Saturday, May 11, 2013

Flashback Friday: Greetings From The D.R.Part 5-"Getting My Way"

Originally Composed 12/19/07



So I'm staying on a little longer…I realized shortly after my last email that although my return flight from Santo Domingo to New York on the 28 th was guaranteed because I bought a roundtrip ticket, I'm flying standby from New York to San Francisco. Standby. On December 28th. Right smack in between Christmas and New Years' Days. Raise your hands if you've ever had to spend the night, or even spend more than 12 hours, in an airport. Not very much fun is it? Especially when you are already tired and grief-stricken, and I would have been both, because I'd have been leaving a place and people I love, and I would have commenced that journey at 4am. I just couldn't do it. Thankfully, I suppose because of wanting to keep their customers' business, airlines are becoming more flexible about flight changes…and Delta Airlines allowed me to change the date of my return to New York to January 10 th, buying me more possibility of making it onto a flight back to California as well as an additional two weeks to stay here. I won't even pretend to feel inconvenienced. The special English assembly for all the needgreaters and missionaries was this past Sunday, and upon my return from the capital for that, I would have only been left with 11 more days with all my friends here in Cabrera. Knowing I'll be around a little longer makes me at least a little more at peace with coming back to California for a while. I'm doing my best to follow the advice of a good friend and not let the remainder of my time here turn into a countdown, being so upset about the end that I stop enjoying myself. From today I have 21 more days here. But from today, I stop counting. Especially since I just found out that if I were to come back again in 2008 and stay for an extended period of time (which I' m seriously working on doing), I could still keep receiving my Social Security payments. Most brothers and sisters that are here as self-supporting pioneers have to work in their home countries and save for a while and come back and stay here in the DR, back and forth, back and forth. I wouldn't have to even do that. I could just come back here and stay…Hmmm….oh, sorry, I'm doing it again. Thinking so far ahead that I'm forgetting to enjoy this moment. Trust me. I'm learning to think very differently about that type of thing.

Now, if you think I'm going to go from here into some long, drawn-out, dramatic narrative about Tropical Storm Olga that hit here last week, you're wrong. Not gonna do it. I won't complain about the fact that by the time I got here, the season for this stuff was supposed to have been over, that's why I chose the time period I did. Not going to talk about the fact that we found ourselves in the eye of it, because during the worst of it we were at the beach up northwest of us in Cabarete, or the fact that the wind had trees swinging so wildly and rain coming at such a sharp diagonal that I felt like I was part of a CNN special report. Or how for the first time in two months I'd wished I had a TV here because that way I could start finding out about this stuff ahead of time. Nope, not saying anything. Not even about how we almost didn't get home from Cabarete that day because there were hardly any gua-gua's running, so that the only one we were able to catch only got us about half the way home, leaving us to go the next quarter of the way on motoconchos, in the wind and rain, in the dark (Yeah, that's right, on the back of a motorcycle in the middle of a tropical storm. Don't bother scolding me-I'm not proud of it, I was just desperate to get home and not be stuck on the side of a dark road all night). How finally, at one point, our drivers got too scared to go any further because they were afraid we'd die (I'm so glad we saw eye-to-eye on that), and how I don't know how we'd have made it the rest of the way home and not end up stuck on the side of the road had one of the concho guys not seen a friend of his heading in the direction we needed to go, in a pickup truck. It dropped us off back in Cabrera where there was no light to be found anywhere and the water was coming down so hard and with such force from the simultaneous winds that it hurt. Like I mentioned in a past email, Cabrera's altitude, coastal location, and drainage capacity makes it not so easy to flood, but on that night, even here I walking back to the house and the water was at least covering my feet, because it just came down so fast. But I don't even want to go there-too traumatic. I've never experienced a storm so loud and frightening that it was impossible to sleep through, and I guess it doesn't help that our roof is made of tin. But once again, in the spirit of not complaining, I'd like to focus on the positive and say that I'm glad to be alive. I think a lot of people learned their lesson from the last storm and listened to the evacuation warnings in all the areas that received them. The elders here received a call from the branch telling them to go and check on brothers and sisters and others living in rural areas and/or other places that may have been more adversely affected as soon as the weather allowed them to do so. By the following day, which was last Wednesday, the rains had subsided to only scattered showers, so an elder took me around with him and his wife to go check on some people, and thankfully everyone was ok. This was a blessing considering how many felled trees I saw on the way out into the country that day, and how much of the country I saw underwater on my bus ride to the capital for the assembly some days later. And they called this storm a light one! I guess they gauge that based on the fact that there were fewer casualties and less damage to property. One bible student did sustain some roof damage to her outdoor kitchen, but she, her husband, her three kids, and the fourth one she's got on the way are all present, accounted for, and well. I really enjoyed just being able to be with the elder and his wife and helping in showing all those ones we visited how loved and cared about they are at all times. It was encouraging even for me.


