Her church is only about 30 minutes from our apartment, but in many ways a very different world. The pavement ends a half mile before you would like it to, and electricity is hit and miss. But this is where Veronica works. This is where her vision and heart lie. She is Dominican, speaks little English, and may be in her late 40's. I don't know much more about her because we just met today. Well, that's not totally true. I do know a little more.
Abby met her a while back, heard her story, and decided that we should go visit. Veronica has taken it on herself to feed over 100 children every day. That burden became too much, so now it's three days a week. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she and a few helpers cook and then feed the children of the area. We drove out today with some other missionary friends of ours, the Tichenor family from Kentucky.
It's name means "Welcome" in Spanish, and we might refer to the area as the slums, but I guess it's really not as bad as others closer to the Haitian border. It's close enough to the city that some of that money finds its way out. Veronica eagerly showed us around the church building. Not a church in the way we normally think, it's really a small single-family home used as a church.
It has a living room that they use for services, or they go outside under a tent when missionaries come to visit, she said. There are two bedrooms, and then the kitchen in back where the daily miracles happen. Two fridges, one is broken and used for storing plates, but they're hoping to get it fixed. Look at the photo. It reminds me of a rustic camp kitchen, but showing more wear. The sheet metal roof is dotted by tar from numerous patch jobs, and must leak something awful during the thunderstorms that frequent the Dominican summers. The walls are just painted, 10" siding pieces, one on top of the next.
Veronica told me they are praying for a family that would come live there full time. They would teach school and music ideally. I'm not sure what else, but the idea made me shudder a little. Imagine living in such an environment full time. Maybe if you treated it as camping; really long term camping.
The kids started to arrive. Normally they come for lunch, but she changed it to dinner tonight because we were coming and she thought it fit our schedule better. I didn't realize she changed the whole thing for us and I felt a little guilty. Plastic tables surrounded by chairs were lined up in the gravel yard in front of the building behind the fence, and I sat at one and talked to a few of the boys.
They had a plastic toy they played with for a while, and then asked if I wanted to play basketball sometime. It was close enough to walk, but I said we would have to do it a different day with the sun starting to set. These boys were 10-13 probably, and very friendly with me as a total stranger. One kid was blind. He was enjoying the clicking sound and rhythm of the plastic toy. He gets around just fine by himself, I was told. Hard to imagine in these crazy alleys and shanties. More kids showed up. All kinds of ages. Where were the parents? I would find out later.
Veronica yelled for attention. It was time to eat, but first she had me introduce my family and Bowin introduce his. Then she asked me to bless the meal and the kids all sat down. Turns out we would take the food to them.
They set up a table outside the kitchen and several adults were there to help with the giant pots of rice, shredded beef and salad. They dished a massive portion of rice onto plastic plates, a little less of the other foods, added a plastic fork, and our kids walked it over to the tables, plate by plate. It was messy and noisy, but perhaps at little less than I would have guessed under the circumstances.
Keilani was having trouble understanding a commotion at one of the tables, so I walked over. A little girl no older than three, wearing a shirt and nothing else, had peed all over her chair seat. She remained kneeling in the puddle, eating happily. I don't deal with those situations well. At all. My only thought was of a hose; no other way I was getting involved. One of the teenage girls was summoned for clean up, and she was not excited about it. She slapped the little girl on the arm a couple times, scolding her, then dragged her out of the chair by her arm. The child didn't seem to mind a bit, and wandered over to another girl of the same age that was sitting alone and eating.
Behind us, were a row of chairs where more kids sat and ate. One boy, probably two years old, was stark naked. He sat on the chair, with the plate of food resting on the seat. The food was everywhere, and his naked butt mashed the rice into the plastic seat as he shoveled the food in with a little spoon. I was frozen. He needs to be cleaned up. He needs some clothes. He needs something; at least some shorts. Again, this was not my area of expertise. I left him as he was.
That's what I saw. Now for what I learned. I walked back to the serving area with some questions.
How does one lady do this? Well, it's not just her, really. She has a few faithful people who help her cook and clean. But beyond that...it's a lot of faith. One day someone will donate 10 lbs of rice. The next day someone will bring them a chicken. Or lettuce. Or whatever. Veronica used to work in finance and is used to budgeting and planning. But it's hard to do there. Sometimes you have something to budget with, and sometimes you don't. But God provides and the children eat.
And the children. That's where it get interesting. Where are the parents? For the most part, dead. Dead, I asked? Really dead, that many? These are street children, mostly from Haiti, and they live with whomever they can, or no one at all. Be it through disease, violence or accident, many of the adults in their lives have died. Though some were abandoned, at times by mothers who were mere children themselves.
Their lives are why Veronica is here. The food they get allows them to skip work for the day, or for half a day anyway. The children must earn money every day if they hope to eat. Shoe shine work, washing car windows at stoplights, or just regular begging. But there are other, worse options, too. School though? School is for kids who have parents; or at least have food and then don't have to work that day. And that's why the food matters so much.
Lunch is at 12:30. School here can be morning or afternoon classes. So the kids can go to work in the morning, then get a good meal, then go to school after. Or vice versa. Except for one problem. I've written before about the immigration issues. If the kid has no papers or birth certificate, they aren't allowed into school. Many of these Haitian children have no papers, and the Dominican taxpayers aren't excited about paying for their education when they are so short on education money already. An understandable position, and there are no easy answers.
This has really made me think about the importance of education. The purpose of education is to learn how to be a benefit to others, and in so doing benefit ourselves. Tragically, the main skills we are born with mostly damage others. Without learning a skill, so many of these kids fall back on the skills that come naturally; prostitution or crime. One or the other, often depending on your gender. Nobody has to teach us those. No schooling. No studying. They come naturally and then they destroy us and those around us. Before long, these "children" end up pregnant or dead, creating still more orphans and perpetuating the vicious cycle of sin.
Veronica's mission is to educate these children to love God and to know how to love others. We love others by doing good things for them, but what if you don't know how? What if you can't fix their car, or develop a more efficient engine for them, or grow a more disease resistant food, or help them invest wisely, or write an entertaining movie script, or show them how to save their crumbling marriage, or teach their children to read, or ship their goods to a buyer, and on and on and on. What if you have nothing to offer because no one ever taught you how to love? That is her mission. And it is huge.
She wants to start a school. A school where every kid can come and learn, papers or no papers. They can learn of a God who loves them, and how they can in turn love Him and His people. And they can begin to learn the skills required to put love into action.
We drove off into the darkening night back for our house thinking and talking about what we'd seen. I figured this would be a one-time trip. A trip to see a different part of the country and to add to our experience here. But now I think we'll go back. For one thing, there are some boys in need of some basketball lessons. But God may have something more besides. Guess we'll see. Guess we'll see.
