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.