Dominican Food, not Mexican...but Montezuma still has to Take Revenge

So I’ve got to say something about the food because it’s so important on our trips J. First of all, Dominican food is not like Mexican food. Dominicans don’t make tortillas, don’t eat tacos, don’t have refried beans, and don’t eat much spicy stuff. Instead, the main staples of Dominican cuisine are rice, beans, and chicken (arroz, habichuelas, y pollo) – a dish known as the Dominican flag – which they eat pretty much every day. And I can see why – Dominican beans and rice are amazing. At each meal we also had bread, fresh fruit (including pineapple, mango, apple, bananas, and grapes), salad, and various deserts. I usually eat to much because there are so many good options.

While we always eat breakfast at the hotel, all of our lunches are prepared by a Dominican woman named Suni (sp?) and a group of other women. So we got awesome, homemade food pretty much every single day. Sometimes during the week she’ll make American food like spaghetti (or as they say, espaghettis) for the sake of those who don’t love Dominican food and our GI tracts, but it’s just as good. We certainly do not starve while we’re there.

For dinners we have several different things throughout the week. The first night we have Papa John’s (Papa Juan’s, we call it), on Sunday nights we go to Jumbo (food court), one night Suni makes fried chicken which we eat at the hotel, one night we go out to a Chinese restaurant, and another night we tour the colonial zone and eat at a restaurant there. On Wednesday nights, we have completely American food, as we grill hamburgers and bratwursts before going to church. As you can see, there’s plenty of non-Dominican food in there so we don’t get bored.

One of our favorite foods they have in the Dominican comes from a frozen yogurt chain called Yogen Fruz. At Yogen Fruz, you have a whole freezer full of ingredients to choose from (from berries to mango to pineapple to chocolate), then what you choose is put in a machine with plain frozen yogurt and completely ground up and mixed in. So, basically, you create your own flavor of frozen yogurt, and you can put different things together, say, strawberry, raspberry, and caramel, or whatever. I think we calculated that there are over 40,000 combinations if you can pick up to three things to put in. Anyway, it’s amazing, and we’re banking one it coming to the US very soon.

Despite any precautions we could take, it seems almost no one on staff escaped getting sick at some point, mainly with nasty, evil GI crud involving nausea, fever, and the body attempting to empty itself from both ends. And apparently they still have colds in the tropics, because a few others got what the Dominicans call “la gripe”, which is anything that involves cold or flulike symptoms. Really, they have colds in the tropics? Then there were those select few fortunate, blessed ones who never got sick. I got sick at the end of the first week with the abovementioned Montezuma’s Revenge. Then, in just one weekend, more than half of the staff (about 12 people) got sick at some point, some pretty badly. We had eaten dinner in the hotel restaurant, which we never do, and it was apparently a bad idea. We do have one funny story that came out of it, however, when two girls became really sick in the same room. At one point, one of them, Katherine, happened to be throwing up in the bathroom. The other, Mallory, wasn’t feeling great, so she went outside for some fresh air. Of course, while she was out on the balcony she suddenly needed to throw up, and so, the bathroom being taken, where else was she to puke but off the balcony on the two floors’ balconies below? Later on, the exact same thing happened, but with their places switched. Oh, the poor maids on the lower floors. From what I hear, that many people getting sick over the course of a trip – or at least all at once – doesn’t normally happen. At least we can look back now and laugh about it!

Singing and Dancing for Jesus...Really!

I love the Dominican church in Cielo. It was here, after our last service worshipping with them, that it hit me how much I loved this country and these people. The people of this church are one of the best examples I’ve seen showing that we don’t material blessing to be faithful, joyful, and satisfied in Christ.

This truth is expressed the most to me in their worship. There is so much energy in their worship and praise, and it’s not just because of the style of music. There is an honesty and genuineness motivating their worship, with no sign of pretense. They sing with all they have and dance for our King because they truly love Him and know that He is worthy. Unlike us, they have not always been secure and fairly certain of having what they needed in the future. Rather, they have had to rely and depend on God, and through this have seen His faithfulness in providing. And so praise out of honest thanksgiving and love. One man in particular just embodies this feeling and personality. He’s an older man, and I don’t know his name, but he gave us so much joy as we watched him just dance and sing, earnestly praising our God for his goodness every single time we worshipped together. You have no idea how happy it made us to see a grown man just dance for the Lord, and we just know that it flows from love and true joy from the Father, not some kind of attempt to look good.

This honest desire to praise was also very apparent the first Wednesday that we were there. It just so happened that the Thursday of that week was a national holiday, Corpus Christi day, or the Body of Christ day. The church, which normally has church on Wednesday night, responded by making the service much longer, continuing to praise God long after the Americanos left – until midnight or one in the morning, simply because they could and they wanted to. I pray that such a spirit invades the American church, which is truly a part of the same body, serving the same God, our Big God. May we understand our God’s love and glory so well that we would just follow the Spirit sometimes and keep praising because He deserves it.

The genuine nature of the worship is solidified to me by the level of participation which the members of the church have in the service. Almost every Wednesday service a group or individual gets up to perform. I’ve heard some beautiful songs that way, and watched a group of girls do a choreographed dance complete with white gloves and black lights. The members of the church are in charge of the band (which is extremely talented) and the singing, and often others preach besides the pastor. In fact, the pastor doesn’t have to do that much because the congregation participates and basically runs the service. I know it’s partly because the Americans were there, but I only heard the church’s pastor preach one time, not because he’s lazy (no way!), but because he didn’t need to.

