I get the point, I’ve learned from my own experience that there are a large number of people who aren’t taking part in the faith walk of truly jumping into following after Christ with their whole lives.  In every ministry there is huge lack of resources including financial and emotional support; But in every ministry you find miracles of hands reaching towards you with help in your hour-of-need; and love when you feel you are on your own.

The hands of God are loving us through his children.  THEY ARE!  The ministry of service can only be understood (and just barely) by walking through it.  As a spectator, I think maybe all you can see is a giant mess of hurt and need. Actually to be fair, sometimes all you see is a mess  while you’re in it.  But as we wait, and endure, hope blinks through cracks in the wall, giving us the sense that there will be victory.  (Victory is a hard word for me to use.  I’ve heard it so often in songs at church it feels a bit meaningless, but I use the word victory because this is a good spot for it.)

I’ve been living in the DR for a LONG time now; almost 7 years.  It’s at the point that people assume I’ll be living there forever. This gives me a lot of anxiety. I long for this particular battle to be over, to feel set free from it and go home and start working on a different battle, one that doesn’t feel so scary all the time.  I think my day is coming.  I think we are nearing the end of the struggle I felt called to here in the DR, and on to the next thing. But as I wait, I receive comfort and hope from everyone out there engaged with our story.

There are stories.  I should be sharing them here on my blog so you can all hear them, but I have such a hard time trying to put them down in written words.

Just know that we need prayers.  The women are struggling financially as prices have gone up on basic essentials, and life is always full of surprises like illness and death, and these things always cost way more money than is available.

It may be hard to understand but when things are hard the women tend to lash out at me a bit.  Not all of them, but many of them. I think they forget that I’m trying to help, and fear over comes them that I am not doing something for them that I should be.  This can be hard to take as a single person.  My co-worker Cara is great comfort to me in times like these, but her time with us has ended and she has moved back to Texas.

I am currently at home in Canada trying to raise funds for the women through ‘La Tienda’ sales, and then I head back to the DR in November.  It’s our goal, as one of the final steps in this particular project. To let the women put everything they have learned through the La Tienda project to use.  After 7 years of work, we are going to be setting the women free to become entrepreneurs and handing them over a bit of money to manage.  This is going to be a very difficult transition for the women and for me, and raising the money is a bit of challenge as well, but we have seen miracles so far and I am hopeful we will see more.

Please pray for the women, that there hearts will not be fearful and that they would really run with everything we’ve tried to teach them.  Please pray for me as I prepare for this giant undertaking.

Also please continue to pray for Jonathan’s situation.  Everything is kind of at a standstill, and I just LONG for this battle to be over with.  Please pray that the Lord continue to provide us with the means, and knowledge to sort out his paperwork.

Thank you for all the Love.

Rachel

You can check it out here. —> Newsletter spring blog 2011   (Mac users – hold down “control” and click the mouse, then select download file) But still keep your eyes on the mail if you are one of our finacial partners, Nothing better than REAL MAIL!

I’ve attatched a Letter I’ll be sending out shortly to supporters.

Dear Friends

7 Years ago, when I set out to stand behind our brothers and sisters living in poverty, in the name of Jesus, I never could have imagined where I would end up.  It has been a long, exciting, scary, and life changing experience to be amongst some of the poorest of the poor, trying to love and serve in a way that would bring glory to Christ.

I’ve had some failures, some successes and seen things that could only be described as miracles from God.  Certainly the Lord has blessed this project beyond my expectations, and kept me safe even when I felt very alone and scared.

When I came to the D.R. to start this project I thought I would be able to finish up in 10 months.  Boy was I wrong; years later and we are just beginning to be at the place were the women can take this project on and lead, and we aren’t done yet.  I don’t know where God will lead us, but it has always been my prayer that I would do an excellent job and be able to complete the task at hand.

I have had many miracles when it comes to financial support.  I have lived off very, very little money, and the Lord has always provided for my needs through his church.  I took on caring for Jonathan and Rosairi trusting that the Lord would be faithful, and He has been so kind towards us.

Although Rosairi is now being raised by Pastor Jonny and his family (the Haitian pastor in our village)  I still care for her financially, giving the family money every month to pay for her food, clothing and other needs, and of course most of you know my little Jonathan is living with me.

I do my best to be a good single mom and full time missionary.  People sometimes feel as though a living expenses in a country like the D.R. are much lower than at home, but this isn’t really the case.  Food, gas, and electricity cost the same in the D.R. as they do in Canada.  My rent is cheaper than most apartments in Ontario Canada, but you get what you pay for.  I Iive in a small two bedroom apartment full of cockroaches, and limited access to running water (about 50% of the time) in a little Dominican town.  Although many missionaries in our area choose to live in “normal” homes in “expat” communities with big walls and guard dogs, I could never rationalize the expense, and have remained living like a an average Dominican.  Jonathan and I eat rice and beans every day, I rarely buy meat, and grin and bare it, when the water stops working just like everyone else.

