This past month has been one of the most intense months
of my three years serving here in the DR.
One of the big lessons I have been learning is that the quick, American
way of fixing things doesn’t always apply here. This has been a frustrating
lesson to learn, but one that has taught me patience and made me trust in God
more as things have not gone “my” way. Also further down, you can see some of the fun parts of this month including the parts of the visit of the Bethel Pilots and a planking video... Dominican Style!
Lesson #1: Physical Abuse
Keysi is one of our varsity players. You may remember that Keysi shared her testimony in our states video about her biological dad
abusing her mom when she was a baby.
What is not mentioned in the video is that since then, she has had a
step dad who continues to do the same.
It came to a peak a couple weeks ago when her step dad beat her mom with
a glass bottle, resulting in her mom having to get 25 stitches in her head and
in her hands. The more devastating
result is watching Keysi try to deal with all this. Within the 24 hours after the event, Keysi had two
violent panic attacks in which me and 4 other friends had to hold Keysi down in
order control her fighting limbs.
Keysi blames herself because she wasn’t there to protect her mom. She
also blames God for letting this happen to her and her mom.
Quick Fix?
Of course! Her mom
went to follow a police report in La Vega (30 min away). The police said they would come at 7
that night to arrest him. Did
they? Nope. Of course, everything in me wanted to
go marching into the police station and get this guy arrested. However, after talking with other
Dominican staff, they all said that if we took that action on Keysi’s behalf,
it would end up a lot worse for her in the end. Even if we got him put in jail for a year or two, he would
then come after Keysi. Does the
mom seem to care? Nope. The other
day, Keysi found a text on her mom’s phone addressed to the step dad saying,
“Guess what? Keysi is trying to
get you put in jail.” Real
sensitive mom.
Another quick fix?
Yeah, get Keysi out of
that home! However, Keysi loves her mom deeply and would never leave her mom
alone. She feels it is her
responsibility to protect her mom, despite how insensitive she may be. Please continue to pray for Keysi and
her family.
Lesson #2: Patience in Visas
Having collected all
the paperwork for our visas (which is a ridiculous amount), we applied for our
visas three months ago. We had
contacted the embassy numerous times and the responded the same, “we have a
long list of people needing group appointments. Just wait.” Yeah, uh huh. Finally this past week we
received our date for our appointment, July 16. Date of departure: July 25th.
Quick fix?
Well in America, all
you need is a passport and a flight to get yourself to the DR. Getting a visa to go to the states can
be a nightmare. For our
group of 15 people, we need passports, letters of invitation, detailed
itinerary, lawyer issued parent permission slips, school issued letters of conduct, completed governement form
(which takes about 2 hours per girl to fill out), $160 per girl to pay for
appointment, and proof of financial support of the trip. Once you’ve gotten all this
information, there is still the possibility that they tell you no. We have been told that we have a
good chance of them granting us the visas because they are minors, female and
it’s a sports team. We were told
that we shouldn’t buy flights before the appointment because of this
possibility of them saying no.
Well, now since the appointment is so close to our departure date, we
are looking into what we can do to get reimbursable flights. If you have any
knowledge about that, let me know.
Please be praying that we are granted the visas and the girls do not get
too nervous at our appointment.
Fun Updates
In other news, one of
my dreams came true a month ago when the Bethel Volleyball team came with an
outreach. They were a huge
blessing to me and my girls.
Pilots and varsity before their games in the capital
Heather sharing her testimony and big sis translating
Pilots with the kids from Corocito
To read their blog
about their time here, visithttp://pilotsinthedominican.wordpress.com/
We also had another
high school volleyball team come from Chico, California. It was a really neat thing to have a
team that could compete against our varsity team. In addition, they did a great job in sharing their
testimonies and really being examples of what a Christian girl looks like. Here is a fun video that we put together after they taught the girls the skill of "planking".