All of us who had planned to go to the English Special Assembly Day on the 16th had been told that because of the storm, there were so many detours en route to the capital that the trip was going to take an extra two or three hours; meaning a bus ride of around six or seven hours instead of the usual four. I was NOT looking forward to being in a bus that long AT ALL and I almost didn't go. I figured I didn't need to-I'd get the Special Assembly Day with my own circuit this spring and I understand Theocratic information equally well in both languages. But Natalie guilt-tripped me into going, so I was like fine, whatever, packed some sleep-inducing drugs in my overnight bag to endure the bus ride and went. I am SO glad I let her wear me down. I mean, sure, it was the same program as all Special Assembly Days worldwide (or at least in the Americas as far as I know), but all the information was tailored for those serving in the country from other lands, whether as missionaries, special pioneers, International Construction Volunteers, Bethelites, or "needgreaters" helping out on a short- or long-term basis. There were experiences and interviews of brothers and sisters, young and old, from all over the world, serving here in the DR in all such capacities. With the theme being, "We Are The Clay, Jehovah Is Our Potter," the focus mainly was on how these avenues of service can help to shape us, and how we have to keep ourselves focused and in the center of the "wheel" so he can keep shaping us to do even more. We received commendation, encouragement, as well as counsel and reminders; emphasis was placed on the need to apply oneself to learning the language of the country (Spanish) well, no matter if we serve in Spanish, Creole or Sign Language. We were warned to be careful about letting ourselves go in a spiritual sense, thinking we don't need to be as careful because we have expanded our service and therefore fooling ourselves into a false sense of security with our spirituality. Since nobody gets baptized at these assemblies, that talk is replaced by another special talk, and this one's theme was "You Make Me Remember Someone." Some may have already heard that talk, I think it might have been part of the program during a past Circuit Overseer's visit. The talk is based on the biblical references to Aquila and Pricilla, who, apparently, also served as needgreaters in their time, how special they were to Paul, and how we can imitate them even more. After the program, the friends basically took over this restaurant in downtown Santo Domingo called El Canuco, where we ate and danced until a reasonable hour ;)

I think its worth mentioning what a small world this is, when it comes to being part of Jehovah's organization. At the assembly, I was approached by a sister who recognized me from a wedding that I may or may not have been invited to (yeah, that stuff does come back to haunt you, so I'd re-think it), another from a party I went to in Hollister, CA back in September (man, I'm starting to see a pattern here), then I ran into two that I'd met in Visalia over a year ago (and we were at a wedding too, but to qualify that, there's no question as to whether I was invited that time 'cause I WAS, and besides, I'd met them before that at a friend's home-see, I'm NOT a partymonger!). Then, as I'm talking to one sister, her friend comes up and says, "Hey, are you April?" I almost denied it, I was scared to know where she knew me from. But I 'fessed up, and come to find out, she'd read a few of my "Greetings From DR" episodes through a mutual friend (and you know who you are!) and put the pieces together. Moral of the story: Besides knowing that Jehovah can always see you, most likely, no matter where you are in the world, somebody else who either knows you, or knows somebody who knows somebody who knows you, will be there too. So you might as well just be good, because you can't run and you definitely can't hide. And why would you want to? I've met so many wonderful people on this whole journey, starting from New York all the way down here to the Caribbean. We wouldn't get this anywhere else.

