Compassion International Visit

Two days ago I had the privilege to visit the boy I have sponsored through Compassion for more than five years now. His name is Yunior and he live with his family just north of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. I brought him a Cubs hat as a gift for him and some towels for his family.

I got a little tour of the Compassion site and saw that they have a few hundred kids who take part in their program on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. They have them divided based on age groups, and each group was very excited to see a visitor! It is nice that since I speak Spanish I was able to communicate with them. When I got to the Compassion office early that morning, I was greeted by my translator--pretty ironic because I was a translator the two days preceding that. I kindly told her in Spanish that I would not need a translator (I guess the office didn't get the email).

I think I was different than most sponsors (patrocinador in Spanish) because I am young, have lived in the DR for 3 months, and speak Spanish. I can only imagine that 90% of the sponsors who visit their children are elderly and instead of speaking Spanish just talk really loud and slow to try and fight the language barrier. "HI MY NAME IS KEVIN, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"

Ironically the Compassion office where I needed to meet in the morning was literally two blocks from where I was staying, and in Santo Domingo, a city of around 2.25 million, that is very convenient.

After my tour we went to Yunior's home. Yunior is on the quiet side, and it took many questions for him to start talking. He is 13 and lives with his mother, her parents, his brother and cousins. They share a small house and do not own very much. His mom works from time to time as a housekeeper but at times is without work.

My conversation with Yunior's family was a little short and was mainly the Compassion guy talking with Yunior's grandfather, but it was still really good meeting the family and seeing their living situation. Yunior told me that in his free time he likes playing sports and spending time with friends. He likes to play baseball at the local baseball field which made me pleased to hear. I know that God is allowing Compassion and myself to give him an opportunity he would not normally have, and I am thankful for it.

In my time at Compassion, I told a woman that I am a volunteer with Esperanza International, and it turns out that not only does she receive a loan from us, but her bank meets in the very room we were in! I filmed a little interview with her for the video I am making, and when I am done I will post a link on my blog.

One of our loan officers at the Puerto Plata Esperanza office was a Compassion kid when she was younger and said she is so very thankful for the opportunity she had with Compassion. Compassion gave her a scholarship up through the end of high school. She is very thankful for all Compassion gave her, and she even remember her sponsor's name! I am going to help her try and contact him too.

I am very thankful that I could meet Yunior and see his family. Another plus for this trip was that I made a connection with a few Compassion workers and told them about our ministry in Puerto Plata, and they seem eager to help.

Translating onboard the USNS Comfort

I had the great opportunity to serve as a translator on the US Navy medical ship called the Comfort. I stayed two days and translated for doctors and nurses asking patients how they were feeling, where the pain was, and giving them instructions with their medications.

At first, we weren't sure that we would be able to board the boat due to bad organization and confusion caused by both DR stuff and the Navy (government inefficiencies...why I believe a small-government is the way to go. If you are reading this Barack Obama, take note).

I was stationed in a post-operation room and got to befriend some people there because in down time I would usually talk to either the doctors or the patients. I was actually woken up one night at 2am because no translators were awake and a doctor needed to see how a patient was doing.

Some highlights from my time were:

• -Learning a lot about the Navy and life at sea. We got a tour of many parts of the ship, and a Chicagoan serving in the Navy showed me where the servicemen sleep and hang out.
• -Meeting with a Navy coordinator about Esperanza and making connections
• -Getting the question asked me by a doctor, "Where did you learn your English?" Because she thought I was a native Spanish speaker because of how well i spoke. That made my time.
  
• -Having some interesting conversations with medical students we spent a decent amount of time with
• -Telling a couple of Mexican-American Navy guys that I was Domincan, and having them believe me
• -Probably speaking the best Spanish of my life (practice helps!)
  

The little girl pictured is one of the patients I translated for. She was really funny and told me there were two mice living in her little cabinet thing and wanted me to bring food for them.

A Tribute to Buddy

Buddy will be remembered as a timid momma's boy but also a very loving cat.

If you have ever seen the movie "Benchwarmers" (which isn't a good movie, so don't rush out to rent it), the character Howie (pictured below) is memorable because he is agoraphobic and scared of everything. He lived in a closet and did his business in a 2-liter bottle.

This is basically the legacy Buddy left (he used a litter box though).

