Sandra

Day 7
written after we got back

It’s our final day in the DR. The week always seems to go by way too fast but it feels good to be going home. We love being in the DR (and love the people there) but there is something so comforting and familiar about going home. I do wish for a packing fairy to show up in our room though. Even though we aren’t coming home with as much as we came with we have way too much stuff to pack.

Sandra and Us in Agua Negra

We spent the morning in Agua Negara (Black Water). It’s a community built on a garbage dump. There is a lady there named Sandra who literally is the Mother Teresa of that community. Seven years ago Sandra had a husband with no job, three kids and no money. In the last seven years she has started a school, a church, a hair salon, a boys club and a girls club, been involved with getting several people new (and much needed) houses, she raises money for the sick in her community so they can get treatment / medication and also has a store where the ladies of the area learn how to sew and then sell their wares to help them make a living. She is moved to tears every time a team comes in to help the people there because she knows God has sent them to help. She is probably one of the most faith filled people I know. I feel simultaneously inspired to increase my faith and ashamed at how little faith I have when I hang around her. As we took the team on a tour of the village Sandra held our baby and at the end of the tour informed us that she would be keeping our baby because she had fallen in love with her. She also bought our whole team (including our driver, translators, missionaries and a few kids that were hanging around) some pop for our ride home. Talk about a giving person. She has next to nothing and what she does have she gives away freely and still finds ways to give to people. We didn’t do any building, we didn’t teach any classes, we didn’t give a whack load of money to her to help make her dreams come true and yet, she gave. Before the tour we presented Sandra with a new pair of sandels/running shoes for herself and her mother because they are on their feet constantly and they have such worn out shoes. She joked that “she didn’t like the shoes but she’d wear them anyways”. The translator didn’t carry the sarcasm over in her translation and we were a little taken a back until the translator said “SHE’S JOKING!” and we all laughed and laughed. She wore her new shoes for the tour and I couldn’t help commenting to one of the team members that by the time we go back she’ll have given those shoes to someone “who needs them more than her”. That’s just the person she is. How do I become that person? How do we become so giving and generous? How do we put others’ needs far ahead of our own? For me it will only be by the grace of God.

Chris Edwards