While of course this church has its flaws as does any human-run organization, when I’m there I am faced with a realness and naturalness of God that I think we sometimes lose in our perfectly planned and laid out services and our inhibitions about really letting lose in worship. I think that if we really faced our true God, our inhibitions would disappear, as did Isaiah’s when he entered the throne room, and we would worship. But only the Holy Spirit can reveal this true God to us – so let’s start praying!

This video doesn't convey it very well or do their worship justice by a long shot, but you'll get a little taste. This is us singing "How Great is Our God" in Spanish. After the video is finished, they actually change and sing the chorus in English just for us Americanos, then it changes to "How Great Thou Art," in Spanish of course. It was awesome.

The Groups and Projects

Over the course of the month we worked on several different projects alongside the American groups that came down. Three main groups traveled to Santo Domingo, one from Montgomery, Alabama; another from Orlando, Florida; and the last from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was very interesting to be there with several different groups of people, as each was quite different: in personality, age distribution, size, dynamic, and focus. For example, the Alabama group was a youth group of mainly high-schoolers, and they were determined to – and did – get a lot of construction done while they were there. The Winston-Salem group, on the other hand, did much less construction (although that was partly due to the rain) and focused more on relational outreach such as Bible school, the Haitian literacy program, and other events which they organized to better get to know and fellowship with the community. This is, of course, a pretty surface example, as the other differences, in personality, group dynamic, and otherwise, are much more difficult to describe, and not terribly relevant anyway. I can very briefly say that the Alabama group, being comprised of youth rather near our (the staff’s) ages, was generally the most energetic and fun for the staff. And being from the Alabama in the Deep South it was funny to watch the regional dynamics which popped up between Alabamians, North Carolinians, and the Northerners from Rockford, Illinois.

As far as work projects went, they can be divided into a couple different types. First were the one-time, start-to-finish construction type projects. The there were about five separate projects which we worked during the month.

First was Karina’s house, where we mixed and poured the concrete floor and primed and painted the walls, and were able to dedicate the finished house at the end of the first week. Finally having their house finished was a huge blessing to Karina and her husband, who had been living in just half of a house for almost a full year. They had been constructing a house as the money became available to add on, which was a very slow process. Mission Emanuel saw this and decided to help them finish their home. Construction on this half of the house had begun before we arrived – hence the rather small amount of work that had to be done to finish it.

The second and third projects were beginning just as we got there, so we got to build and watch them grow from the ground up. These two projects are situated side by side, only about five feet apart, and will soon be houses. One house is for Vijo and Glendy and their family. Vijo and Glendy are employed by Mission Emanuel and used to live in a house on Mission Emanuel’s property. As Mission Emanuel has expanded, however, their house needed to be turned into offices, so another house is being built for them in the community. The other house is for the family of Aquelino (I think I spelled it right…), who is the physical therapist at Mission Emanuel’s medical clinic who works with their special needs patients.

When we arrived, these two soon-to-be houses were just ditches dug in the shape of a house and rooms where the footers – the foundation – would be poured. When we left, the cinder block walls were going up on each house, and were nearly finished at Vijo and Glendy’s. To get to that stage, however, we had to twist the rebar, mix and pour the concrete footers (using a lot of small buckets), level out the ground in each room, and lay a lot of block. It was pretty dirty and very hot and sweaty, but, believe it or not, we quite enjoyed doing the work. There’s just some about using your hands and body to work and tiring yourself out that you miss when you only use your brain to work, sitting and reading and typing or whatever. It’s a good feeling, a good kind of tired.

I should also tell you about the amazing Haitian workers that work/put up with us at the construction sites. There were about four or five of them always around this year, including Marcos, Luis, and others that I don’t want to try and spell their names because I’d probably get it wrong. They are some of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen, and really good sports, considering they have to teach us how to do everything and fix the things that we mess up. We joke that they see us coming and say (in another language), “Crap! We were getting so much work done, but now those Americans had to show up.” They are, of course, much more efficient workers than we are, and probably can work about twice as fast as we can with better quality. We’re always amazed when we finish work in the afternoon then come back just the next day to see how much work they’ve done. The point being, they’re just awesome.

The next project was one that began in March, actually the one that I worked on during my spring break trip. This was Dominga’s house. In March not much was there yet and we were just smoothing out the floors and pouring some concrete in the columns. When we got here this time, though, the walls were finished and plastered and the roof was already on, with a pile of sand outside just waiting for us to mix into concrete for the floor. So, during the third week the Orlando group mixed and poured the floors, then sanded, primed, and painted the walls. Other workers put in the doors and windows, and it was finished! We dedicated it the Friday of that week – an exceptionally beautiful and powerful thing. There is a story behind that house, and Dominga herself could be a saint, she is such a loving, humble, and godly woman. I’ll tell you more about that time later.

The last project that we worked on during the month was a palm garden in the Mission Emanuel compound. This was also a very special project with a story. It was (and is) special because it is more than just a garden to look nice – it is also a memorial. It was constructed in memory of a student named Spencer who was from Winston-Salem and loved to come to the DR, but who committed suicide earlier this year. Since I’m not from there I don’t any more about him and what happened than the relatively little that I’ve heard. However, I do know from what I’ve seen and heard that this garden is beautiful and lasting show of support and love for him and his family in a time when they certainly need those things. And not only is it a show of our human love, but as a living memorial it proclaims the glory of God alongside the entire creation.

