In reflecting on my time living in the Dominican Republic and working for Doulos Discovery School, there are a few lessons I wanted to share with all of you.
God calls us to enter into deep, meaningful relationships and communities.
The number of relationships and the types of community will change over the course of our lives, but being forced out of our comfort zone to truly love the people around us is essential for great personal growth. It is no easy task, but it is an essential part of teaching us to be less selfish and need other people. Most people in the United States work so hard to become independent from everyone that they cut themselves off from the communities around them. The DR may be plagued by sporadic supplies of power and freshwater, but it is rich in community and fosters a culture that is attentive to the needs of other people.
God will always be with us and provide for our needs when we trust him.
This may not look like what we expected or wanted. Whatever God brings is bound to challenge us and push us a little further than we really wanted to be pushed, but it will bring true growth. God wants us to trust Him and He is worthy of our trust.
God reigns over the big and the little and our prayers matter in issues of all sizes.
In looking at the massive amounts of suffering and inequality in the world, we often become hopeless when trying to imagine how to begin to attack such insurmountable problems or create grand schemes for solving the worlds problems through organization and planning. The biggest mountains to climb in this world seem to be in the hearts of men and Jesus really is the only thing that can change hearts. We also tend to pray in the midst of our own crisis, but somehow doubt that our prayers to God about problems like global hunger and global inequality are worth God’s time or will have any affect.
It is better to wait and listen for the leading of the Holy Spirit than just doing something for the sake of filling the time. There will always be more tasks to complete and more people to help, but the complicated, messy, and important problems like relieving suffering and redeeming communities, cultures, and people will never be effective unless we are following the leading of the Holy Spirit and allowing God to work through us. I think most of us just decide on something good to do and than ask God to bless it. God will bless and use whatever we give him, but it is more effective to wait and make our choices based on His will and not our own.
It is harder to learn how to serve than to learn how to lead.
If we cannot serve with true humility and give up our pride, we will never be able to lead lovingly. Leadership without love is useless.
Love is not a feeling.
Feelings are fickle and always changing. Love is not a feeling it is a decision. It is a daily decision and stubborn commitment to do what is best for the other person. The same is true of loving God and having faith in God. Self-sacrificing, servant love is the ultimate power in the universe that will bring about true change and redemption. We will not accomplish anything of worth without love. Teaching is a vivid example of this. My students always listened better and learned more when they felt loved and cared for.
God is working to redeem the world now and bring His Kingdom to Earth.
This means that what we do now has eternal impacts. God is bigger than any mess we can make, but our role in redeeming the world now does matter. The point of following God is to take part in the redemption of things now, not just to make a comfortable life, maintain faith, and wait to get to heaven.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wrapping Things Up at Doulos
The last days of school were characterized by the usual whirlwind of activity. Here are a few of the highlights.
The end of the year concluded with a service/workshop week where every class (PK3-11th grade) picked a project that would help the community and spent the mornings completing their projects. To provide the students with a few life skills that are not normally offered in town, the afternoons were dedicated to workshops ranging from cooking to swimming lessons. Many of the students do not know how to swim properly, even though the town is surrounded by rivers, simply because there is no community center or park district where swimming lessons are available. I thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected chance to use my training from many years ago as a swim instructor to teach some of the elementary students the basics of swimming and spend the hot afternoons cooling off in a private pool that was generously rented to us for the week.
Service projects ranged from spending time with some of the orphaned children that live near Jarabacoa’s largest river (Rio Yaque del Norte) to painting a map onto one of the walls of a public school. Half of the 10th and 11th grade classes teamed up with some of our elementary classes to lead them in playing games and spending time with children with disabilities at a neighboring school and with the elderly in a retirement center. The other half of our oldest grades worked with me, my cousin Bob (who was visiting for the last 2 weeks of school) and the Math teacher to complete the final stage in our Water project; painting trashcans.
This may seem like an odd service project, but it is very appropriate. The community of Jarabacoa is chronically short on trashcans in public locations. They are usually sparse in private homes as well. One of the biggest problems we found during our 11th grade Chemistry project studying the pollution of the region’s largest river (Rio Yaque del Norte) was simply solid waste. Trash bags, diapers, Styrofoam cups, soda cans, old shoes, etc. were found pilled up in slow areas of water flow and along the banks of many parts of the river. As a simple step towards resolving some of the pollution problems, the 11th graders worked together to design colorful messages to paint on metal trashcans that would educate the public as well as provide a place to properly dispose of trash.
Our final evening activity of the year was a talent show where students had the opportunity to show off some of their more hidden skills. The program ranged from praise songs to glorify God, to athletic dances, to humorous skits and comedy routines. Many of the students practiced for weeks to choreograph their own dances and come up with songs and jokes. The teachers contributed one skit to the program with a message about God and life. The skit was supposed to be somewhat serious, but most of our students found it hilarious to see some of their American teachers performing in Spanish and even using some of the local slang. It was my first performance in Spanish and hopefully not my last.
The last day of school was filled to the brim with the annual awards ceremony to recognize academic excellence as well as servant leadership, games, reflection, prayer, and goodbyes. All of my students have grown in so many ways over the course of the past two years and I can’t wait to see what they do in the future as the ministry of Doulos continues.
The end of the year concluded with a service/workshop week where every class (PK3-11th grade) picked a project that would help the community and spent the mornings completing their projects. To provide the students with a few life skills that are not normally offered in town, the afternoons were dedicated to workshops ranging from cooking to swimming lessons. Many of the students do not know how to swim properly, even though the town is surrounded by rivers, simply because there is no community center or park district where swimming lessons are available. I thoroughly enjoyed the unexpected chance to use my training from many years ago as a swim instructor to teach some of the elementary students the basics of swimming and spend the hot afternoons cooling off in a private pool that was generously rented to us for the week.Service projects ranged from spending time with some of the orphaned children that live near Jarabacoa’s largest river (Rio Yaque del Norte) to painting a map onto one of the walls of a public school. Half of the 10th and 11th grade classes teamed up with some of our elementary classes to lead them in playing games and spending time with children with disabilities at a neighboring school and with the elderly in a retirement center. The other half of our oldest grades worked with me, my cousin Bob (who was visiting for the last 2 weeks of school) and the Math teacher to complete the final stage in our Water project; painting trashcans.
This may seem like an odd service project, but it is very appropriate. The community of Jarabacoa is chronically short on trashcans in public locations. They are usually sparse in private homes as well. One of the biggest problems we found during our 11th grade Chemistry project studying the pollution of the region’s largest river (Rio Yaque del Norte) was simply solid waste. Trash bags, diapers, Styrofoam cups, soda cans, old shoes, etc. were found pilled up in slow areas of water flow and along the banks of many parts of the river. As a simple step towards resolving some of the pollution problems, the 11th graders worked together to design colorful messages to paint on metal trashcans that would educate the public as well as provide a place to properly dispose of trash.
Our final evening activity of the year was a talent show where students had the opportunity to show off some of their more hidden skills. The program ranged from praise songs to glorify God, to athletic dances, to humorous skits and comedy routines. Many of the students practiced for weeks to choreograph their own dances and come up with songs and jokes. The teachers contributed one skit to the program with a message about God and life. The skit was supposed to be somewhat serious, but most of our students found it hilarious to see some of their American teachers performing in Spanish and even using some of the local slang. It was my first performance in Spanish and hopefully not my last.
The last day of school was filled to the brim with the annual awards ceremony to recognize academic excellence as well as servant leadership, games, reflection, prayer, and goodbyes. All of my students have grown in so many ways over the course of the past two years and I can’t wait to see what they do in the future as the ministry of Doulos continues.
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