I have been exceedingly blessed, and never had to worry about my funds.  People have always been very generous, and because I live on so little, I don’t have to pull my hair out of my head trying to raise support.  Part of it has to do as well, with IATW.  IATW do their best to keep running costs low, only asking for 10% from their missionaries to keep things moving. As someone who has met many missionaries from different organizations around the world I know that this is an amazingly low percentage.

All this to say, I need to raise more money for my financial support.

I wish I had the time to go around speaking and raising the extra support I need, but if I do that, it would take away from the work I’m doing to raise awareness about the women and their needs.  All of the money we make from selling the women’s work goes right back to them, and their needs are great.  I couldn’t possibly take time away from promoting them.

Everyone who has supported me so far has been so generous and I am grateful for everything that has been done to stand behind me and this project.

I’m asking that if anyone is able to increase their regular support sent into IATW so that I can continue the work we are doing here, please pray about doing that.

I’ve never sent out a request like this and feel pretty sheepish, if you know anyone who may desire to respond to this need, or a Church that you think would like to get behind this ministry, please pass along this little plea.

Much Love and Gratitude

Raquel

I’m reposting a blog by my dear CARA, because It’s AWESOME. This will give you an Idea of what to pray for : )

” Just wanted to share a little more about how awesome Tati is….

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that Violeta has been very sick…. if not, please pray for her, she is still very ill.  I haven’t been to see her in a while.  They say she is doing a little better, but she is still unable to work.  Violeta is one of the women of the art co-op that has been a friend to me, and it makes me very sad to see her like she is.  She has some form of severe anemia, and in the past year she lost both of her parents to TB.  I’m not a doctor, and I wish I knew more about what to do for her.  there are people tending to her, but she doesn’t really have anyone to help her all of the time, or help her with her work.

Before rachel left she had talked with Violeta’s brother about doing her work for her, but he didn’t want to do anything without being paid.  understandable, but now he has completely stopped, and the art co-op just can’t afford to pay Violeta if we don’t have any of her work to sell.  I was feeling burdened by this and i just didn’t know what to do.

Yesterday I went into the village to work with Tati on some things.  We were going over what women were missing work, etc.  she informed me that SHE DID ALL OF VIOLETA’S WORK FOR HER.  I was shocked.  She said that she felt bad and wanted her to receive her pay.  So she stayed up late every night and finished a month of work in one week!  I am continually amazed by Tati’s initiative and compassion for others.  The art co-op would be a complete disaster if not for her.  She is the glue that holds it together.

Praise the Lord for Tati, and please continue to pray for Violeta.”

1- Pray for Tati as she learns how to run the co-op on her own!

2-Pray that some headway is made for Jonathan’s Paperwork, and that we know how to move foward with him. (sweet sweet Jo….)

I’m going to try this till the end of July and see how it goes… : )

Okay so here we go…..

1-Prayers of THANKS because the Lord has brought us through a very tight month with just enough, what a MIRACLE!

2-The women are having a hard time remembering that EVERYONE involved in this project is a volunteer.  Pray that the women understand the vast number of people standing behind them are all doing it voluntarily, and making scarfices of time an energy.  Some times a few of the women act “entitled” and unthankful.  This just makes Cara and I feel tired… (even though we know this is the norm for ministry work).

3-Pray for our dear Violetta.  She has been very sick and in the hospital.  Being sick in poverty  situations, is often needlessly fatal. Please PLEASE pray for her.  She has also lost her Mother, Father, and Step-Father, this year to TB, please pray for her poor broken heart.

Love

Raquel

As it turns out, there are tons of missing cogs, and finding my place in this community doesn’t fix anything, it just helps, and that’s it:  Pretty inglorious.  Cara and I, all the people selling La Tienda stuff, or buying it, or sending money, it’s all good.  It’s all changing lives on an individual basis.  People sit so close to the edge here that every $10 we get REALLY matters. $10 is the difference between food and no food.

But MAN we sure are missing alot more cogs!!! I wonder why that is.  Are we not doing enough? Are others not doing enough?  Is it unsolvable? (wait no- after 6 years here I truely beleive that when Jesus said “the poor will always be amoung us” had nothing to do with wether or not there is a solution to our friends and neihbours being hungry, but rather an invitation and a challange to always remeber them, and not just in a moment when you want to judge someone elses spending habbits.) I think anyone who works towards serving impoverished, sick, or uneducated people, learns to function with out enough resources (be it things, or know how) to fix it all, and just be satisfied to keep our hands to the task in front of us.

