No division

Day 5

written on May 18/11

Let me start off by saying that our baby girl Abriel is amazing.  She has been so easy going, calm and has been a great sleeper.  I still would have loved a fussy baby but I feel our baby girl was truly given to us to help us accomplish what we feel God wants us to do while in the Dominican.

We started our day off in the village of Nazaret.  We have been here over 7 times so we have come to know the names and faces of some children and adults.  It was nice seeing them again.  We sat and talked (and breastfed) together.  I am getting excited about the improvement of our Spanish (we didn’t even need a translator! Sure it was a basic conversation but still...).  A woman who has 10 children held and loved on our baby while her naked little ones ran around. I am looking forward to really getting to the know people more when we return. We have an opportunity to live in that village.... but I am not sure if we are ready for such a drastic change of life (I will talk more about that in another entry).

In the afternoon we went to one of my favourite yet hardest places to visit, Mustard Seed, an orphanage for children with physical and mental disabilities. Many of the children have a form of cerebral palsy which means their bodies are in knots and they can’t walk or use most of their bodies. Almost all the children are non verbal but their smiles melt your heart more than any words could.  The children end up there mostly due to being abandoned from families that can’t or won’t bear the load of one of these children.  Loving on them is such a privilege and is seemingly easy to do. But really, if you think about it, how hard is it to do anything for a couple hours?  I am faced with how easy it is to embrace the poor, sick, different and disabled while on a “mission’s trip” yet in our everyday lives these people get very little or none of our attention.  How different would our churches look if we embraced all people, if we were more inclusive, if we didn’t mind being inconvenienced to help out someone out?   Loving all people is hard... especially when it involves us having to do  work or puts us out in some way but what a beautiful thing when we put others before ourselves.... and when there is no division, no us and them.  Our team experienced the joy of being with children who the world looks upon with pity.... but maybe it’s us they should have pity on when we miss out on opportunities to love others.

Keeleah