Final Week

It is hard to believe that today marks the start of our final week of Short term mission teams coming to the DR.  We have been working hard with a new team arriving every Saturday since April 26^th, with one week off near the end of May when our interns arrived.  If you haven’t seen our schedule, it is at the bottom of this blog. 

Although this busy schedule was a huge challenge, we handled it pretty well.  Another thing that was challenging was the poverty that we witnessed every day.  Even though many of the people we worked with had very little, they seemed to be content.  Several times a woman has come to our house and dug through our trash cans out front, looking for food.  That was really hard to see, but imagine how hard it was for her.  Do you feed her and then when more people come, feed them too?  Do you just pretend you don’t see her?  The first time we just said, “hi” and kept on going, because it surprised us.  Then, Teri set some mangos from our tree in the trash to help a little.  Maybe that sounds like not doing much, but we wanted to be subtle, and still help. 

We also see people on the streets asking for help.  We try help when we can, but there is so much need and you don't always know if it is real.  Once we gave money to someone on the street that was walking through traffic on crutches and looked pretty bad.  After traffic started moving, I looked back and saw him holding both crutches in one hand and walking fine.  When you see that, you get upset and think that you got fooled.  But we did not let that keep us from helping others.  A good friend once told us something that stuck.  She said, “I would rather get to heaven and find out that I was more generous than I needed to be, than the other way around.” 

The point is you don’t always know the circumstances that someone is dealing with.  That is true for anywhere, not just the DR.  If your action is motivated by Love, then there is nothing to be ashamed of if things are not what they seemed. 

Please pray for as and we will pray for you that the Holy Spirit lead us to help those who really need it.  Amen 

Our Weekly Schedule

Sunday: Breakfast at 10 then Church on the Beach (~1 hr drive each way). Then back in Santiago with Dinner at 6 and Orientation until 8:00-8:30

Monday – Wed – Friday: Prayer at 7:30; Breakfast at 8; Leave for worksite/ministry at 9 until 4:30ish; Dinner at 6 and after that Devotional until 9pm

Tues – Thurs: Prayer at 7:30; Breakfast at 8; Leave for worksite or ministry at 9 until 4:30ish; Dinner at 6 and after that there is a Church Service on Tuesdays and we have a Staff meeting on Thursdays until 9:30-10pm

Saturday: Turnover Day: Old team leaves and new team arrives.  We have to clean our Work Team Center and get everything ready for the next week.

We have one day off each week.  Some of our team will have Saturday and the others Sunday and it rotates.