In addition to these beginning to end construction projects, there are also some ongoing projects that we worked on. One was helping to label and bag bottles of water so the Water Treatment facility can sell them. I say this is ongoing because every day we would finish a few thousand bottles of water we would come back the next day to find another mountain of full bottles awaiting us. Personally, I rather enjoyed the work, as mindless tasks can be rather stress-relieving before they become completely boring. And, after all, it was a good cause because according to their sampling tests, this is the cleanest water in the entire country.

Another ongoing project was the Haitian literacy program. It’s just a literacy program because many of the Haitian children do not have the proper documentation and can’t be in a real school. I unfortunately didn’t participate in this very much, although I wish I had. From what I know, all of the children were learning how to read and write in Spanish, as well as singing, praying, and of course, playing. Although not technically a school, this may appear to be the closest to what a school would look like in the United States, as the Haitian children are generally more disciplined and well-behaved than the Dominican children, though no less fun and cute and awesome. This program is really crucial to the Haitians, as simple education goes a long way toward breaking the cycle of poverty.

Perhaps the most permanent ongoing project for Mission Emanuel and the Americans who come is to build relationships and love the people of Cielo and Nazaret, the neighborhoods where the Mission works. This is without a doubt the most important part of the trip and the means by which Christ’s love is most shown. Certainly, we show Christ’s love to people in a very powerful way by providing for their physical needs, and in some ways this backs up our words. It’s like James says: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” But, in response to spiritual need, Christ himself most showed love by hugging and touching and smiling and talking – personal contact. As I’ve said before, it is our time out in the community that most changes us, the Americans, and, I think, the Dominicans as well. It’s in these relationships, though they are unfortunately fragmented or cut far too short, that the most redemption happens for this place and its people, and for us. This is how Jesus works – person to person, face to face.

To see photos of the projects, go to my facebook pictures: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1268050533&v=photos. I'm having trouble getting them in the right place to put them on here.

A Day's Work

This isn’t nearly as exciting in writing as it is in reality, but it’ll help you realize what we do every day on a trip.

On a normal day we got up for breakfast at 7:00am, which we ate at the hotel where we stay. Then we piled into the buses/van at around 8:15 to drive about 20 minutes to Cielo where the Mission Emanuel compound is. From there, we split up to work at different projects such as construction, helping with the Haitian literacy program, or labeling and bagging water bottles at the water treatment facility. As staff, we would generally direct and help with whatever work was being done, as well as serve the group members by bringing them water and mortar and things like that. Then at about 11:30 the staff would leave to help set up for lunch, while the group would work a little longer and come to lunch at 12:30. After lunch a variety of things might happen. Some people might continue the construction projects, while others may go and hang out in the community with kids and families; while some groups held different community outreach activities some afternoons (like mass chaos on the baseball field, aka a kickball game). At about 3:30 we would head back to the hotel for some much needed free time spent at the pool, napping, reading, and general relaxation. Each night we would have dinner at a different place – one night at the hotel, another at Jumbo (Walmart with a food court attached), others at a couple different restaurants. Wednesday nights we would grill burgers and bratwursts at the Mission before going to church, while on Thursday or Friday we would leave the hotel early to tour the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo then eat a restaurant there. (By the way, if you want to find the first of anything in the Americas, look in Santo Domingo , the oldest city in the New World.) Also, sometime during the week we would go to the market, a building full of stalls literally stuffed with souvenirs and vendors trying unceasingly to get you to buy something. Then each night after dinner we would have a staff devotion, often followed by playing some hilarious group games.

I told you it might not sound very exciting, but I don’t think I ever had a bad or uninteresting day there (except maybe the day I got sick). Through what we did, it was so easy to see God, most especially in our interactions with the people – workers on the worksite, children in the community, families in their homes, and people worshipping at church. His glory was everywhere, even in the midst of suffering and poverty – in fact, He overwhelmed it. When it was all done, we were really tired, but it was a good kind of tired. We had spent ourselves for other people and for something bigger than ourselves, and while we were tired, we were also satisfied. We had given, yet we were full. God is Good and worthy of all praise, and his word is true:

And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

-Isaiah 58:10

I Love the Dominican Republic

The next several entries aren’t mainly reflections, just observations and memories that remind me why I love the Dominican Republic. You’ll also get some of the details of the trip – what we did, who was there, what a day looked like, and more.

I’ll start out with my observations and perceptions of the DR itself and its culture, which of course is still quite limited because I’ve mainly only seen on tiny piece of the country and have only been there one month, mainly around a lot of other Americanos.

Picking a random place to begin, the traffic in the DR is crazy, and it’s seems like there’s always a lot of traffic, at least in Santo Domingo. There are certain traffic signals which are basically optional (like one stoplight in particular and most stop signs), staying in the lanes (if they are marked) is optional, and the horn is used liberally for a variety of reasons. These reasons include telling someone to get a move on when they wait a split second too long after a light changes, and alerting someone to your presence so they don’t just decide to change lanes right on top of you. There is no such thing as defensive driving – you would never get anywhere. You just have to turn out in front of oncoming traffic to turn left most of the time, assuming they will slow down instead of hitting you. At many stoplights, men walk up and down the rows of cars trying to sell bananas or necklaces or cell phones or whatever else. Lots of people ride motorcycles, zipping in between lanes of traffic and through the middle of intersections. Sometimes they get amazing numbers of people on these small bikes, too, like 4 people and some other stuff. It’s partly due to these motorcyclists that all roads off of the highway are riddled with the largest speed bumps you’ve ever seen, which require an almost complete stop to drive over. Fortunately, however, we have awesome and very experienced Dominican drivers, starting with the amazing Rodolfo (aka Rodo Baggins), who drives their main bus and Bienvenido (or Bienvo) who drives the staff van and has a wonderful personality at all hours of the day. With all those loud Americans, these drivers put up with a lot!

