(Orginally posted August 14, 2017)
I decided that I wanted to catch you guys up on all that is happening here, not just in the ministry, but also in everyday life here in Sabaneta by answering your questions! I wish I could sit and have a coffee or tea with each of you and have a personal conversation, but this will have to do for now.
Okay, here we go!
1.) How many days have you been working and living in the DR now?
I moved here on March 28th, 2017. I have lived here for 139 days. I began working with the Ve a Jesus Fundacion my second full week here…and I haven’t stopped running and working since then! It’s been an adventure!
2.) What is a struggle you didn’t expect?
I honestly expected a lot of the things that have been a challenge to deal with. I had good training from my missions agency and I had a good contact base of missionaries through my language school experience. God put people in my life who had already lived the "hard" and were able to share personal experiences about learning to manage the struggle and hardships of the missionary life. That said, I don’t know that there has been anything yet that I didn’t expect…BUT…It’s one thing to expect the struggle and another thing to have it knock the breath out of you while on the field. I’ll never forget the day I was playing flag football at my childhood church. I was probably in the 7th or 8th grade. Running across the big yard, a man made solid contact with me. His shoulder in my stomach. I flipped over his shoulder and landed on my back. (This was no-contact flag football, by the way. haha) I couldn’t breathe for several seconds. It was the most awful feeling.
I feel like that moment is a tangible reflection of how the expected struggles have hit me. The struggles of;
- culture shock,
- homesickness,
- loneliness,
- language-barrier frustrations,
- hot days with no air conditioning, (I have A/C in my bedroom, praise God. But no other homes that I frequent have A/C, so rarely is there refuge from the day’s heat),
- no running water some days (not in my home, but when I am out with other families, there many times is no access to running water),
- bucket showers,
- sleeping under mosquito nets,
- and even more than all of that, the spiritual warfare that is very real and very heavy here in this city.
Some of the things I mentioned seem small, but when it all adds up, all of a sudden, those little things can sometimes be overwhelming. When your water runs brown and you can smell the dirt in your shower water, or can see that you’re washing your clothes and dishes in the dirty water…it’s an eye-opener. It’s a humbling position to find yourself in. When a child is correcting your conjugation of verbs for the millionth time because you are having a bad grammar day, it can be unnerving. When you have to walk another mile after having walked 4 in the hot Dominican sun and are tired of being soaked in sweat, you keep walking as you pray again, “Lord, I need a vehicle. I know You will provide.” When you find yourself in yet another church service that is hard to understand because of the muffled sound systems and you miss your church family in the US, it squeezes your heart until it hurts.
And it all forces me to my knees.
On my knees is where I find comfort, peace, my tears are dried, and new strength is found to take the next step. The grace is found to do it all over again another day. And mercies, new mercies every morning, are poured into my cup as well. He knows what we need, no matter what land we walk, what language we speak, what color we are, or what our story is. And we can find exactly that in His Presence.
In the photo above, you'll find lyrics to a Spanish worship song that has ministered to me greatly in the past year and a half. This is something I jotted down one night in Costa Rica and it stays with me. "In Jesus, I am strong. He alone is my Rock. Through the storm, He is Lord."
(I must clarify. None of the things I’m experiencing here, none of the differences between cultures are BAD things. They are just different. My natural and expected struggles have no relation to whether or not I love the people and the culture here. It is a matter of re-adaptation to all things new. If you are curious about this re-adaptation or what is commonly called “culture-shock,” you can search it on google and find articles explaining exactly what that is.)
3.) What kind of coffee would you serve?
Steve Hutto, come on over! I have a little bit of goodness in my freezer from three different countries! I have brews from Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic! You can take your pick!
4.) What has been the easiest change in your life so far?
I have to giggle sometimes at the way that God has been working to prepare me to live here even since I was a young child.
One of my youngest childhood memories that is so clearly etched into my mind is the day my father brought us to see the land that would be our home for the next 20-something years. (My parents still live on that land today.) I was only 8 years old, and when we got out of the car, the grass was as tall as me and there were bugs EVERYWHERE. Grass. Trees. And bugs. I freaked out. I cried. Megan, accustomed-to-the-city girl did not like the sight of this.
In addition to that, this 20-acre plot of land sits, seemingly, in the middle of the nowhere. We had to drive what we would soon refer to as the “everlasting-cow-road” for 35ish minutes before reaching city limits. At first, for my mother and I, this was a shock to our system. However, through the years, it became very normal and I became very relaxed in that sort of lifestyle.
Now, as I walk down dusty streets, broken sidewalks, sometimes down long stretches with rolling hills and roughly made barb wire fences, greeting the cows and giggling at the massive pigs and the goats that pass me by, I have to smile at God. He has been preparing me to live the country life here with the people. So, there is no shock of going from the city-life to third-world countryside life…all because God knew where my feet would be treading today, and He saw fit to begin that transition early to prepare me for what lie ahead.
These answers have been a tad lengthy - so I’m going to put a pause here and let you guys catch up reading this post as I work on the next several questions! May God’s blessings rest on you today as you seek to honor Him. He is worthy! I love each of you.
