A little over a month ago I was blessed with the opportunity to be a part of my first ever international missions trip. I went to the Dominican Republic as part of a group including people from 2nd Congo, a church in Rhode Island and a few other people from New England. It was a great trip in many ways. I saw a lot and learned a lot. But before I get to that let me tell you a little about the trip and what we went there to do:
We departed from 2nd Congo early (really early) the Saturday before the Super Bowl. From here we headed to Laguardia airport in NYC, where several TSA workers threatened to give us "special" treatment since a few of us had on Patriots gear. (Below is NYC from the bus window)
From there we flew into Santa Domingo, DR and then took a bus ride over to La Romana. Below is our team on the bus with Emilio, one of the leaders from Good Samaritan, praying for us.
Saturday night we spent getting settled into the place we stayed all week, Casa Pastoral. Sunday we worshiped with our brothers at the Haitian Baptist Church in La Romana (they even sung Fairest Lord Jesus, a song that we had just learned at 2nd Congo, though we didn't learn it in Spanish). In the afternoon we went to the beach for a few hours and came back in time for the Superbowl.
We also spent the evening preparing for the week to come, which meant portioning out what seemed like a million pills into individual portions that would be given out this week.
This gets me to the point. Why did we go there? What did we go to do?
We went to partner with Good Samaritan Hospital, a Christian owned and operated hospital in La Romana. The hospital has been a 20 plus year dream of a group of Dominicans and Americans who've worked together to build it. As you can see below the hospital is up and running, even though it's still under construction. This is the norm in the D.R. Almost nothing ever seems finished, which is a good metaphor for life, I think.
One big part of our trip was to help continue construction of the hospital. Much of what you see in these pics was built by people on our team and many of them had the privilege of being there for the completion and open of the emergency room a few years ago. We helped with construction on the third and fourth floors, which will become offices for Doctors and what you might call VIP rooms for wealthy patients. That might not sound like the kind of thing you'd normally send a mission team to help work on, but those Doctors and wealthy patients are the thing that will enable this hospital to become self-sustaining, rather than being forever dependent on support from American churches.
As for the work, we had a few skilled laborers on our team who did many different things. But those of us who are not so skilled spent most of our time moving concrete blocks from the ground to the third floor and then carrying the blocks to wherever they were needed. We did this via a rope with a hook on it, one block at a time.
The other big part of our trip was to take medical teams to the Bateys. Bateys are small villages where the sugar cane workers and their families live and are easily the poorest places I've ever been. They look very much like the places you see on commercials that are trying to guilt you into sending them $0.37 a day. The people in bateys are generally extremely poor and have no access to medical care, education or the kinds of government services that we complain about if we have to wait more than 30 minutes. So Good Samaritan sends out medical teams who try to visit every batey (there are somewhere around 150) twice a year.
Here's a picture to give you an idea what most bateys are like.
We were one of these teams. Again, we had a number of people on our team who knew what they are doing. They actually treated patients and prescribed medications. The rest of us helped in a number of ways, either working the pharmacy (handing out plastic bags of medication) or dosing out deworming meds for anybody willing to take it (apparently it tastes horrible).
This is the line of people waiting to be seen at the clinic.
Here's a woman from our first day who was happy to get medication.
After everyone who was willing to stomach the deworming medicine was finished, a few of us had the opportunity to walk around the bateys, talk with whoever was interested and share the Gospel with whoever would listen. The 2nd day I went to a batey I walked around with Ron Halterman (one of our elders) and our translator Manuel. We had the opportunity to share the Gospel with a number of people, including a mother who had a brand new baby. She even invited us to come in he home and pray for her newborn. We also brought soccer balls for the kids and tried to play with them (I fell flat on my back trying to kick a ball in mid-air). After a few minutes I had the opportunity to explain the gospel to about 20 kids. Below you can see Manuel trying to explain to them how to share the soccer ball. It didn't work...
Notice the trash mound in the background where the kids are playing. These bateys have no running water, no sewage, no trash pickup or landfills (in fact there are no landfills on the D.R. and trash has to be burned or gotten rid of by boat, so it's burned). Most have little or no electricity and very few have schools or churches.
So it's fair to say that there are lots of needs here, far more than we could help with or even figure out how to help with in a week. But the people at Good Samaritan are making progress. The have been working to install water filters in bateys to provide safe drinking water. They're also working to build schools in bateys, since this is the only way out of poverty for the vast majority of people who live here.
More than anything, though, our mission was to provide the hope that comes in Jesus Christ, the only one who can give us a hope and a future that is greater than this world and this life.
Sugarcane, all the way to the mountains.
La Romana from the roof of Good Samaritan Hospital.
No comments:
Post a Comment