It's been a long year but March marked the church's entrance back into mission field. Tasha Sutherland and Ricardo Walker accompanied a team of 8 woman to the Dominican Repulic to assist SCORE international for 7 days in many of the villages Tasha had worked with while living as a full-time missionary in Santo Domingo. While in the DR, SCORE asked that the team to send them daily "mini-blogs" for their website. The following is a synopsis of their experiences, trials, and victories given from the point-of-view of several team members.
Sunday, March 14, 2010 -- Our morning began when our team left the Embassy Suites at 9:00am to attend a Dominican church service in San Pedro de Marcoris. It was exciting to see that the church was packed with a lot of small children and adults; we also had a high school group join us.
The service started with a member telling his experience of helping in relief efforts in Haiti the past two weeks. It was very heart-wrenching to hear of all the corruption going on in Haiti, still, and how the Haitians are coping. After the sermon, a lady in the congregation sang a song in Creole, which made Michelle and I realize that "Alleluia" is the same in every language! The service ended with the congregation singing "Lord I Lift Your Name On High" in English, Spanish, and Creole - all at once. It was quite amazing!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 -- Our day started with a pit-stop at the store La Sirena to exchange our US dollars for Dominican pesos. We then purchased sandwich supplies and juice to feed 200 people at Cercadillo, a community of Dominicans and Haitians that live near Jackie's House. Once done, we prepared ourselves for an emotional good-bye with the children at Jackie's. I know for me it was hard to say hello to the kids yesterday, after not seeing them since our trip last year, and then to say good-bye again so soon. There have been many changes at Jackie's House, mostly because a lot of the children from last year were missing - their mothers have taken them back home. But it was also great to see the improvements on the house and meet the new children that have arrived since our last visit. After lunch, we prepared the sandwiches for Cercadillo and experienced a bitter-sweet good-bye with the kids. While traveling to Cercadillo, we found a woman named Carmen walking down the road. We had first met Carmen last year while distributing medications in Cercadillo. She is know as the "head witch" of this large community and has authority over all who practice witchcraft. However, since meeting Jackie over 4 years ago, Carmen has slowly stopped practicing common black art rituals and has NOT passed along artifacts or any rituals to her six-year-old granddaughter, which is very common for witches to do. I believe that it was a divine appointment that God had prepared for us to meet Carmen on that road. Our time with her this afternoon was amazing! While on the bus, Carmen sang a few songs for our group. It was amazing to see how God has transformed a powerful witch into a God-fearing woman! Just hearing her say "Gloria a Dios" (Glory to God) gave us chills and made us realize HOW powerful God truly is! While at Cercadillo, we stopped at a baseball field and about 60 people, if not more, showed up to hear testimonies from some of our team and the Gospel message which was shared by Eddie. Once our impromtu service was complete we passed out sandwiches and punch to the villagers...for many, this was the only meal that would eat all day.