The weather in the DR doesn’t ever change much, unless it decides to pour rain, as it did often during our last week. I can almost guarantee you that today the highs are in the upper 80s with lows in the upper 70s and consistent humidity in the 80-95% range. Even the Dominicans sweat all the time.

Besides the traffic, most everything else is more chaotic than the United States, including school and the grocery store. In fact, going in the grocery store when it’s busy is about like driving, except you have a cart instead of a car. Nothing generally happens really efficiently, except for the Haitian workers doing construction. The inefficiency is seen especially well at the hotel where we stay, as we tell them to have the group’s rooms ready about an hour early so we’ll have them on time. The power flickers on and off randomly at the hotel, and goes out for hours at a time at the Mission. The water is, of course, very unsafe to drink. Trash isn’t collected very consistently, so many open spaces and gutters are littered with trash (vile plastic!), and the village of Cielo has its own dump site right off the side of the hill in front of the Mission. Cows wander around the neighborhood (I guess everyone know whose they are), along with chickens, dogs, cats, and sometimes ducks. In general, everything is a little bit dirtier and older and more well-used than in the United States, except in the select American-ish places like fast food places, some stores, our hotel, and Jumbo, the DR equivalent of a Walmart Supercenter and a mall put together. Almost all advertisements and business signs are hand painted (very well) onto walls or storefronts rather than having nice logos and manufactured signs.

I say none of this to talk down upon the Dominicans. In fact, I feel almost like Americans are a little too obsessed with everything looking perfectly clean and nice on the outside, and everything being orderly and controlled. While that’s good sometimes, we can carry it a little far. No matter what, though, there are many other things that make me love the Dominican Republic. First of all, at least in the villages where we work, people are very welcoming. They often invite you into their homes then make you sit down, even if the only sit they have is an overturned bucket. They are very giving people, too – we went into one of the poorest houses in the neighborhood and they gave each of us mangos, likely just about the only food they had because they grew on a tree outside. And the children are the best. I don’t think there is a small child in the entire DR who is not cute and playful and loving. I’ll tell more about them later. In general, when you get to know people they are just so loving, humble, and thankful. And while you can really see evidence of the oppression of poverty in so many pairs of eyes, the Dominicans I know are still people of energy and laughter and hope, especially the young ones. It’s really not hard to love them.

In writing all of this, I find that it’s very difficult for me to describe why I grew to love this place and its people so much, and I haven’t done a very good job. I think it will be easier as I describe some more specific things. It's also true that I only know a tiny bit about the culture compared to all their is to know. Now all I can say is that Dominicans are people like you and me – they laugh, play, work, have birthdays, sing, dance, succeed, fail, and feel happy, sad, sick, forlorn, encouraged, grateful, depressed, and triumphant. And I love them not for any rational reason, not for any characteristic they possess. I didn’t try to love them; it just happened. I love them because my God loves me, so much that it overflows into them. God does the loving, not me (fortunately!).

Poverty Cannot Be Ignored

I wrote this in response to my trip to Haiti:

There’s a part of me, or a little voice of the enemy, that says it would be just fine to continue on with my life the way it is and those in poverty can do the same. I mean, am I really that bad? And am I really going to change any of their situations? I was doing just fine before I saw the poverty, wasn’t I?

But then there’s this other part of me, a pretty big part – that part that God has taken control of – and that part says all of that is just crap. I think that even if I wasn’t a follower of Christ, there would be something in me that knew that justice should be and must be brought to other people, that ignoring such obvious suffering is heartless, inhuman, and wrong. It’s that bit called a conscience, what I see as perhaps a little bit of the divine image left unbroken in our makeup. That part asks how I can keep enjoying the blessings and comforts I have in the knowledge that these people have none of them. It inquires as to whether such a life spent in purposeful ignorance and indifference to many of those God loves may just be a poverty of its own.

I think of the beauty brought into my life through music, my opportunities to listen to and play it. I just happened to be listening to music as I rode back from Haiti, and music is really one of my passions, something that gets me going and excited, that brings me intense enjoyment, and that connects me to God. Music is a profound blessing, and I often thank God for the beauty and joy it gives me. But a truth finally struck home as I rode away from the poverty in Haiti – so many are deprived of this beauty which I love so much. The vast majority of the people in the world don’t have an iPod and the ability to listen to just about whatever they want, whenever. So many have no opportunity to learn to play an instrument, even if they wanted to. No, those in the Port-au-Prince tent cities know only noise and pollution and heat and sickness and hopelessness. And here I am, thanking God for His wonderful blessings, ignoring the fact that so many are without this same blessing. The same can be said of so many things in my life which I love and enjoy.

When I consider this, even without thinking about God, who in good conscience could ignore such poverty?

Then, of course, we serve a God who loves the poor. In serving Him, He tells us to love the things and people that He loves, including all of our neighbors – basically all of humanity. And then He still has to tell us over and over to love and serve and give to the poor because over and over we marginalize the poor, forgetting that they are our neighbors, or simply pretending that they’re not. Even when we do serve the poor, we often feel like it’s some kind of spiritual extra credit, earning our brownie points with God for a good spot in heaven or something like that. We’ve decided it’s just an obligation, something “good” people do a little bit of in their spare time and with their spare cash so they can keep their “good” image. We live like God’s command to serve the poor is backed up mainly by a big, cosmic “because I said so.”