My good friend William Brown the Third, is a Doctor working in one of the poorist neihbourhoods in NYC.  We became friends on one of his many service trips to the DR, and have remained close over the years.  It’s funny to listen to him talk about some of the things he encounters trying to practice medicine within a marginalized community.  Arguably the people he works with are LEAPS and BOUNDS ahead of the Haitian Communities he worked with while here in the DR in terms of resources available to them, but many of his stories sound exactly the same as what we deal with here everyday in the Co-op.  Funny how you can find such strong similarities between making bracelets in the Caribean and curing illness in NYC.  It’s weird.

Going into it, I think any “do-gooder” has grand idea’s of what they can accomplish if they just join the cause, but what we discover is that serving people, takes your ALL. Serving people WELL takes alot more than just YOUR all, it takes yours and a whole bunch of other peoples.  I think that’s why Jesus says that the whole Church is his body, and not just John Pijper or Mother Theresa.

That’s it.  Just some thoughts.

Chairs are expensive in the DR, about $20 for the ugliest of plastic chairs, so I almost started to panic (I was so excited) when I realized that I could drag this one back with me for under $5.

I brought it home and cleaned it up with my Mom, and stuffed it in my suitcase.  I felt very pleased.

I’ve been using this chair for the past couple of months as an “office” chair.  By that I mean I sit in it all day while I try to sort out our 30 Ladies, their projects, and how to sell them.  It has been a VERY different period of time for me.  For the last few years I’ve been in the Village everyday, tromping around, working with people, and getting covered in dust, paint, and baby pee.  But now I kind of feel like typical office worker with the added ambience of mosquitos and the sounds of cockfights right outside my window.

The few times I’ve been in the village I can’t help but notice Alfonse.  He’s the older gentlemen we’ve hired as our night watchman.  Actually he is almost completely blind, and what we are really doing is houseing and feeding an older gentleman we happen to LOVE!  He has a friend come stay with him at night and we pay him too.  Not much, but something.

One day I was feeling bad about Alfonse and how long he has to sit all day (he can’t walk very well) in a plastic chair.  It occured to me that maybe he could use my beloved red vinyl chair.  This thought distirbed me because I like my chair.  I don’t really want to part with it.  So I settled instead, on getting Alfonse some cushions for his chair.

Okay let me be honest here, I am not really enjoying writing this story.  It shows just how aweful I am, but I have to share with you the witness of Alfonse and what he is like so I will try to be honest.

What I really settled on was giving Alfonse a couple of brightly colored cushions I had bought a few months ago but wasn’t really using.  Not exactly an extravagent gift.

Alfonse was very grateful for his gift, which kind of embarressed me. Nothing like have someone shower you with gratitude for something that really didn’t cost you anything.  But that didn’t embarress me half as much as the what happened a couple of days later.

I was visiting my friend Chichi who lives a few blocks over.  Chichi is Pastor Johnny’s Daughter and before she got married she lived in the Village.  She would go over and visit Alfonse and wash his clothes from time to time and Alfonse was always very grateful.  Chichi isn’t exactly poor by Haitian standards.  She and her Hubby both have Jobs, some furniture and plenty of food.  She would, from time to time, have enough money to buy herself the occasional treat.

While we were talking I couldn’t help but notice my cushions sitting on the floor of her living room.

“Where did you get these?” I asked, a little suspicious.  She said that Alfosnse had given them to her as a gift!

Alfonse got something nice for himself and the first thing he does is give it away.  Not because the person he was giving it too needed it, but because he is kind and loving.

I’m not going to expand on all of this.  I just want to share it because it gave me reason to pause.

It took us FOREVER to find something for Marrianna to make that would sell.  She is one of my favorite Ladies, always smilling and hugging me and grabbing my boobs (this is normal in many Haitian communities, it’s just another sign of affection like a hug or a high-five). Marrianna is an enthusiastic giggly learner, but VERY slow.

Many people don’t know how much work goes into making just one necklace.  So I decided to go wandering around the village yesterday to get some video of the women hard at work on their La Tienda Goodies.

I posted it on the La Tienda Facebook Page so you can and click here to view. If you’re Having trouble viewing it you may have to “Like” our facebook page.

The Big Cartel Online Store has been going pretty good.  I think the income from it accounted for about 6 Salaries this month which is pretty neat when you think about it.  We’re working hard to keep things rolling.

More Videos and stories to come……..