Happy Thanksgiving!

Dominican Republic Trip Nov. 2011–Journal Entry No. 6
Thursday was special, no doubt. What a gift to celebrate Thanksgiving with the poor. The day provided numerous opportunities to reflect on the good gifts in our lives. Despite the fact that our hosts don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, many gave us “Happy Thanksgiving” greetings first thing in the morning. We headed out early and went to Batey Lagina. While Lagina wasn’t as dirty as Plumita, there was a similar aggressive vibe amongst the adults, especially later in the day. The medical clinic went smoothly; we treated 88 patients. This was the day where we could have used 10 times more shoes than we had with us. It was also our first day working alongside pediatric nurse practitioner Kristy Engel, a dear friend who has been working full-time at this mission for 10 years.

On a day we associate with an abundance of food in the U.S., we faced one of our hardest challenges: we ran out of food during food distribution. It was a gut wrenching moment where we had to defer to our translators on how to handle it. Emilio immediately shifted gears and started directing us to houses where the elderly and moms with many, many children were. While the team did lots of talking about this moment in the bus on the way back to the city, and the young people tried to shift the blame for the situation to our hosts for not telling us accurate numbers of residents, in the end the reasons and blame were irrelevant. The bottom line was that some got food and some didn’t and it was a really awful feeling to be connected with that hard, cold fact. We still had bags of food to distribute at Casa Pastorale and had to rest assured in the fact that Emilio and his team would return to Lagina next week with more food.

After Lagina, we toured the Good Samaritan Hospital. It was impressive yet also humbling as we were given access to every nook and cranny, including the surgery rooms. It felt like a privilege we didn’t deserve.

One of the highlights of my week came next: a visit to an orphanage in La Romana. I met three very special girls: Madeline (12), Naomi (11) and Cynthia (6). Madeline was gorgeous and very cautious. She told Turner he looked like Justin Bieber and took his baseball cap and modeled it for me. She gave me her email address and made me promise to write. She asked me questions like how often I have to cut my hair, if I had daughters, if I was a good student, and when I’d come back. Madeline was also a patient teacher. She tried diligently to teach me a very complicated hand clapping game and never gave up on me, despite the fact that it took me numerous tries amidst endless laughter to get it right. When I succeeded, she hugged me fiercely. Naomi was startlingly smart. She showed me her computer lab, took me to her locker and proudly showed me her notebook, and gave me her email address along with a note telling me she loves me. Cynthia grabbed my hand no more than 10 seconds after I entered the gate. I wonder what made her pick me out of the crowd of nearly thirty that visited that day? She was energetic, giggly, tomboyish, and endlessly loving. A gifted gymnast, she tumbled, cartwheeled, and flipped for me making me applaud and squeal with delight. She rode on my back for hours while I galloped around the compound. And she walked the entire length of their basketball court on her hands. She wrenched my heart by asking me over and over again if I’d be her mom. Little did she know that she is exactly the sort of daughter I’d want. I will remember and pray for her for a very long time.

Thursday night, we took our hosts out for pizza in the city. It was crowded and chaotic, but totally worth mentioning because dinner for about 30 cost $190.