So Buddy,

Thanks for a good 10+ years, and if cats can go to heaven, please come out from wherever you are hiding and say hi. I mean I wrote a whole blog entry on you, seriously.

PS Buddy forgive me for accidentally kicking you in the face that one time. It was your fault peeking out behind the chair when you did.

Check this Out

Here's another thing I contributed to the Esperanza website. Enjoy!
Below is a picture of me and some sweet graffiti that I saw and had to get a picture with.

"...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6)

Kids United in Christ

If you guys didn't know, a loan officer and I from the Esperanza office have been going to a rural neighborhood and spending our Saturday with the people teaching English and preaching from the Bible. So far it's just starting up but we hope and pray that God would use us to help these kids know and grow in Christ. We also hope and pray that the English lessons we are providing will be a great opportunity for them. Check out our site.

We would greatly appreciate your prayer and support.

Since I am going back to the States in a month or so, I only have 3 more weeks to teach and we are looking for other teachers or organizations that could help us in any way. If you or someone you know could help us, let us know!

Poverty and Disease

I have had the chance to interview some people who are facing big medical issues in their lives.

The woman I wrote about in this article and her family all have tuberculosis. It is really hard for them to get buy and to have enough money for food and treatment. One of her sons recently died.

Another woman I interviewed has a daughter born without the necessary cavities to urinate or defecate. Her daughter had a doctor that performed many operations for free and helped them out a lot until the doctor died after battling cancer.

There is a child of one of our associates who is crippled and will be able to get free medical treatment later this month when a medical missions trip comes to the DR so that is pretty exciting.

Yesterday I met a woman who fell and is injured. She was wearing a neck brace and laying in bed when we went to go visit her. She is now unable to work and therefore unable to provide for her family and payback her loan.

It is sad how poverty can really hinder people in life; especially people with treatable medical problems who cannot afford treatment.

Esperanza International Featured in Readers Digest

The company I am interning with* was recently featured in Reader's Digest magazine. You can read the article here and find out about how it got started.

*I am technically interning with HOPE International, a partner of Esperanza. I work extensively with Kiva, a website that raises funds for microfinance. You guys should check out HOPE's website as well as Kiva's and Esperanza's. This picture is a random one I took today that I thought I'd add to spice things up.

Bad moves made by the Cubs this offseason

• Ryan Dempster getting $52 million for four years.
Dempster had a good year in 2008 (17-6 with 2.96 ERA) but did not play great on the road. That is really the only dazzling season of his career and I think it will probably be his career year. I expect his stats to be W/L 14-11 with an ERA of around three and a half.

• Milton Bradley getting $30 million for three years.
Don’t even get me started on this guy. He had a good year last year until he got injured. In his one “full season” of 146 games with the Dodgers, Bradley batted .267 with 19 homers and 67 RBI’s. Nothing dazzling. Last year he tore it up in Texas batting .321 with 22 HRs and 77 RBI’s but has had injury troubles his whole career. My question is this: why give an unproven guy so much money? 10 mil a year? And we traded Mark DeRosa to free up salary room. The fact that there is a Youtube video called “Milton Bradley Suicide Bombs His Teams” should throw up a red flag.

• Trading Mark DeRosa. He is one of my favorite players in baseball today. He’s my kind of player, can play anywhere in the field and is a good hitter too. Back in my playing days I played a wide variety of positions (Senior year I played 3B, 1B, 2B, C, LF and RF) and batted and ran decently enough to be an asset for my coach because of my versatility. I like the fact that you can give DLee, ARam, Soriano, Fukudome, and Fontenot days off and not have to worry about filling their gap in the lineup because DeRosa fit it.

Last year he batted a solid .285 with 103 runs, 21 HRs, and 87 RBIs with a .376 OBP. Those are stinkin’ good numbers for anybody, let alone a “utility guy”. Not to mention he was a team leader and a fan favorite and a clutch player (his HR in the 08 Division Series is the only good thing that happened that series). Granted, that was probably a career year for him too, but to trade a guy making only $5 mil a year to free up salary room? And you go and pay Bozo Bradley how much?

Heck he played in the World Baseball Classic with his beloved USA, so he is a true American not like Alex Rodriguez.

And the guy the Cubs signed to replace him will make only about $3 million less than him.

