WiFi has been down for over a week now, so these thoughts are a week late, but ENJOY!!
Written on Friday, September 22nd: I’m warm and sleepy and dirty. I love that feeling.
Putting into words what’s been going on around here is nearly impossible…but. Here I am, in the rain forest, the night bugs doing what they do- singing their songs, trying.
So Hurricane Maria. Since Monday we’ve been preparing for her. That looked like picking up any debris that could potentially damage the barn or dorms or home in any way, boarding up windows, and digging trenches for the water to come, as well as prayer for protection. Maria blew through Wednesday after dinner til real early this morning. She was nasty, but there was little damage here on the mountain. Unfortunately members of the five churches that Vicki and Ruben have planted throughout the DR were affected- one family lost their entire house, but this morning a supporter of Hope Mountain reached out and offered to pay every single expense to build this family a new house. hallelujah, HALLELUJAH! HOW AMAZING! Open handedness: a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Today my job was to bake three massive batches of sweet corn bread for the neighbors lining these streets- I’m talking stupid amounts of bread. After lunch we spread out and went door to door offering everyone we saw bread and prayer if they’d like.
Mindset: If all we can do is offer bread to show that we care after the storm, then so be it.
One of the women we offered bread to invited us into her home. I asked (through our magical translator and friend, Star) what her story was. She explained that she got married young, had three kids, and introduced us to three of her grandchildren. Her father died eight years ago, so she took her mother in and cares for her husband, children, grandchildren, and mother day in and day out. Not to mention through talking with her we found that her back has been in severe pain for the past four years. She allowed one of the girls on my team to lay a hand on her and pray for her. It was beautiful. I haven’t stopped thinking about her since. Her endurance and selflessness is profound. I think the Lord wants me to go back to her, we’ll see what happens.
Human connection. Powerful!
Good things are happening here.
Moments I don’t want to forget: I danced with a blind man in the streets a couple days ago.
Tuesday I walked to the corner store with Dasia, Thyme, Taylor, and Aubree and one of the street pups curled up at our feet. We started loving on the pup and combing him out when out of nowhere a little sweetie walked up and layed on my lap. She saw that T and I were gently caring for the dog and she began to slowly and carefully love him with us. Then she tugged my arm and led me to the street and we danced. We spun and laughed and twirled and swayed. She is gorgeous- long lashes, rosy features, compassionate nature..so softly and sincerely beautiful.
Magic! This is living!!
Written on Saturday, September 23rd: We were told to, in our teams, pray and ask God what He wills for this community, and do it. My team and I prayed together and got inspired. We decided to set up a table in the street and offer to paint women’s nails for free- just to sit at their feet, offer them rest, and make them feel beautiful. It’s international- women want to feel beautiful, seen, worthy, treasured. We wanted the women of this community to be empowered. A lot of them have large families to care after each and every day; with constant selflessness it’s easy to lose your sense of self and the beauty and power within womanhood. The idea was that we would bring them in feeling beautiful, and they’d leave feeling something strong within them..something eternal..GOD! We made invitations to hand out, we collected flowers and greenery to decorate our table, and made cards to thank them for their time and encourage them (all translated to Spanish of course).
Gosh, it was beautiful.
From three year olds to elderly, women came to our table and we sat at their feet and painted their nails. For hours we sat and we welcomed and we painted. One woman google translated “it’s so nice to see people doing good things for this community.”
Chills.
Good things are happening here.
Written on Sunday, September 24th: This afternoon eight of the girls here joined a local volleyball tournament. If you know anything about me, I’m not the “sporty” type, SO Taylor, Dasia, Thyme, and I took a walk to rally as many kids as we could to invite them to come to the court with us. The sun seemed to be shining brighter today or something because it was blazing out. We ran into a group of people diving into a little water hole to keep cool and bathe and shortly after we walked up to the river I found myself being shoved into a sewer that connected the river from one side of the street to the other by little crazy soaking wet children.
Wet and dirty and alive! Joy! The kids loved it.
The four of us managed to come back to the court with kids around our necks, on our backs, and holding on to our hands. I love little things more than kids hanging on to every limb I’ve got and laughing at absolutely nothing and absolutely everything all at the same time. Shortly after we had trekked back to the court with our army of street kids it started POURING. People ran for cover, but our squad just let the rain come down. We danced and screamed and went wild. Careless in the care of God.
Ended up walking a woman home that I’ve seen nearly every day since the buses dropped us off here at Hope Mountain. She lives on the same street as us, so we’ll often see her sitting on her front porch or walking around or at the basketball court. We’ll say “Hola, hola!!”, smiling and waving. Goodness, she’s always smiling. One half of her body- her arm and leg- is dysfunctional and she has a hard time speaking, but we’ve really managed to connect. Today we walked her home in the pouring rain- we held her hand and
screamed any song we could thing of about rain at the top of our lungs- she couldn’t understand a word we were saying, but she was BEAMING. Every inch of fabric we were wearing was soaked through and our hair was wild and we were freezing, but we were happy! Felt so free walking home in the downpour. Something beautiful about
the mix of carelessness and euphoria in that walk.
Again, good things are happening here.
I’m believing more than ever before that it’s not immature or careless to celebrate. Celebrating requires strength. Strength because celebrating in a world like today’s means celebrating in the midst of all kinds of evils. Yet I’m choosing to fight for joy, to add music to a broken world, to laugh without fear of the future.
Honestly all I can say is read the Bible. It’s making me come alive.
Until next time<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 sending love back home/to wherever you and your screen are on this earth<3
