Money Saving Mom®

On Thursday on our trip to the Dominican Republic, we visited an urban slum in downtown Santo Domingo. What we saw and experienced was shocking–and yet heart-warming.

{I wish I could have taken my camera to capture the scenes for you, but we’d decided to leave it behind as it was a somewhat dangerous situation for Americans to go into these slums. We found out later that one of the men who showed up while we were visiting was actually one of the city’s most dangerous criminals–a man who has an alliance with the police and therefore never gets punished for any of his deeds because he just pays them money to overlook his criminal actions. Our guide was incredibly grateful that I hadn’t brought the camera as he felt there was a good chance it would have put us in a great deal of danger!}

To even reach where the people lived, you had to go through this very small and long concrete corridor in between two stores. At the back, we ducked under laundry hanging out and entered a concrete broken down dwelling that looked like it hadn’t seen anything clean in decades. It reeked of years’ worth of dirty laundry piles mixed with sweat.

Inside this smelly, dirty, concrete dwelling was a beautiful woman. To most people, she wouldn’t appear all that beautiful from the outside. Her teeth were mostly missing and what was left of them were rotted and brown. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a very long time. Her clothes were dirty, extremely worn out, and stained.

But she was a beautiful woman regardless of her outward appearances because she radiated with contentment. Her living conditions were appalling. She was in charge of caring for some of her grandchildren because her daughter has been sick for years. Her son is a high profile criminal. And she is unable to find work and relies on the kindness of others for support.

Despite all her struggles, she was so joyful. Instead of giving in to hopelessness and despair, she was telling us how she’s trying to reach out and help others.

And then, she asked if she could pray for us. I was moved to tears.

Here was this woman who has practically nothing and she’s asking to pray for us!

I wish you could have heard her prayer. It was powerful and filled with praise to the Lord, thanking Him for bringing us to visit her and asking that God would bless us.

After we gave her a box of staple supplies and prayed for her, I hugged her and thanked her profusely for letting us come. While we came to reach out to her, we left the ones who were ministered to.

If she can be joyful, content, and giving in such an awful situation in life, I have no excuse to ever complain again.

{This picture is of one of the other families we visited on our trip. All six of them live in this house and it wasn’t much bigger than what you see here. I was so impressed with the girl on the left. She had so much drive and potential: she’s working at the supermarket and going to the university to study accounting and hoping to get a job in the accounting field once she graduates.}

After spending time with the children in the Child Sponsorship Program on Thursday, we served them lunch and then headed to meet with a local pastor who was involved in this Child Sponsorship Program. He showed us some of the amazing outreach opportunities his church is spearheading in their community.

One of them is this Water Store that Debbie, a woman who is on this trip with us, helped to fund. The store has a water purification plant that provides water to their church, the Child Sponsorship Program, as well as providing a very inexpensive source of water for this community.

{Piles of trash like this were very common in many of the places we visited.}

There is a huge need for clean water in almost all parts of the DR, but it can be expensive to have to purchase all of the water. The Water Store offers water at about half the price of what you’d pay elsewhere, so people from all over come to buy it!

What I loved most about the Water Store is that it is self-sustaining and income-producing. So not only is it helping to increase the health of thousands of families in this community through clean water and providing the water at a great price, but it’s also creating a source of income for a number of families, too.

The Water Store is staffed by four employees, plus there are many people who buy the water in bulk and have set up numerous distribution points in outlying areas. In this urban area where jobs are very scarce, the Water Store is helping to provide an income source to many, many families!

They are currently planning to expand the store because the demand is so great. By expanding, they will also be able to supply many more distribution points and provide even more revenue for more families.

What we were most inspired by was how hard this local pastor and church was working to reach out to those in their community. In addition to the Child Sponsorship Program and the Water Store, they offer a medical clinic, classes for the local public school students, retreats for young people. They are also actively working on setting up a vocational school for their community with plans to offer English classes, computer classes, vocational classes, and more in order to help those in their community find jobs.

They had so little themselves, and yet they were doing all they could to help those who were in much worse situations. It was so convicting to me to see firsthand!

Maybe you don’t have money to invest in something like a Water Store, but I want to challenge you to follow the example of this pastor and think about what you can do to bring health and hope to those in your own community–and around the world. We all have something we can give, even if it’s just a cup of cold water to someone who is begging on the streets.

Start looking for opportunities to reach out and give and you’ll likely find them all around you!

Tomorrow, I’ll share about our experiences visiting the slums in Santo Domingo. It was definitely a life-impacting experience for both my husband and me!