My suggestions for the Cubs:
• Get DeRosa back (can you tell he's my man-crush?)
• Have Zambrano be the pinch hitter for the Cubs on his days off. I’m totally serious and it lets me watch him bat without converting him to an outfielder which takes years (just ask Rick Ankiel).
-Sign Henry Rowengartner to a long term deal. just kidding, had to give him a shout out.
• Win the World Series, and then hire me for a job in the front office. GM would be great but at this point I'll take anything...

Stuff coming up and a couple of random stories

Something Fun
I don't know if you guys know, but during TU's Spring Break I was able to meet up with the Taylor Spring Break team in Jarabacoa which is in the central part of the DR. We went white water rafting and had dinner together. It was fun to reconnect with fellow TU people and hear what is going on in Upland. Krista the other HOPE International intern who happens to be another Taylor Grad from Chicago was there too and it was cool. I took one picture the whole trip and it was of myself at a bus station on the way back. Lame I know

Some highlights for the rest of my time here are:
-This month I am going to visit the kid I have sponsored through Compassion International for the last several years. I'm pretty pumped about it and it should give me a new perspective on the sponsorship.
-The end of April I will be serving as a translator on the US Navy's medical mission boat Comfort for a couple of and am pretty pumped. I will be spending the night there and I'm really excited. I'll probably post something about that after it happens. The ship in the picture is the Comfort.

Random Story time:
-An elderly Haitian woman slapped me in the face a while back. I had just taken a picture of her microfinance group and she walks up to me, looks at the picture, and then slaps me right in the face. It turns out there was a mosquito biting me, so I was grateful, or at least tried to seem grateful.
-Last week at church there was a high school from Florida group doing missions down here on their Spring Break. One guy from the trip recognized me and said he met me while visiting Taylor last fall (he stayed with Schooler). What a small world...

Some things I would appreciate prayer for here in DR:
-That I could continue to develop relationships here in the DR in my remaining weeks.
-That I would continue to progress in Spanish
-That I could be a light and a spiritual

Prayer for my life when I get back:
-That I would be led to a job that will help me get good experience in a field I am interested in

Something I'm learning here:
In my job here, I have been blessed to interview some of our associates all of whom are really poor. I am always reminded of their worth in God's eyes even though this world may look down on them. Hearing about their faith and joy in Christ is an encouragement and humbling. This verse is something I'm reminded of constantly:

James 2:5
Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?

Driving in the Dominican Republic

In Lonely Planet’s Dominican Republic guide (you gotta have one traveling), under the “Road Rules” section, the first sentence says, “The first rule is that there are none.” This is a true statement. I have never seen a speed limit sign, but they do have many speed bumps. Stopping at stoplights is optional and only depends on if people are coming from the other direction. Lonely Planet also says, “Driving in the DR is pretty much a free-for-all, a test of ones’ nerves and will, a continuous series of games of chicken where the loser is the oine who decides to give way just before the moment of impact.”

One thing I find really funny is that the second a light turns green people honk. Literally the light will be green for a split second and there will be a half dozen people honking. In the US people generally leave minimum 3 or 4 seconds for a person to start going, sometimes maybe even longer to be polite. In the DR, some people even honk before the light turns green. A Swedish teacher at a Haitian church here in the DR said that someone honked at him before the light turned green. He said he got out of his car and asked the guy why he honked, and the Dominican said, “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget to go.”

I travel a lot by motoconcho which is a motorcycle taxi. The way to flag a motoconcho down is not by yelling. You can wave your hand, but the best way is to either whistle or do a loud “pppsssssss.”

One of my favorite moves is the old “drive on the other side of the road” trick. This works well because motorcycles can easily weave through traffic. When someone wants to turn left ahead and knows they will have to wait but see a gap before they get to the intersection, they will turn left and ride on the wrong side of the road so they won’t have to wait. This is particularly annoying when crossing busy streets because it means you have to look-both-ways basically the whole time you are crossing the street. I have found this out the hard way, crossing half of the street and then running across the other half looking for traffic one way and having people honk at me from the other direction. Not cool!

Another blog that I do

I contribute to a microfinance blog called Mykro.org. Check out my latest post.

