Today, was another mandatory early morning devotional. Coffee was necessary, but there is nothing our class values more than spending time in relationship with our Father. We dove heart first into James 2, where we then were cornered by the truth of how God created us. He created us all equal. God doesn’t call us to love others when it is comfortable for us. God commands us to love everyone. It was an impressionable morning and a healthy reminder to the truth of how God created us. I pray that we never lose perspective!
After our early morning devotional time and breakfast, we split up into our many different site groups and headed off to love. As you know, this is a student run blog, so I hope that you get many different perspectives and different insights as to the different ways God is pursuing His people in the Dominican Republic. The site I get to be apart of for the next two weeks is called Young Men’s Social Work. In a nutshell, what the site does is bring young men, usually between the ages of 15-25, into a realization of the love that God has for them by helping them get off of the streets and out of the cycle of poverty. The Young Men’s Social Work site is a fairly new to Students International and already God has been using it to influence the culture around it. Today started out like any other day on the site, young men came in for a devotional that they go through and discuss how any thoughts they may have on it. Then the leader took prayer requests and prayed for the group. We helped teach an English class for the guys and then everyone took some famous siesta time. During our hour and a half break, we learned how to play a traditional game of Dominos that Dominicans apparently know how to play fresh out of the womb. It was a great experience attempting to compete with the locals. After we had our pity party from never winning a single game, we headed out to the main park downtown. There, we got our shoes shined by some local boys in order to try and break the ice so that we could get to know them better. It worked! We ended up playing some different slapping games to see who could move our hands the fastest. As we were now used to, the Dominicans won. With our hands red and throbbing we reluctantly said goodbye and headed back to base.
Later tonight we will be spreading out into local homes and learning first hand about the culture and what it truly is like to live as a Dominican. Being here is an amazing opportunity and I know that our entire class is having a blast. The time we have here is moving too quickly!
Written by Nathan C.