How do you pour into someone and minister to them when they are blessing you to begin with? Here in the Dominican Republic there is an amazing culture of community and giving hearts. This makes my heartache to see God move into their hearts.
Each house you walk up to welcomes you with open arms. Some of the things we have been told when walking up to a house “may my house be your house” and one family, who was not even Christians, responded “if we have love, we have time” after we asked to share the gospel with them. I can only imagine what it would be like if everyone in the world was so open and loving with their time and home. One of things that makes us even laugh is that every home we walk up to without fail pulls out a stack of Europlast chairs (these are just standard plastic stacking chairs).
These are people with little to no money and no more than simple jobs but one common thread between all of them is their store of chairs for anyone who may come to visit their homes. We laugh about it and joke “here come the Europlast chairs”, but when you think about it these chairs represent love. I think the reason it is so noticeable is because in America, our house is our house and most people live quiet private lives. So far, this is just our first week and most of our conversations have been learning about the people and their family and just briefly sharing God’s love for them. This has left me realizing that I have learned so much about two different small communities in just a matter of a week yet how 
many communities have I lived in and known no one. It can’t be that hard for me to step out and try to learn about the people around me. What would my world look like if I poured into those around me, or if I learned about families around me? I can only imagine what my prayer life would look like or what would be a priority when suddenly all the people around me in whatever community I find myself in are important to me and mean more than a face. What do you know about the community living around you? Because you live there, is it different?