My Schedule

I realize I haven´t written a blog in a while and it's actually not my fault. I wrote a blog for part of my job and submitted it to the site (mykro.org) but it hasn't been published. Since we are not supposed to "double dip" our blog posts there, I was going to provide a link on this blog. Anyways, in this post I will describe the job that I do here and supply you guys with a couple of pictures.

I am interning with Esperanza International, a HOPE International partner, and my job is to work closely with an organization called Kiva. Kiva is a site that raises funds through donations from people all over the world. I travel around with the Esperanza loan officers and take pictures of the loan-groups as well as interview the group leaders and put their stories on Kiva.

A typical day is like this (actually every day is really different, but this is at least the amount of time each thing takes):
*6:30am get up, breakfast (cornflakes, banana, OJ, everyday)
*7:30amish travel somewhere to go to meetings with a loan officer
*8:00ish arrive where I need to be
*8:30 the loan officer arrives where I need to be (sometimes I wait 15 minutes, sometimes I wait an hour...but it really doesn't bother me, I just go with the flow of things)
*9:00 get to meeting, do interview(s) of clients and take pictures
*10-12 go to other meetings and do the same
*12pm return to office, start on the next day's schedule
*1pm lunch
*2pm-5:30pm work on the next day's schedule, post stories, journals, and pictures collected throughout the day to the website. Also I sometimes do typical "intern" things like printing receipts and data entry.
*5:30-6:30 go to the gym that is a few blocks from the office (40 pesos to work out...thats like $1.10, this is actually the "glass half full" typical day, I dont go to the gym as much as I should, I usually just work out at our apartment)
*6:30-8:30 go to the apt, shower, start making dinner, eat dinner
*8:30-10:30 "read" in my room. I usually fall asleep for a half an hour in an awkward position before I wake up, turn the light off, and go to bed for good.

Here is a typical weekend:
*Friday night usually just chilling at the apartment. The dude I live with works late a lot of times, and I am usually content resting up for the next couple of days.
*Saturday I usually go to the beach and there are sometimes a random assortment of other intern-type workers who are able to go too. It is nice that there is a good beach 5 minutes away, and two other great ones within 45 minutes and 35 pesos (about a dollar)
*Saturday evening- there is a group of people my age from the church I've been going to that I hope to get involved in...I actually haven't gone yet... (apparently "jovenes" in the DR means late high school/college aged people, while in Ecuador it meant late high school until you are like 30)
*Sunday: sometimes beach, sometimes just chilling. 6pm= church

That is a normal week. I've only been here about 5 weeks and still hope to do a lot more and develop relationships here. Your prayers are greatly appreciated. The added pictures are a couple recent shots taken at loan meetings (Schooler if you're reading this, the puppy pic is for you).

If you guys don´t have Spring Break plans and want a free place to stay in the Caribbean that is 5 minutes from an awesome beach, come and visit me. Seriously.

I will leave you with a passage from the Bible that has meant a lot to me recently:
1 Peter 5:6-11

Sometimes I wish I could just know it all right now…

Something I have been learning down here is to wait. I have a lot of expectations for being down here and a lot of things I want to learn and improve in. I think for the first couple of weeks I was frustrated that I didn’t learn everything already.

I realized that I need to be patient and wait. My Spanish will improve over time with practice and study, both of wich I need to be willing to do. I need to work hard at improving in ways I can with both learning Spanish and getting better at my job.

Something interesting about the Spanish language is that they have the same word for both “to hope” and “to wait”, esperar. That word really has taught me about the interconnected relationship between hoping and waiting. Many times in the Bible it says to “wait upon the Lord” and I think that involves a lot of hope.

Isaiah 40:31 NAS says, “Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.”

Some other versions say “those who hope in the Lord” showing further the connection. I guess where I’m at right now is that I need to put my hope in God and wait on him.

So in terms of Spanish frustrations, developing relationships at work and church, knowing a lot about my job, I may not be where I want to be now, but I know that with patience and the right perspective it will be getting better every day.

What I did at work this week:

I traveled with loan officers and interviewed clients about their loans and how it affected their life and family. It is really cool to interact with the people we are helping and reminds me of the impact we are having.

Major League Baseball Heaven

So if you guys don’t know (or haven’t walked into our family room at my house), I’m a big baseball fan. While I was in Ecuador, the only sport people cared about was soccer and the national hero was a speed-walker. My Ecuador experience was great, but could have been better if there was baseball.