Awesome experiences of this installment:

It is sad how spoiled a person can get so easily, in a country where it is so easy to talk about the Bible and about God's kingdom. Every day we meet nice people, who will listen, who appreciate the good news and the hope it brings. Does it mean that everyone will let their life be changed by it? No. Does it mean everybody will become a progressive bible study? Far from it. But just the joy that one gets from having so many opportunities to even open the bible and talk about the hope we have is tremendous, and most of us, at least those who live in North America, are given fewer opportunities to do that in the door-to-door ministry. Everything that comes out of my mouth when preaching and teaching feels more and more real to me. (You know how they say you have to picture yourself in the paradise scene? Well, the other day I actually caught myself daydreaming about hanging out with a family of gorillas, of all things. It's all the preaching, I tell you.) I feel like I can "handle the word of the truth" with much more ability than I ever could before because I use it more frequently than I ever get to back in Cali. Which tells me one thing-I'm probably not looking hard enough for the opportunities. I had a great conversation with the taxi driver over the weekend, and with a Haitian man who gave me his chair to sit in while I waited for the taxi I was able to place some literature…like, seriously, I'm losing count. Today I had an experience that really proved to me that "God's word is alive," and how no amount of fancy explanation we can give compares to its power. We were working in La Entrada, a little town up the road from us, when another sister and I saw a man working on his motorcycle in a lot across from his house. When we asked if he had a few minutes to talk, he said no, which doesn't happen very often, because out here most people say the same thing as if they were reading it from a script: "I always have time for the matters of the Lord, " as if that phrase itself is the password to heaven. But not Pedro. He just kept working on his bike, even when the sister with him tried to lead him in the Dominican way by asking, " You don't have time for the matters of God?" He said that if we talked to him he wouldn't be able to pay attention because he had to hurry up and finish fixing his bike, as he had somewhere to be. Normally, I'd have given him a tract and left the situation alone, but Jehovah's spirit intervened, obviously, because I kept right on talking. At that moment, I remembered an "I'm busy" response that I learned from a pioneer from Florida some months back. I said, "Would you mind if I read you just one scripture and then we'll leave?" So he gives me the go-ahead and I said, "Let me know what you think about this," before reading him John 17:3. "Think about it," I said. "We are always in a hurry, like you are right now. In a way we have to be if we want to make a living, care for our families, etc. But imagine a life with no hurry, no rush. Vida eterna (everlasting life), to do all the things we'd like to and have the time to do them" I said. "But life's not like that right now, is it? We're constantly running, and when we're not, when we do have a free moment finally, we're still anxious or suffering, aren't we?" For the first time since we arrived, he actually looked us in our faces. " Siempre (always)," he answered. "Siempre," I said back to him. "But the life I'm reading to you about is a life without any of that, forever. What do you think?" "Should I pull out a few chairs so you two can sit down for a bit?" was his reply. "That got to you didn't it?" was what came out of the sister that was with me, which kind of threw me for a loop and I didn't know how he was going to take it. "It did," he said meekly. Got him. We told him we'd go finish the street and give him a chance to finish with his bike. We came back to where he was and he pulled out the chairs, and right then the one of the brothers with us pulled up in his truck. The territory was just about done and he was coming to take us back. "Oh no," Pedro said. "You can't leave yet. You said we were going to talk some more." We talked about him, about how his wife left him when he lost his high paying job at a hotel, because she wanted a man that had something, and she took their daughter with her. He talked about how lost he felt, how he'd been looking for some answers. We read him some scriptures and showed him how the only way he was going to find the answers he seeks was by studying the Bible, which he said he didn't even have a copy of. "To be honest," he said later, "when you first showed up I didn't want to hear anything." No, really? I thought. But I'm so glad you came back, he said. I told him that for us to hold back from sharing what we knew was the real solution to mankind's problems would be the same as having the cure for a deadly disease and telling no one. "Well, I want to be cured, then!" he said. Straight out of a Watchtower, isn't it? I left him a Require brochure and we made plans to come back with a brother on Friday. "See you Friday," he said as we waved goodbye. "And don't forget to bring me a Bible!" I was so pumped after that, I walked away and left my purse in his yard, which I didn't realize till we were almost back in Cabrera, and we had to go back. When we got there, he had it in a chair, waiting, with all its contents (which was great, because it contained my camera, ID, passport, money, cards, everything!!!!!)

Next installment-we'll talk about the pandemonium that has resulted among the local teenagers/young adults in the congregation due to the annual mass-arrival of all the single North Americans this time of year. Thankfully, I don't count. Partially, because I'm black, like most of them, and partially because at 26 years old, as far as they're concerned, I got one foot in the grave already. Thank goodness.

Till next time…by the way, if y'all ever loved me, you'd keep me, and my goal of returning here, in your prayers. But no pressure. J

Love,
April

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