Haven of Rest: Dinner and Sleeping Arrangements

The first photograph is in the dining hall at the Haven of Rest;

Each night, around 100 men are fed and 20-25 women are fed.

The women sit separate from the men, and they also get their food about 15 minutes before the men enter.

Each tray is set the same; both the men and women file through a buffet line to get their main dinner plate and then take their seat.

If enough is left over, people will be offered seconds.

Full time staff as well as volunteers work in the kitchen; volunteers set up and serve the food.

This is an example of one of the rooms in the Harvest Home;

Women are welcome to sleep overnight in these rooms for whatever reason.

They may stay for a day, a week, 3 months, or even up to 6 months.

They are provided with showers, clean towels and bedding, a storage bin for their personal belongings - which must be emptied everyday when they leave... in case they do not return.

I spoke with one of the supervisors at the Harvest Home who worked with the Women's Day Room; all of the women referred to her as "Miss Thelma"

Fifteen women were staying overnight when I ate dinner with them and observed in the Women's Day Room. Many asked me if I was new; I wasn't sure how to respond. I told them I was new just for tonight. It was interesting to see the variety of women present and those that carried with them one small bag of belongings, and others who carried a couple luggage items and several other bags.

After dinner, I sat next to Miss Thelma's desk as she distributed medications to them women as they have need for it. Many of the women have prescription drugs while others have just vitamins and typical over-the-counter meds; all medications are kept in the office and it is closely recorded when medications are being taken. While staying at the Home, there are certain rules and schedules that must be followed. After dinner, they can smoke until 8pm, then they must remain indoors the rest of the night, showers are available, and until 9pm, they can access their medications with the help of Miss Thelma. She told me that for the most part, the women all get along.

As far as finances go:

Resources, material donations for the widows and children are always a blessing.

Basically monetary donations do the most here...as anywhere in the world. Our funding is from our business buyout 10 years ago. We also have a very faithful base of individuals and a few churches who sow into the ministry on a monthly basis. There is one business that gives us money to finish construction on the mission house each month as well. Basically Bill and I are self supported and we are also one of the largest contributors to each program because of the business buyout agreement. That will finish this year and next year with the house finished and the buyout contract up, we are very excited to begin to plant more churches because we will have more time.

-Karen Rumple

Karen emailed be in regards to various difficulties or barriers between the Dominicans and Americans

In regards to

Language:

"Bill and I don't see much of a language barrier as we do a cultural barrier. They take 2 hour lunches and actually cry tears if they work 1 minute past 12:00. They want their food and want it now. Where as we Americans will eat on the fly. They will not do this no matter what. Again, there are more cultural barriers of things that are unbelievably hard to understand as opposed to the language barrier."

Cultural Barriers in Communication:

"You must be very careful to study a culture and what offends and what does not. The Dominicans love to communicate with Americans unless it is something serious. Then, they do not like it. Americans like to speak to Dominicans only if they feel confident in their Spanish skills. Because of the cultural barriers that are present, conversations need to be kept very light. Our humor is mainly offensive to them. What we find funny they usually do not. And what they find funny we find very simple-minded."

Translators:

"Interpreters are not much of an issue any longer since Bill and I pretty much understand. We do not speak eloquently and when preaching something very important, we will use an interpreter. Interpreters also interpret when groups come to help the poor."

Karen goes on to say:

The goals of our organization are:

to plant as many churches as we can in areas that do not have a healthy church,

support each pastor through the produce of the farm,

take care of 100 widows someday,

also in our mobile medicine program which is brand new: we will take care of children with diabetes, have a prenatal program as well as std education, place asthmatic nebulizers in each barrio so people have the ability to get medicine faster than they do now, which is wait in line for 30 minutes as many of them pass out during that time.

The obstacles in any of our programs are time lines.

The people here move very slowly.

We Americans organize then take the bull by the horns.

But perseverance has become our key attribute in these last 10 years.

And things are coming together pretty well.

We will finally finish our mission house this year after having to live in 3 rooms for the last 9 years.

So, Praise The Lord!!!

Grace & Peace: Projects to aid the Widows as well as others...

The following is from the "Why is Grace and Peace Here?" page on their website.

The Farming Project: This project is important to assist all of Grace and Peace's other programs. This project will provide food for the widows, the children, the ministry center, all of the families of those laboring in the ministry and those that pass through the medical clinic where the doctors see a nutritional-based problem, along with many missionary families in our region of the country. This farm will have over 200 dairy cows, beef cattle, a fish pond for protein, 7000 chickens for eggs, 2500 ducks for eggs, 250 goats for meat and milk, pigs and many acres of vegetables.