So now I’m in the Dominican Republic. They love baseball here. Not only is it the national sport, but it’s really the only sport people value here. In that regard, I fit in quite well. I saw on the Esperanza website about a month before I came down that Jose Reyes, one of the best shortstops in the big leagues, worked with Esperanza to build a youth baseball field.

Norberto, the director of the Puerto Plata branch of Esperanza and also the guy I share an apartment with, has some MLB connections (kinda). First of all, Esperanza was started by Dave Valle, a former player in the majors who played for about 12 years. His son actually lived where I live now last fall and is a pretty sweet guy.

Since Esperanza’s main goal is to help people, people like giving money to us, and especially some wealthy businessmen. Norberto told me that one time on a HOPE trip (where donors from Esperanza’s partner HOPE come down and check out what we’re doing) a group had the owner of a pretty big bank and also the guy who was the co-owner of the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush (that was the rumor).

Norberto is from San Pedro, which is where Sammy Sosa and a lot of other players are from. He said that his dad played softball with Sosa’s brothers and went to school with Robinson Cano (of the Yankees) as well as George Bell’s sons. Apparently he even ate dinner at Alfonso Soriano’s house when Soriano helped out with Esperanza (scroll all the way to the bottom of this link), but Soriano was out of the country (Norberto said he met his mom). Felix Pie (the guy the Cubs just traded) lives right by the Esperanza office in San Pedro, used to date one of Norberto’s friends.

My hope is to meet a player or two and get a picture with them. We shall see what and who the next three months bring my way.

Some cool things I hope to do while here (besides meet some baseball players):
-meet the kid I sponsor with Compassion International and volunteer with them
-go to Haiti on a HOPE Trip
-find a gym and work out a few of times a week
-keep improving my Spanish
-contribute a lot at work

Stuff I would appreciate prayer for:
-That I could make a difference here spiritually and contribute at work
-to really grow as a person here
-that I could also find direction in life after I'm done here

First week in La Republica Dominicana

My first week has been an interesting one. I flew into Santo Domingo last Tuesday and worked at the Santo Domingo office on Thursday and Friday (Wednesday was a holiday; I went to the beach with some coworkers and got pretty burnt which is ironic because earlier in the week while I was at Taylor, I got frostbite).

The organization I am with here is Esperanza International, which is a sister-organization and partner of HOPE International. They both give out small loans to people who cannot get loans anywhere else. As the old saying goes, “You need to have money to make money” and that is why many poor people are stuck in poverty; they have the skills to run a successful business just not the means of investing in it.

I will work extensively with Kiva, an organization that funds many microfinance companies by being a central location for people to see stories of clients and donate money. My position has a lot of freedom to it which means I will be able to help in a variety of ways and also means that I need to be proactive in looking for ways to contribute.

Right now I am in Puerto Plata which is on the northern coast. From my apartment that I share with the Esperanza branch director, I can see the mountains and the ocean. I can actually only see the ocean from part of the roof, but hey that counts, right? This weekend a bunch of Esperanza people came up from Santiago and Santo Domingo to hang out with us. Just down the road there are 27 waterfalls fairly close together that you can hike up and then jump down. This picture I got online because our cameras would have gotten soaked if we took them along. Notice the tour guide at the top! It was really awesome but also exhausting.


Puerto Plata is pretty small. A good way to get around is by motoconcho which is just a motorcycle taxi. On my first ride, we were going to the cable car that goes up to the nearest mountain for a view of the whole city (it actually was closed due to rain). We were still waiting for Krista to come (she went to TU with me and works in Santiago) and while we were all on our motoconchos I saw Krista walking down the street and motioned for her to follow us. After a little running around she finally met up with us.

My apartment situation is the best of the other interns I have talked to. I share a two-bedroom apartment with the branch manager from my office and it is pretty nice. A 5 minute motoconcho ride will get me to a pretty cool beach, and a 45 minute ride will get me to an awesome beach.

Some things you can pray for me to do are to find ways to make a significant contribution with the company I’m with, that I would find some good consistent fellowship while I’m here, that I would make the most of relationships and free time while I’m here, and also to be a light wherever I go.

Until next time,

Kevin

Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.

Deuteronomy 7:9