Last Monday we started ministry sites. I will be working at a social work site now for 7 weeks, Monday through Friday from 9am to 3pm. Margie, another students international semester student, is working with me. We walk to the site every day in a community called El Callejon. When I first thought of coming to the Dominican Republic, I pictured El Callejon exactly. It is the slums of Piedra Blanca, the area I live in. El Callejon means “The Avenue”-it is a settlement that is wedged between two main roads-dirt roads stream with mudslides and garbage due to the almost constant rainfall. It is almost impossible to trudge through the streets without slipping. The houses are make-shift made with scrapwood and tin and whatever other materials are available. Houses share walls and roofs and little walkways weave through the community. It was a squatter village after a hurricane in 1998 and the people just settled and stayed. The whole community is about 4 city blocks long with about 400-500 people squeezed into that space. There is a cinderblock wall that stretches the length of the community on one side of it. It is about 8 feet tall. The story behind the wall is that the neighbors on the other side of it erected it to hide the poor community of El Callejon. It was built for segregation and represented the divide between classes. But the Students International art site came in and began to paint it- one section at a time with huge murals that all display God’s love for the community with pictures and scripture. They have taken that symbol of poverty and hopelessness and turned it around and made it into something so beautiful. I think that that image represents this community perfectly. The first day, after walking through the community, Margie and I were asked if we thought El Callejon was a poor community. The thought of a community with trash lining the streets, with people dirty and half-clothed sitting outside their houses, with stray dogs roaming, with babies crawling through mud puddles, all led my mind to answer yes, of course this is a materially poor community. They have water every other day. The electricity rarely works. Lots of times they go without food. This community, like the cinderblock wall, represents poverty. But as I have seen this week, the people in this community live together, providing for one another’s needs as they arise. They share the little food they’ve got. They care for the neighbor’s children. They spend time in relationship telling stories and laughing. El Callejon functions as a family. They take their poverty and turn it into something beautiful-just like that wall.
With that being said, I think sometimes we are too fast to decide if a community is poor by material measures. El Callejon is poor in material, but most of all is poor in spirit. Many people do not have jobs because of their low self-efficacy. Men objectify women and women think that they only have worth if they are with a man. Most children have an absent father and are born out of wedlock. Students drop out of school and do not set high goals for themselves. Alcoholism is present. Abuse occurs regularly. So many people have no hope for a better life. This is exactly the target of the social work site. We realize that we do not have the means to feed a whole community or to fix their plumbing or electricity. But we do have the ability and the passion build relationships with the women and girls in the community. We can lead bible studies and share God’s love and providence in their lives. We can mentor them to make better decisions and to set higher goals and to value themselves like God values each one of them. And so that is what we will be do. We take the passions and gifts that God has given us and make what we can of it. He will do the rest.
Margie and I will be leading 4 bible studies and teaching 2 English classes each week. In addition, we will be helping with crafts such as sewing, painting, and crocheting. We will be available for mentoring and counseling at any time during the day. We have 6 groups of women that come. Two groups are young girls, two groups are adolescents, one group is for young marrieds, and one is for women. The last three weeks here will be a little different. The women in this community so often live with a man who they call their husband but no legal measures have been taken so that they are actually married. The social work site has put a lot of weight on the significance of marriage and volunteers to help the women get their marriage legalized and have a real wedding. We have one day at the end of each year that couples can come to pre-marital counseling and then get their marriage papers from the country. We have 2 weeks of preparation and then the last week of pampering the women for the ceremony. This year we have 6 couples that will be getting married, so Margie and I get to participate in all of the festivities that go along with that. It’ll be a really great next 7 weeks and I’m excited to build relationships with the women in the community.
I think my favorite thing so far from site is being known in El Callejon. The first time we walked through we were merely spectators. Two American college students do not exactly blend into a community like that. But after being there a week, I feel like we have learned enough names and met a big percentage of the women and girls in the community that now we are viewed as a part of it. We participate in it daily and are no longer looked at as outsiders. It is so great to be able to walk down the street and be waived to and to call people by name and to be invited into their houses and into their daily lives. That is my goal here. I do not want to be a spectator, an outsider. I want to be welded into the culture and the lives of these women so that we can relate to one another and learn from each other.
This week, pray for the women in El Callejon and pray for Margie and I, that we may begin to build strong relationships and that we can effectively communicate God’s love in a tangible way.
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