But that not it at all. We’ve completely missed it. First of all, our service to the poor is simply justice. It’s bringing just a little bit more of a semblance of fairness into the world. I’m amazed we still have to be convinced of this with words and experiences. If we think people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then why, when we apply this, does it not apparently apply to those we see in poverty, surrounded by death, oppressed by a lack of options, simple survival a much higher priority than happiness? At least it never applies if it involves us giving up anything of ours - any one of those items in the long list of things that we have decided bring us more happiness, while oftentimes they really squeeze it out of us. Is it fair that I have so much and they have so little, that I have all the opportunities in the world to shape my life and live in prosperity, and they have none? Doesn’t seem like I can justify a “yes” to that one. And speaking of entitlement – I feel entitled to three meals a day, a comfortable bed, a cell phone that works, a college education, an air conditioned vehicle, general comfort all day, and relatively few inconveniences. Otherwise, I’ll probably complain a little bit, or a lot. Man, what if everyone in the world felt entitled to such things, such luxuries! Anyway, the point is that my idea of fairness is pretty warped. Our comfortable lives, free of the tiresome and risky necessity of depending on God for physical things, make it exceptionally easy to ignore anything outside our little worlds, especially this difficult idea of justice and service which actually involves sacrifice.

We are especially good at glossing over the fact that following our Good Fater’s command to serve the poor would actually be better for us. This isn’t a pointless command. He tells us to serve the poor not only because He loves the poor but because He loves us. As silly as it seems in the context of my deluded, self-centered life, giving up stuff and spending my very self on behalf of the poor is actually a blessing for me just as much as it is for those I’m sacrificing for. Just ask anyone who has ever been on a mission trip and they’ll tell you they received spiritually just as much as they gave physically or more. They’ll tell you that when Jesus said “blessed are the poor” He wasn’t just saying they will be blessed when they get to heaven. They’re blessed now, only in a way that we often overlook and blow off as secondary. So many of them are blessed with a spiritual wealth many in America never see, because they know that you don’t need physical stuff to rejoice in the Lord and live life to the fullest. We find out that it’s us who are impoverished. When we serve the poor, we are blessed. It’s not an obligation – why do we keep insisting that it is? It’s a blessing, a command from a loving and just God who has all of our lives at heart, rich and poor, desiring only our good.

The point is that poverty cannot be ignored, spiritual or physical, within our country or without. We can’t just go on with life. And it demands more than just a one-time response – it requires a whole life of bringing justice. It’s not spiritual extra credit but a constant and regular activity for Christ’s followers, an outpouring of His overflowing love in our lives, expressed in many different ways. It’s not just giving money to an organization that fights global poverty – serving the poor may express itself as outreach in our own communities, loving those around us who are depressed, abandoned, unlovable, and hopeless. It’s not an obligation – it’s the command of a good Father, demanded for the good of all His children, because service to the poor reduces the poverty of both the served and the servant.

Why I'm Blogging

So, I'm back from the DR and all I can say right now is that it was awesome, one of the best months I've ever had. It was also pretty busy and tiring, so I didn't have much time or energy to write while I was there. Now that I'm home, however, I have that time and energy, so I'm going to try to write down some of the experiences and realizations that I had while I was there.

I'm writing this blog for several reasons. First, I want to record the experience so I can remember it much later. Second, I am encouraging/forcing myself to journal and reflect on experiences that I had rather than just letting them pass by, as well as taking the journal entries that I wrote while I was there and putting them together so they make more sense to a reader. I also want to help those who haven't been there (especially those who sponsored me) to get an idea of what the DR is like and what I did, and challenge them with some of the same things I am being challenged with from the trip.

So be on the lookout for more entries!

Haiti Pictures

The pictures I took on our trip to Haiti may be found at

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67880&id=1268050533&saved#!/album.php?aid=67880&id=1268050533&ref=mf

if you have a Facebook. They aren't amazing pictures, but they kind of tell the story.

HAITI: Memories and Reflections (the Epic)

These are my observations and forthcoming reflections after my trip to Haiti with the staff of Mission Emanuel during my stay in the Dominican Republic. We went to Haiti in order to deliver 3000 bottles of water from Mission Emanuel’s water treatment facility in Santo Domingo, along with a variety of food and medical supplies. The supplies went immediately to assist Misión Rescate, a partner with Mission Emanuel which runs a medical clinic, food distribution program, and general relief effort (basically whatever they can give to and do for the Haitians) in Port-au-Prince across from the presidential palace. Sixteen of us rode there in a bus, the back stuffed with supplies so that we all fit very snugly in the front few rows of seats for the nine hours it took to get there. We left Santo Domingo at 4:00am, and in a smaller, faster vehicle it might have taken 6 or 7 hours with God’s mercy and not much traffic. However, with border security/chaos (which actually went really smoothly, considering), crazy traffic, bad roads, and the many large (literal) speed bumps along the way, we finally arrived at our destination at 1:00pm. We unloaded our cargo, met the people who ran the mission and toured its pretty minimal facilities (a large tent for the distribution, and the medical clinic), then packed and handed out food bags to those who came to the medical clinic. Two and a half hours later we were back on the road in a much roomier bus, to arrive back at our hotel and guiltily soft beds at 11:30pm (18 hours of driving). What a day! We’re still processing what we saw.

