Back From the 3rd World

I just got back late last night after eight days in the Dominican Republic, where I was leading a team of 90 people (mostly teenagers) in a building project with Careforce International. We completed two classrooms in the school that Careforce runs, which means that 60 more students can get an education next week that were unable to a week ago. We also invested in helping the community surrounding the school and compound, by finishing off sidewalks that the government had promised the locals but never delivered on -- well, we completed about 75% of that project before armed soldiers forced us to stop; we were making the government look bad, or something like that.

We were also able to aid a local Nazarene seminary by building walls for them, as well as a playground for local children, and reinforce the wall around the compound itself -- they need walls, otherwise squatters will overrun their property and the school will be forced to close, effectively cementing the cycle of poverty for the local children all over again.

It's amazing to me that every March Break, all kinds of people flock to the Dominican Republic, but only see the opulent resorts. You don't have to travel far to be confronted with all kinds of poverty and desperation -- which only serves to make the ritzy resorts seem all the more obscene.

The teenagers we brought with us worked their tails off, and I was really proud of them and the blessing we were able to be to both the school/compound and the surrounding community. It was also a profoundly sobering time for many of them, as the majority had never before seen -- and smelled -- such poverty up close and personal. It was a good time of working on behalf of another part of the advancing Kingdom, and also seeing their worldviews being stretched as they recognized how little the people around them had, in comparison to their own lives back in Toronto.

Now you know why I haven't blogged much in the past week or so. I'm back in Canada, and regular blogging will commence right after I get a really hot shower and a good night's sleep.