Also from the Jan/Feb 2007 Newsletter, Bill Rumple updates about The Farming Project:

"The farm, which has by far been one of the most difficult "universities" of my life, is finally starting to produce a number of things. We've already been producing platanoes, bananas, corn, and yucca. Yucca is what the Native American Indians brought to the first thanksgiving using the term "Manioc". It is similar in shape to a sweet potato or a yam, but is stringier and has less taste. A couple things that grow real well on the farm, for which the soil is perfect, are peppers and onions. Along with peppers and onions, we have papaya, chinola (passion fruit), cabbage, and tomatoes. After using what things we need from the farm in the widows program for example, the overages get sold to pay for the farm costs and to buy things that we don't produce, i.e. rice, cooking oil, etc. Now that we've begun to bless the widows along with what they have been getting over the years, they are just thrilled to death and so are we!"

Grace & Peace Newsletter Excerpt

The following is from Grace and Peace Missionary Fellowship Newsletter

They generally post them on their website as well as have them mailed to everyone on their mailing list but with recent changes in their website administration and whatnot, I have not been able to access the most recent newsletters. Regardless, this one is from the Jan/Feb 2007 newsletter

New Widow Vehicle - by Karen Rumple

"In May of 2006, my second widow vehicle's engine went. Although this was my second vehicle, it was actually my third engine. I'm sure so many of you wonder why so many engines? Well, we did too. The cold hard facts are that some of my widows live so remote, that my vehicles tended to continually overheat as well as the fact that, because vehicles are so expensive, we tended to buy "fixer-uppers" for $10,000-$13,000. Well, I knew it was time for a better vehicle, so Bill and I agreed that most of the monies raised this past January would be used towards my new vehicle. We raised almost $16,000. Along with that, we put $2,000 more we had stored away and purchased a 2001 Toyota Land Cruiser. It's perfect. Not too flashy to be stolen, but sturdy enough to get me to each widow and back home safely. Since I like to visit certain widows by myself, I wanted a reliable vehicle. If you've seen those cell phone commercials where the guys are holding their phones out in front of them trying to find a signal, that's a great depiction of what we do here when we are in these remote areas. And many times there is no signal at all. Reliability was important, but even more importantly was the fact that at times I have sick widows whose family will not take them to the appropriate doctors. Just this past year, I watched Armancia Manuel (this is the same lady we visited while I was in the Dominican volunteering)die from diabetes. Her family kept telling me they would take her to the doctor for the correct medicines and once I realized they just weren't going to do it, she had a stroke. She died shortly after that and that's when we began to consider helping widows like her get that special medical attention. Thanks to so many of you who helped make all this possible."

I really felt like this article in the newsletter portrayed some of the obstacles and difficulties overcoming them as Grace & Peace interacts with these widows. Karen feels strongly about helping to provide for their needs, but at the same time, does not want to become a crutch for their families to lean on ALL the time. One of the hardest things is knowing where to intervene, or leave it up to the families to take the responsibility on themselves.

Also, in regards to the truck issue, the roads are not really roads in these Haitian villages where the widows live. It is mostly dirt and rocky terrain, and when it hasn't rained, the "roads" kick up a lot of dirt and dust.

Several times while I was there, we would ride in the back of the truck, sitting on the edges of the truck bed, holding on to the sides. Let's just say, there were a few occasions when we feared one of us was going to be dislodged from the truck... ;)

This is what we woke up to every morning...

July 4th, 2006 - July 18th 2006

I traveled to the Dominican Republic and actually volunteered with Grace & Peace with three of my close friends, and one of my best friend's mom.

This is one of the reasons I chose to blog about this international organization, but also because I feel a strong passion in my life towards the Third World and working alongside them to improve their living conditions, their health, their education, and their well being. While I was there, I learned a lot about life outside of the States, and I really enjoyed their culture - as much as there is a struggle as they continue developing as a country, the people are beautiful and many are genuinely happy with as little as they have.

I recently found my journal from my trip and I found this entry relevant to share in regards to the Widows Ministry:

"...So after we got done with that (referring to a study on sexuality with 14 local girls; the culture maintains that girls can not be Christians if they wear earrings or pants instead of skirts and there are issues that arise when they feel like they cannot practice religion or go to church because they don't own any skirts...), we got ready and went with Beth and Karen to visit a dying widow. Armancia - (was her name) -she had a stroke a few weeks ago, her face is slightly deformed, her bones are so tiny, her ankles were so small around and she had open sores from being in bed for so long. She can't really talk but she'll open her eyes and acknowledge that she can hear you. Mmm.. it was a horrific sight. She was like, shriveled up and they had this netting to put over her to keep bugs off. Her legs and feet were covered in a dirty t-shirt to keep the flies out of the wounds. Yeah, it was sad. She lives in Altagracias, a very poor Haitian batey and while we were there, these little kids took rocks and "keyed" Karen's truck. Well, more like "drew pictures with rocks" on her truck. They didn't know better. Today when we were back in the same area, she (Karen) asked them who did it and they raised their hands saying "Yo! Yo!" (I or Me in spanish) She explained how they cannot do that and that her husband was very upset. Then she talked to their mothers and they gently "swatted" them for it. When we were standing there, the kids were saying what a nice picture they made on the side of the truck."

We found out a couple weeks later that Armancia had died.