The Dominican Republic Part III

When looking back at my days in the D.R., I'd have to pick Thursday as the most memorable.

Thursday morning started like the others with breakfast, worship and devotions, and then we loaded the buses for our distributions.  Our group went to a small church, Iglesia de Dios Misionera La Gran Comision Tercera, in the community of Mata Godo.  We drove through the city and then into the country to get to there.  Once we arrived and pulled alongside the barbed wire fence surrounding the church, the director of the church, Filomena, came running towards our bus full of energy, obviously very excited!  This distribution was one of the smaller ones (only 150 kiddos) so we were able to interact with more of the kids in the community.

As we walked towards the church, we found all of the kids quietly waiting on the benches inside the church - some of them peeking out the window to look at us.

The same events took place as the first two distributions: the local OCC Volunteers lead a great presentation for the kids including singing "Jingle Bells."

After the presentation and signing, it was time to hand out the shoeboxes.  We all grabbed boxes and started distributing them to the kids.  This is when I learned one of my best lessons about packing a shoe box: I was handing out two boxes - one was cardboard and one was plastic.  I handed the cardboard box to a little girl and as I was getting ready to hand the plastic one to the girl next to her, the first little girl dropped the cardboard box and grabbed the plastic.  The kids LOVE the plastic shoeboxes because they can be reused later.  Mental note made!

As the kids started to open their shoeboxes, the skies let loose and the rain started to come down.  Some of the kids didn't mind - they were too excited about their shoebox.  But some of the other kids scattered - some inside the church - some inside the school bus next to the church - some ran down the street.  One little girl just stood next to me like she was lost.  She couldn't have been more than 2 years old.  That's when I remembered that I had some pillow case dresses in my backpack made by some of the ladies at my church, so I grabbed one and gave it to her.  With the language barrier, she wasn't sure what I was giving her, so I slipped the dress on over what she was already wearing.  It was perfect!

One thing that surprised me when handing out the dresses was that I didn't give them to just little girls like I thought I was going to.  I gave 2 of the dresses to 2 of the moms in the community.  They were so small that they could wear the pillow case dresses as tops for themselves.

Normally after our distributions are complete and we've had a chance to interact with the kids, we loaded the buses and headed to the next location.  But not this time, and that's why this distribution was my favorite.  Our bus had to leave to take someone to a bus stop, so we ended up being at our distribution site much longer than any of the others.  This is when I met the little girl I wanted to bring home with me.  She had the biggest eyes and biggest eye lashes!

I started playing with her, tickling her neck, smiling at her, and lifting her up in the air, and she was smiling and laughing!  After playing with her for a little while, through the help of a translator, her mom told me that I was one of the only people who was able to make her laugh and smile like that in the 1 year that she had been alive.  She told me that her little girl loved me! Cue the tears!  I couldn't imagine a little girl, who was 1 year old, barely laughing and smiling.  It broke my heart.  It let me know how different our worlds really were.

I was also able to teach a little boy how to play knuckles.  (When you bump fists, and then your fist explodes and goes "BOOM!")  After a few short times of repeating the action, the little boy caught on and eventually started yelling "BOOM!" at the end with a giant smile.  It made my heart happy that I could make him so happy with such a simple game.

Right before we left the community, our translators started playing a few magic tricks with the kids and before long, a group of kids had gathered around them.  After the magic tricks were done, they started singing and dancing with the kids.

The kids were having a great time not because we just brought them shoeboxes, but because we were spending time with them singing, dancing, laughing, playing games, giving them hugs, and paying attention to them.  We were showing them God's love.  It made me want to put them all on the bus and plane and bring them home with me.