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After have a long week of ministry, and debrief in San
Juan out team boarded a flat bed truck for a long ride
to a city in the mountains called Arroyo Cano. The truck arrived on Sunday afternoon, so with 14 people’s luggage and a
ten day supply of food, and seventeen people we were off. On the way Pastor
Gregorio saw some of his congregation that needed a ride so of course we picked
them up. All six of them and their keyboard, radio, and snake! So let me just
give you a rundown here we have 23 people, 10 day supply of food, all of our
luggage, my guitar, a keyboard, and a snake.
About half way to Arroyo Cano we began to hear thunder and
see lightning in the distance, so the pastor stopped to see if we wanted to
stop. So we all decided that the rain can’t be that bad so we would rather be a
little wet and try to keep our luggage dry. We truly thought at the time that
we were making a great decision, but what we didn’t know was that this was the
biggest storm since we had been in the country, and that there would not be
anywhere else to stop for shelter. The rain began falling, and it grew harder
and harder. The rain was so hard that by the time we reached the church
everything was soaked.
Pastor Gregorio shows us to the compassion center that is
adjacent to the church where we will be staying for eight of our twelve days in
the mountains. As we are getting settled we begin to hear the sound of boys
knocking on the door, and opening the louvered windows. So the translators, Pastor
Gregorio, and I went outside to talk to them, all total there were about 25
boys ranging in age from 15 to 10 possible a little younger. So we told them
that they girls just needed their privacy and that we would see them at church
that night. After we talked to them they
only got worse. They began climbing on the roof and peeling back the tin roof
to look in on the girls while they were changing. This went on for about four hours. Needless to say our girls felt pretty
violated and were very upset. There are no amount of words that can truly
express the tone that this set for this leg of our trip.
So that night we headed to church, we did a dryme called
it’s my life, which talks about how we hold onto our life and not allow Jesus
to come in. Pastor Gregorio asked me to deliver the message for the night so in
about ten minutes I prepared to share a message about god love and how He
desires to come into our life and live in our heart. The translator and I were
able to present a very graphic picture of the gospel. The only bad part about
the church service is that a group of men cam to sit behind our girls and were
making passes at them and hissing at them which is a common way that men in the
DR treat the women especially an American woman. At the end of the service I offered a chance
for the congregation to accept Christ into their hearts and about 20 people
responded to make that decision.
After the service the men and the young boys that were
making all the ruckus were just hanging around. Pastor Gregorio came and told
me that we need to take the group for a walk to see the country side. At the
time I thought he was crazy, a walk in the “country” basically means a walk in
the dark! In the mountain villages there are no street lamps like in San
Juan. We believe that he took us on the walk to
protect us. He used the opportunity the have an elder of the church run off all
the boys and men so that we could have a peaceful nights sleep. One small
detail that I need to interject is that during all of the happenings to this
point Sarah has been very sick, and she was not able to be with the group, and
just to top off our night when we finally returned to the compassion center we
walking in with our head lamps to see giant flying cockroaches everywhere.
The following morning, we started inviting people to our VBS
after about an hour of inviting we ended up with over 150 kids. As we began to
do our VBS Presentation men began to collect around our girls. As we were
hanging out one of the men tried to grad one of our girls butt. After our VBS
we decided to debrief our time, and realized that it would be best for our team
if we went back to San Juan. A lot
of prayer and careful consideration went into the decision to leave. We called
Miguel and asked him to send someone to come and bring us back to San
Juan. After Miguel spent some time trying to figure
out logistics, he called back to let me know that we were gonna have to spend
the next nine night in a hotel because that was not anywhere else for us to
stay.
The Lord truly taught us a lot about trusting him. Our girls
were very reserved about leaving because they were worried about having an
opportunity to minister to the women of the town, but also they were very upset
about the situation there. We know that we made the correct decision about
leaving, and you will see how God confirmed that through the rest of our
ministry time in San Juan.
