were working with is amazing! They, a family of eight, said YES to God and moved from the U.S. to a small village in the Dominican, to bring hope and healing to the spiritually and monetarily impoverished people there. They started a school in a city called Cien Fuegos for the kids that would normally be playing in the dump. Then they purchased the property in the village of Lajas and God expanded the vision.
So what do you do when God gives you lemons? What if the call is hard and will require much of you? What if you look headlong into the vision God has given you and you can’t see any blessings; only work, only that this vision requires great amounts of faith. Well I guess we could ask Noah, his task seemed impossible, even ridiculous, and yes, it required great faith and trust in the Lord. The reward didn’t come right away, the blessings were covered by headaches and backaches and the smell of livestock. However, at the end of it all, there was a promise and rainbow and a people saved by a God who loved them. This is how I picture the mission in the Domincan. It is difficult, there are no backhoes and bulldozers to work the land, and every thing has to be done by hand, with the few simple tools that are available, by blood sweat and tears of the few who have answered the call. Those that choose to persevere because they believe that God is good and faithful to accomplish His will and vision for the people of the Dominican.
This month, this ministry, was life changing. God taught me so much about perserverance and praising Him through my pain, my circumstances; that therein lies my healing, my victory. He also taught me that He is infinite. I don’t get to coast along on this journey with Him, believing the lie that I have somehow come to the end of Him, that I know enough about Him or have experienced enough to just check out. I have been wrong, I have believed a lie that has kept me from pursuing Him, from pushing in, from perservering. God showed me in the Dominican Republic that He is vast and infinite and unrelenting in His pursuit of my heart.
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