The Dominican Republic through my Family's Eyes

  October 24^th-November 3^rd

 ^{Every Thursday at Colegio Timoteo, we break into small groups and within those small groups of students we spend time teaching, and praying for one another. In my group last year, one of my boys, Steven, had the same prayer request every week which was that my parents could come down to visit so that he could meet them. He prayed for them every week for the entire year. Back in October 2012, a prayer request prayed over a long period of time was finally fulfilled. My parents were able to come and see the ministry that is going on here in Jarabacoa, and experience what it is like to be out of the country for the first time. When I took them into school to meet my students, Steven came running up to me, and he tells me, "JIM! God DOES answer prayer! Look! He brought your parents. Now I am going to pray for your brother!" It was such an amazing time an opportunity to be able to have my parents enter into my life here and really have the opportunity to see and experience the place where God has put SO much Passion on my heart to work. In just 10 short days, my parents really were able to meet so many people that have impacted my life, as well as see so many different things and places in this beautiful country. Here are some pictures of some of the things that they were able to experience while they were here.}

The Value of a Peso

One day in August, two boys from club (Yeudy and Jefry) came to my house visit with me. I had told both of them before that my family was coming to visit me from Indiana for a week in October. The first thing that Jefry tells me when he gets to my house was, “Jim, tell you mom to bring me some roller blades.” Unfortunately this is a pretty bad habit that many of the shoe shiners have is begging in the street (many time because they are put up to it in by their families).  It was interesting because the form in which he asked was not really asking; he was demanding that I tell my mom to bring him skates.  I told him, “Jim, tell your mom to give me skates? Show me the money and then we’ll talk.” I continued on by saying, “Tell you what, you have exactly 2 months until they get here,” I figured this would be an awesome opportunity to teach them about saving their money, “If you can save up enough money to buy the skates, I will talk to my mom to see if she is willing to bring you the skates that you will buy.” 

    So we began to discuss how much they think they could save daily from their earning. They said that 25 pesos would be easy to save up daily and I explained that if they would spend one hour less in the arcade they could use that money for something they really want.  I continued to explain that if they would save just 25 pesos a day by the end of 2 months they could have saved $1500 pesos. Their eyes lit up and were shocked that they could make that much money in such a short amount of time. They decided that they were up for the challenge. I happened to have two empty spaghetti sauce jars in my cupboard and we made then into piggy banks. We decorated the jars with construction paper and random things I had in the house, and we put their names on them. They even sealed the lid so that it wouldn’t be easy to open in order to eliminate the temptation to spend their savings. They were so proud of their piggy banks. Yeudy and Jefry left very happy and excited to start the challenge… I started them off by giving each of them 5 pesos and I said now all you have to do is find 20 pesos more to finish the day. They left the house on a mission. Two days later I was leaving the supermarket in town and I had another one of my boys from club (Alexander) come up to me and asked if I had any more empty jars, he wanted to participate in the challenge as well. I got really excited because that meant that Jefry and Yeudy also began sharing the idea of saving with the other boys in the street. About a month later, I found out that unfortunately, Jefry had stopped and ended up using the money for other things including things for the family. Yeudy, come to find out his family wasn’t too crazy about the idea either, however, he ended up being able to save a nice quantity of money and ended up buying himself some new clothes. I am very proud of them for taking the challenge and really impressed that they made it as far as they did. I am a little frustrated with the families because I see that basically there is a hindrance in not allowing them to literally get out of the situation they are in.