I should preface my observations and reflections by pointing out that I realize they are severely limited. All I really know is mainly what I saw out of the window a bus and inside the compound where Misión Rescate is, and that isn’t much. It was only one day, I didn’t talk to basically any of the people living there, and I didn’t see nearly everything. But just scratching the surface of this country is almost more than anyone can swallow at once.

Observations and Exposure

Haiti. If I told you that in the DR there was chaos, that there were crowds of people, and that there was poverty, I would be right. Then I could say the exact same about Haiti, and still be right, but you wouldn’t get the whole picture. Because in Haiti (at least at the border and Port-au-Prince where I went), there is more chaos, more and denser crowds of people, crazier traffic (you have no idea how crazy), more trash everywhere, and more widespread and worse poverty. The infrastructure is significantly worse. Many places don’t have running (let alone clean) water, (reliable) electricity, or sanitation. I didn’t see any nice-looking houses, whereas even the DR has areas of decent, clean places to live with some utilities and maybe even a car (maybe you could call it middle class). Rather, just about everywhere we went looked poor, really poor. Almost nothing is clean and sanitary, and nowhere smells particularly pleasant. People line the sometimes narrow streets, selling whatever they have to try and make a little money and feed their families. There are people, lots of them, everywhere. Women walk down the sidewalk carrying huge loads on their heads, children walk to and from school, and many, many others move around doing only they know what – and that may be nothing, as there was 80% unemployment even before the quake. People fish around in the sewer for some unknown treasure that we would probably call trash. The streets are clogged with all kinds of vehicles – car, trucks, motorcycles, and almost none of them look new and clean, like almost every car you see in the US. The kids come home from school in the afternoons and stand by the street talking because they don’t want to or can’t go back to their homes, which are probably tiny and cramped and dirty, no place to spend the afternoon. Oh, and it’s hot, really hot, most all of the time, and humid. Us Americans left the air conditioned bus and immediately started dripping sweat just standing around. I can’t comprehend what it would be like to live just in the heat for all hours of the day and on for years and years. And that’s just the heat. What about the tiny homes (or tents), pollution, lack of food and clean water, disease, insecurity, and sometimes crushing hopelessness of poverty, a lack of options, with nowhere to go and no way to change it?

From what I can tell, almost all of this was the case before January 12^th, when the earthquake hit. The earthquake took the rock bottom of physical poverty in this hemisphere and opened a chasm in it just so Haiti could fall a little further. Now, five months later, most empty spaces in the city (including some streets) are still filled with lines of tents wherein thousands of displaced families live with minimal sanitation, hygiene, or means of leaving any time soon. Small constructions of tarps, some sporting the logo of a relief organization (USAID specifically makes very sure everyone knows what it contributed), and other random materials are a common site, many serving as family homes. Huge piles of rubble still stand on the sides of some streets, while many collapsed buildings look like nothing’s really been moved since they fell, since very little heavy machinery exists to do so. Families still pick through the cinder-block-and-rebar ruins of homes and buildings, looking for something to salvage out of an already-picked-over pile of nothing. The presidential palace looks especially haunting, a specter of ruined grandeur rising above a massive city of tents, seemingly unchanged in five long months. The lofty domes have fallen in on the halls beneath, pillars have crumbled, walls have collapsed, although it’s still much more than a rubble heap. The building would have been haunting even before it collapsed, as one would have been faced with a grandeur and wealth that should never have existed with people in extreme poverty just a quarter mile (and less) away – a mighty reminder of corruption. “Yeah,” I think, “this has got to be the Haitian government’s fault, those greedy, selfish, power-hungry people!” But if I’m honest with myself, this palace is also a reflection of my own corruption. A short plane flight away is my house, in my mind at least as nice as this palace was, the place where I smugly sit comfortably with a world of need around me. How dare I criticize the Haitian government’s corruption, as awful as it truly is! What about mine? Am I exempt from thinking about the plight of these people because I live farther away? Does this give me the right to saunter arrogantly up to Jesus and tell him they’re not my neighbor, or somehow convince myself that I can love people in poverty by ignoring them? My heart knows the answers.

Poverty is about People

This is a wildly superficial and inadequate description of what is really happening in Haiti. I could spend months living there just to get the gist of the physical condition of this country, and then take pages and pages to try and tell you. But then behind this physical façade are layers and layers and layers and layers of facts and truths and subtleties and stories and feelings and thoughts and struggles and conflicts and triumphs and complexities which I couldn’t learn about in years and years. There’s spirit and emotion and mind and soul of every person in this country, and then relationships between them. Only our God is big enough to know all of these things, because he hand crafted every one of these people and is sovereign over ever detail, even the piles of trash on the side of the road, and the drop of sweat or the tear rolling down a child’s face.

Because poverty is about people. I’m reminded of this every time I’m faced with it. People are in poverty, not places. Not countries. A country is just an imaginary shape drawn on a map. It’s God’s children, His creations, fearfully and wonderfully and beautifully made, that experience the pain, suffering, brokenness, and hopelessness of poverty. People are the ones who live in tent cities and sweat and get sick and lose family members in rubble. And their poverty is much more than physical. I can look in many of their eyes to see a hurt and despair that goes much deeper than a lack of food and shelter, not to mention comfort. But people are not just the receivers of this suffering; they are also the primary source of beauty and love and anything Good – anything God – in these places. Surrounded by sin and death, people still bear the image, albeit a sometimes blurry and cracked one, of a glorious God. In these circumstances, people are the ones to still praise God, love others, share, give, welcome, and show a spiritual strength that we can’t touch. People are the receivers of poverty (and also the creators and ignorers of it, like me and the Haitian government), but people are also the main way God shines through in these darkest of places.

