Our ministry in the Dominican Republic is
in a neighbourhood called “Villa Liberación� (or in English, Freedom Village).
The neighbourhood is technically government housing built after Hurricane
George hit 12 years ago. Villa Liberación is a really large area so we’ve been
paired up with Team Transformers for the month, they’re such a wonderful team
to work with!
Our first day of ministry was on Tuesday
when we first met Pastor Tony, we intended to do a prayer walk around the area
but we were immediately distracted by the kids (we’re thinking there are about
60-80 kids that flocked to us).
Wednesday we played with the kids and went
door-to-door to meet people in the area. Thursday we realized that our pastor
was so easy going and we had no plan for the next 2 weeks, so we walked around
the entire area for the afternoon and prayed. Afterwards we met and all agreed
that we’re here for the kids, there is so much pain and abuse that’s happening
behind closed doors, these kids need to see that someone loves them. We’ve also
seen a lot of the teenagers have the ability to lead and take charge, however
they do so out of intimidation.
Our plan for the next 2 weeks is to do VBS
(Vacation Bible School) with the children in the morning, and play in the
afternoon (after a siesta since it’s SO hot). Yesterday we took latex gloves
and garbage bags and began to clean up the field that they play baseball in
(it’s got broken glass bottles and garbage everywhere), it was amazing to see
the children come out and join us to help the cleanup process. One man in the
area even took pictures of us cleaning to encourage the locals to take better
care of their neighbourhood.
I could literally go on and on about the
kids we’ve met so far, there’s a lot of potential in these children and there’s
a life that they don’t see simply because they’re not encouraged to live any
differently than they currently do. One thing that’s hit us all pretty hard is
how they have so much joy out of something we literally throw away, a perfect
example is this:
That’s a tractor
tire that these children use as a trampoline, there are a few of the kids who
are able to do full front flips, back flips, twists; can you imagine the
potential if there was a gymnastics program available to them? WOW!
Anyways that’s enough rambling for now,
we’re all doing well & we’re all healthy. We’ll update again soon! Be sure
to check out my teammates blogs as well, especially Daniel’s, he’s our video
guru so be sure to check those out!!!
If
you’d like to partner with us in this ministry, please consider supporting us
financially by clicking on the link to the left of our blog, Cinthia and I
still have $9,459.10 to go before we’re fully funded.
