= Sólo una Soñadora I can't sleep and so decided I might write instead; I had too many thoughts whizzing around my head!
I was thinking about my recent trip to the Dominican Republic - I was hoping I might write a series of posts about my trip, but I just don't know where to begin or what to say! And because I didn't have internet while I was there, I don't just want to give an account of what I did each day, as where's the point in that! So hopefully, I'll be able to tell you more about it as part of saying something else as well! Anyway, I got back in England about 5 days ago and before that I was out in the DR for 2 weeks with a team, through Mission Direct (an organisation which sets up mission trips to help in some of the worlds poorest places). Anyway, I was incredibly touched by the trip and really feel that I want to get more involved with mission work there, but I am scared that I have always been no more than a dreamer; and the more I dream about the DR, the worse I feel because I'm not DOING anything. Granted, I have only been home 5 days, but... I don't know! I'll be heading back into my 2nd year of my 3 year degree in Theology at Cambridge University in just under a week, and I can't help but think about how different it's going to be there than in the DR. I mean, already it has been arranged that I'm going to a meal with my Fresher family (a system to give all new 1st year students in the college some older students who can help them if they have any problems settling in!) that will cost me £20 and that I don't even really want to go to! When there are families starving and young girls MY AGE selling themselves for less than a dollar because they have no other way of providing for themselves. What am I doing?! £20!!! I know I should look at what I've got as a blessing - which I know it is, and I am thankful to God every day for all that I am blessed with - but I can't help but feel disgusted by what I have wasted my money on, over just the past year! And then I pray to God that I will use the feelings and the sorrow that I feel right now, to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. But I don't know what! Currently I am trying to discern whether God's plan for me may involve going out again to the DR next year. This would be for a longer time, hopefully the full 3 months that I get on summer holiday from uni; in which case I would be out there helping to lead the teams that go out, just like mine did, at intervals throughout the summer! But I have this tiny tinge of a feeling in the pit of stomach currently, that it will end up as longer than that in the future. But that scares me, so my plan is to ignore that tinge until it grows a bit and until I can't possibly ignore it any longer!!! After all, it could just be my stomach still adjusting back to English food! ;-P But I do feel that God placed the DR on my heart a long time ago. That's why I ended up on this trip in the first place; it wasn't the idea of doing mission, but rather the fact that I had felt a love for the country and it's people for a long time and this was the easiest way I could see of getting out there and meeting them! Just a normal holiday would never work: 1) Because I would get so bored just lounging around; and 2) Because you never actually get to meet the locals properly or truly experience the culture of a place if you're going round as a tourist all the time! But I'd been interested in the country for AGES! Having learnt Spanish in school and 6th Form, I thought I'd at least be able to communicate to a basic level with people there, and this had also given me the chance to study the politics and demographics of the country for A-Level. I'd also been sponsoring a little girl called Esmaili in the DR, through Compassion UK for a couple of years, and writing to and receiving letters from her certainly kept up my love for the country! And then I was FINALLY able to go! A dream come true, one might say! :-D The trip was AMAZING. Absolutely AMAZING! I was so blessed by all the people there working so hard and actuallyDOING things for God. Serving the poor and really making a difference to peoples' lives. Our main project was in conjunction with the Samaritan Foundation and that was building a house for a family. Between the 7 of us who went on that trip, we sponsored the building of a modest family home, and then when we went out we helped build it! [We actually just moved dirt and made cement and built windows; but it's not like we had any skills whatsoever to actually build a house, so we were very glad of the skilled workers supporting us throughout!] Anyway, at the end of the fortnight, we were able to hand over this house (not quite with the toilet in yet, but it was to arrive soon) to a family who really needed it. The family having our house was a single mum with 6 daughters and her oldest daughter had a son as well! They were currently staying with the mother's brother who was looking after them in his tin shack with a leaking roof, no solid walls, no toilet and not even prime location for the girls' schooling or a clinic. And they were staying with the brother because the mother's husband had tried to kill her and all the children in a fire in their old house and so they were running away from him. House dedication and handover day was emotional as the mum, clearly holding back tears, was given a house with (nearly!) a toilet, with an intact roof, and placed in a new village which eventually will have a school in it and isn't far from a clinic. It was such a humbling experience,, to be able to give someone something as basic as this, and for it to be practically palacial compared to what they had before - I have 4 sisters, making 5 girls and my parents living in our 5 bedroom, nicely sized British house; the idea of us fitting into a house the size that we built... it just doesn't compare! Other than the main project we also did some ministry trips, usually in the afternoons! We visited a men's drug and alcohol rehab centre; we visited a children's home for disabled children which had been set up by a wonderful Godly woman in her own home and with no stable financial support at all; we visited a part of the DR which had long been filled with sewage and definitely one of the worst places to live and which now is beginning to look like a community thanks to lots of work done by a local lady running a school and many church programmes and clinic programmes there. We went into a few of the other Samaritan Foundation villages - ones that are already built - where we did painting, varnishing, feeding, teaching, playing, singing, etc. And everywhere we went, there were so many people who couldn't wait to meet us and be with us and love us. And I couldn't wait to do the same back. And there was probably more that is skipping my mind right now; but it's late so you'll have to forgive me! ;-) Of course, we also had a couple of tourist-y days; one when we went up Mount Isabel de Torres in the cable cars and another where we spent a few hours on a sandbank in the ocean nicknamed 'Paradise Island' before having a speed boat tour in and out, through winding paths of mangrove trees! So it certainly wasn't all work!!! But every single thing about the country made me fall more and more in love with it and the people who live there. It's natural beauty and the pockets of beautiful community dotted around, mean I will never be able to forget this tiny little country on that tiny little island. And I pray that God will use me and my love for them to act out his love on earth, bringing hope to the poor and strength to the weak. And I also pray that one day, I will be able to look back at this and laugh; "Ha! I used to be only a dreamer...!"
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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