Christ Shines Through

If only we have the presence of mind to look, we can still see God and His glory even here. It’s pretty tempting to look at such suffering and ask, “Where is our God, the one who says He loves us?” But to say that would be to ignore all kinds of wonders, big and small, that God is working in Haiti and around the world. This starts with the wonder of salvation. This sounds cliché and cheesy, but if we really understood what God did for all of us when He made a way for our complete salvation and joy, there’s no way we would question His love for us. But then there are all kinds of things beyond that. For one, I was floored by the beauty of much of the countryside of the Dominican Republic and parts of Haiti. The mountains which lay in the middle of the island shared by the two countries are really breathtaking – flat valleys rising steeply to smooth peaks, sometimes moist and forested, sometimes arid and covered in shrubs and cacti. I had no idea such beauty existed there. Even the chaos of the border crossing was contrasted by the calm of the lake right beside it, hills rising on the opposite shore. The city of Port-au-Prince is big, and the problem of poverty even bigger, but the huge mountains rising up around the city still proclaim the glory of a God who is so much bigger – infinite, in fact. On the drive back I glanced back through the bus window to see a beautiful, colorful sunset. Anyone in Port-au-Prince could have seen the same thing, the same beauty. It’s just another reminder that God’s love is universal, indiscriminate, and given to the entire world, just He allows the sun to shine on the entire Earth. Would that we could learn to love like that!

Even in the darkest of places, Christ is still a light, shining through His Body (and almost anything else). Like I said, His glory still flows through His people, and also through His provision. His Glory radiates into the heart of the brokenness through Misión Rescate, where exceptionally faithful people work and work and work without recognition to bring justice and healing and Christ to the Haitians. People like Omi (I think that’s how you spell it) the leader of Misión Rescate in Port-au-Prince, who has been there for months laboring and still had a big smile on her face thanking us when we arrived with our supplies. Misión Rescate has stayed in Port-au-Prince now after so many aid organizations have already pulled out, and hopes to become a long term effort, just as the needs are all very long term. I’ve talked to people who know much more about Misión Rescate than I do (such as one Anna Bolton), and they are amazed by what God is doing through these humble and faithful and compassionate people. They are truly doing God’s work, and His provision is obvious in what they do. For example, they were just about to run out of bottled water the moment we arrived, coincidentally bearing 3,000 bottles of water. At one point God provided 5,000 backpacks and school supplies – they were distributed in a few days. One day a shipment of bottled water came in, but Misión Rescate already had plenty of water to give and use. So, rather than hoarding it for later, Omi called another organization in Port-au-Prince and asked if they needed water. And Misión Rescate is just one big example of God working in Haiti. There are also all the small acts of strength, sacrifice, humility, and compassion that happen within families and friends and communities that are facing enormous hardship. As we see here in the DR, God’s glory doesn’t just exist in the broken places, Christ’s works actually outweigh the negative, as crazy as it seems when you’re there (and as often as we miss it). If we just look, miracles are everywhere. God’s glory remains, sometimes hidden, sometimes subtle, deep within sea of brokenness. Yet the all the sorrow and pain in the world are a just a drop in the ocean that is God’s love.

These hints – or monuments! – of God’s love and faithfulness in the midst of poverty remind me that this is not all there is. If this fleshy, physical life was all there was I think I would just cry all the time and be depressed for the rest of my life because the physical situation in Haiti, when viewed without God, is absolutely hopeless. Fortunately, though, that is not the end of the story. There is another separate reality which is in many ways much more weighty than the tangible one that we see (the one where this is hopeless), although as comfortably fleshy, physical beings we often forget that. And this reality - the spiritual reality - can be saved and transformed and redeemed even as the body suffers and people deal with physical poverty (though the two are connected). It’s not enough to deal with the physical needs; a person’s spiritual needs are really significant – after all, this part is eternal. In the spiritual there is always hope, and that bleeds over into the physical too, when we realize what God can do. And then we have only to remember the promises – the certainties – we have when we consider eternity. Someday this will be no more. No more tent-houses, diseases, pain, broken hearts, anguish, despair. No more decay and death of loved ones in earthquakes. No more sin and evil, and no more poverty. There’s no reason to be hopeless. Our God is big, and no matter what, He will restore and redeem, and His Will would be done even if we tried purposely to thwart it. Our hearts should break for our brothers and sisters sufferings as God’s does, but there’s no need to give into hopelessness in front of such a massive problem. This problem is much bigger than I am, but then again, so is the One who is fighting against it, and He has ultimately already won. Instead of despairing we have to move forward, learning what we can learn, changing what we can change, doing what we can do, praying what we can pray.

