Blog from the DR
As I sit here on this tattered brown couch in the Children’s center called Cien Fuego I can’t help but want to close my eyes from the exosting week I have had here in Lajas DR. Day after day a new ministry, food that’s seemingly delicious at first, and beautiful faces surrounding me at every moment. In all the hubbub of ministry I have found my self falling in love with this beautiful country more and more each day. I have had the opportunity to experience prayer walks, learning how to cook Dominican food working the land, and working in the children’s center. Our ministry contact for the month Is pastor Ruben and his wife Vicki from Dallas Texas. They have been married for 22 years and have 8 children raining from 22-6 years old. Their oldest 4 are off to collage and also insisted in the United States Military and their youngest live with them in Lajas. Ruben is from the Dominican Republic and his wife Vicki is from Texas. After living in the states for more than 20 years the Dominguez family began there journey to minister to the hearts of Rubens people. After years of living here in the DR, The Lord has provided for them in ways I can’t even describe. In just 3 years they have built a school for kids in one of the most poor neighborhoods in all of DR. The children live among trash heaps because there family’s can’t afford to pay rent for even a small cheep place to live, so the only option they have is the dumps.Most family’s here have multiple children and can hardly afford to feed them let alone provide them with a good education. There houses are made of cardboard or thin sheet metal. Only half the neighborhood roads are paved and that was only within the last 2 years. There are baby’s that roam the streets aimlessly in little diapers or underpants looking for things to do, while there are older children out in the trash heaps looking for recyclable items to collect and cell. Life here seems so unreal. I can’t imagine my life this way. I would never wish this life on my worst enemy. At times I question God, why? These precious little ones don’t deserve this life.. Where is that baby’s mother? Why is it so unsafe for these precious niñoitas? And God said so simply, even the richest person lives a life of calamity. It is easer for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It’s true a rich man doesn’t wake up in the morning in his king size bed in his beautiful air conditioned house and wonder if he will get a meal that day spending hours upon hours in communion with God just to answer their prayers for enough food to feed their family “today”. He doesn’t wonder if God loves him enough to provide the simplest needs he has for that day like a bath or enough recyclables from the trash heap to make it to the next day. He has all his riches and splendor to keep him happy and comfortable. But these people.. What do they have? Only God. Everyday they wake up facing death, deaease, famine, addiction and illness. Imagine with me just for a second waking up to your mother or father dead beside you at the young age of 5. Or looking at your two or three year old and with tears in your eyes saying I’m sorry baby but I can’t give you food today. For a father and husband that’s gotta be tough, not to be able to provide for your family the way your human nature was created to, and for a mother and wife, heartbreaking not to be able to provide the basic necessities your family needs to be healthy and thriving. These people NEED God, that’s all they have. The more you need God the less you need anything else, the easer it is to live a life so impossible to the typical American… Even the poorest one. Each day that passes is a day that the Holy Spirit teaches me something. All I need in this world is God. Even when it seems like my world is falling apart because my new home or “tent” was infested by fire ants in the middle of the night. All I need is God. He provided me With that tent and has compleat dominion and control over those nasty ants. All I need is God. the Holy Spirit taught me about choosing the right attitude choosing to see a seemingly bad situation through the eyes of Abba father. Helping me to remember that I at least have a shelter over my head, a warm sleeping bag to cover me and a pillow, though small to lay my head on at night. I still have far more then those kids only minuets away from me have ever had in there entire lives of living. All I need is God.