Some Things I’ve Learned

I’ll start with the things that I learned. First of all, there are some things which God slaps me in the face with every single time I am faced with extreme poverty. Of course I usually promptly forget again until He knocks me over the head again, but I wanted to write them down, in the hopes that they will eventually remain permanently in my thoughts and life. Remember, these are directed at me primarily, my challenges from God:

• · It’s so much worse to live like this (in poverty) than you ever thought. And you can’t imagine spending more than a day or so in their position. What about your whole life? What if you had no AC and shower and college and car to return to?
• · God is bigger, MUCH bigger. And Good. Put yourself in perspective, please.
• · I’m extremely whiny about extremely minor inconveniences and discomforts. I mean, I complained about the discomfort of the bus ride to Port-au-Prince at one point, at least mentally. I get back to my nice hotel and get mad when the air conditioning was off and my room is a little warm. And, I assure you, I have complained about much smaller and more selfish things. Wow. Really!?
• · Like I said, people, living, breathing people, are the ones who are in poverty. Don’t forget that. It’s not a faceless thing.
• · You are outrageously comfortable all the time. Like right now, for instance.
• · You can’t see this and do nothing, or just do something once. It requires a change in who you are and how you live and what your heart feels.
• · Why do you buy so much crap and spend so much time doing nothing? I could write a page on my working out of this problem (still in progress) as it is a more complex one than the question belies at first glance, but each time I am I see poverty I am reminded of its importance.
• · God’s heart is for these people. It’s all over the Bible, there’s no way around it. Didn’t you say (over and over) that you wanted that heart?

These are just a few things that run through my brain when I am faced with poverty, and there are of course many more lessons that God might have faced me with. These were the things that really hit me this time, though. It may seem like many of these realizations are pretty harsh, but I refuse to believe that I am somehow being too hard on myself. My sin is still really big, and it needs to be constantly exposed and brought to my attention or it will never be healed during this life. Each time I am faced with poverty like this, my self-righteousness is challenged, as is my idea of justice and my complacency. And it’s good to be shaken up. In fact, I don’t think it happens to us enough, and we start feeling like we’re doing fine on our own, like we don’t need God that much, and like our sin really isn’t too bad. We have distanced ourselves from most anything that might force us to reevaluate, to honestly examine our lives and start to realize problems and change some of them.

For me, seeing this kind of thing not only exposes my issues, it also forces me to action, as one would expect. It makes me want to do something big to help people in poverty, and not just people in Haiti. It always does. This time through, however, I was most struck by the realization that an appropriate response is not just action. It isn’t just giving more money or raising awareness for poverty, though those are certainly good and necessary, and I will be doing more of those things. No, I now know that poverty (and God) merits a bigger response – not in size, but in life change. It requires from me both a heart change and a lifestyle change, not just one-time or even a single continued action. My heart change includes the internalization of the things I mentioned above: humility before such a great God, continued realization of the poverty around me and my own luxurious life in comparison, and simply a migration toward the mindset Christ had toward the poor. Heart change then goes hand in hand with lifestyle change – both must be focused on, as the spiritual and physical change together and neither can be neglected. Simple action will not change my heart, just as an overspiritualized lesson may remain stuck in the brain, not bringing any action. As my heart changes, my life should too, and vice versa. This might come in the form of complaining less (in my head as well), being a cheerful servant, and not buying things that I do not need. I have journaled a lot about this idea of heart and lifestyle change in the face of poverty and the gospel, which I may eventually type up for you to see.

Not About Me

As you can see, I actually have a tendency to focus inward in the face of such things – how I am going to change, or what I am going to do. Not that these things aren’t important, but sometimes I have to step back and realize this is not about me. To see this and just make it about me is absolutely ridiculous. This is about God and about these people. This is no spiritual exercise just so I can be more holy. It’s an opportunity for God to be worshipped and glorified, and for justice to be brought to people in poverty. I am nothing, just a tool in this great endeavor. If my heart changes, God molded it. If I give money, God provided it. If I love people, it’s because God is the source of all love. And I don’t want to forget the Haitian people in my own personal crusade for action and change, even if it’s for a good cause. I want my world to get bigger because of what I have seen, rather than having looked out just to reenter my single-person tiny reality.

I feel like the best way to respond is to think about how God sees people, particularly people in poverty. First off, God loves people. He knows every quirk and every detail of every person, and He still loves us completely. His heart breaks for their sin and poverty of body and soul, and our poverty in ignoring it. He never stops thinking about a single one of his creations – otherwise we would cease to exist. And so I wonder: Can this love flow through us? Will we let it?

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Well, that was exceptionally long. If you read all that I commend you and thank you. If you learned anything or realized anything, please just use it to give glory to God, and not to me. The last thing I want to say is that people must keep noticing Haiti (and the extreme poverty elsewhere in the world). It’s never over, even though the media seems to have short term memory loss on these kinds of things when more “exciting” and “newsworthy” things come up. The one and only thing that is done is Christ dying on the cross – so we should work really hard to show this to people especially, because this is the only source of real, lasting freedom from the oppression of poverty. And we must remember that Jesus is the savior here, and he can save anything. We are just tools. We don’t do the saving – He does.

If you want to be a tool for God in this, I would first ask you to pray. Please, pray a lot. For people in poverty, for Haitians, for anyone helping the Haitians (like Misión Rescate and Mission Emanuel), for God’s restoration and salvation to come quickly into these darkest of places. If you want to give financially, I would recommend giving to Compassion International, which works in amazing ways to reduce poverty everywhere. They were in Haiti long before the earthquake happened, and will remain in Haiti long after relief organizations have all gone. You can sponsor a child from almost anywhere in the world, sponsor a Child Survival program, or give specifically to one of their other programs, including Haiti relief. https://www.compassion.com/contribution/default.htm

I will also check to see if there is any way to give to Misión Rescate, possibly indirectly through Mission Emanuel. If you just want to help with poverty, you can also give to Hands and Feet Ministries (handsandfeet.com), Mission Emanuel (missionemanuel.org), or Healing Waters International (https://www.compassion.com/contribution/default.htm), all of which I have experience with and all of which do wonderful things.

Thanks for reading! I’ll post again soon with details from the Dominican Republic and maybe some other thoughts.