Day Four - Part 2

Hey, it’s Jake Hendrick from the DR! The week has been awesome so far, and we have all been growing closer to God and each other over the trip. This morning I had a very interesting experience at the brickyard. Let me begin by giving you a little background information. In this last year, Mr. Neill had a section of Bible class that focused on international injustice. He showed several video documentaries of injustice in India. Among the different forced slavery and prostitution were two different jobs, making matchsticks and making bricks. The videos showed very clearly the process of making the bricks, a backbreaking job.

After breakfast yesterday morning, Mr. Neill told us that Brian (the director here) was asking for volunteers to run into town to get bricks that we needed for the sidewalk. Since I had already done my devotions and other things, I volunteered to ride in into Jarabacoa. We rode down the mountain for about twenty minutes until we arrived at the brickyard. Up until this point, I had not even thought about the videos that I had watched over the last year. The first things I saw when I hopped out of the truck were piles of bricks. There were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bricks just piled on top of each other. Brian told us we could walk around and soon someone would be out to give us a tour. As we walked around, I saw what was obviously an oven of some sort to bake the bricks. I saw hundreds of trees that were sitting to be chopped up to fuel different machinery. I also noticed two men who were only shoveling ashes out of the bottom of an incinerator and carting them away. Then I turned around and chills went up and down my spine. The hair on my arms literally stood up. Two men were putting wet clay into brick molds, scraping off the excess clay, smoothing it out, taking off the molds, and repeating the process. They did this over and over again, their hands constantly moving, and they never stood up. They were working under a tin roof, under which it was at least ninety degrees. They picture was exactly that of the slaves in the injustice documentary. I later found out that those men made about $150 a week, working ten-hour days with a two-hour siesta (rest) each day. They get two weeks vacation for the year. Now these men chose to work in conditions like that. Sure in India, Africa, and even probably places in the DR, there are people stuck in slavery making bricks, but it just gives me chills to think that those men were at the point in their lives that they would work in a brickyard. The slavery of making bricks goes back as far as the Israelites and Egyptians. And yet after all those years, it still happens in the world. What makes me thinks even more than that is that in this country, those men in the brickyard have it better than most. It is going to be difficult to go back to a country where everyone has a chance to succeed. I am learning that God has a will for everything and sometimes I’m not going to ever see it. I just need to trust in Him and try to impact these people’s lives for the better while I am here.

In Christ,

Bones

In the afternoon on Thursday, we all loaded up into the vans and took off to do some ministering to the people in the community around us. Everyone was excited and looking forward to making some new friends; the vans were packed with balloons and basketballs and soccer balls to share with the kids. We arrived at the first village tucked away in the back roads of Jarabacoa. We piled out of the vans and while some of us started a game of soccer on a makeshift soccer field, the others of us brought out the balloons. Soon our group was surrounded by children with fistfuls of balloons crying out in Spanish whether they wanted a “sombrero” or a dog or a fish or any twisted shape we could possibly come up with. As the commotion from the balloons died down, other activities took their place. The bigger boys went off to play a game of soccer, a few girls formed a circle to play volleyball, while others started playing with the jump rope we brought. It was a great evening of fun and games, but telling you about the things we did cannot even begin to explain the entirety of our experience. The members of our group felt things within their hearts that they could not understand as the connections between the children were deepened. An overwhelming love swept over our group, and as the time neared for us to head home, we dreaded the challenge we would face when we had to put the children down and say goodbye. I don’t know about the rest of the group, but I know that I was overcome with a feeling of helplessness as to what I could do to help these children grow up in a loving, safe, and clean environment, and to always remind them that there is hope, and there is Someone who loves them so much that they could never comprehend it. As we were preparing to leave, I was giving hugs and saying my goodbyes to the girls I had played with. Each time I said goodbye, I would add in “Jesus te ama” which means “Jesus loves you.” When I hugged one little girl and told her that Jesus loves her, she looked at me with a sparkle in her eyes and told me that she also was a Christian. I could feel the same spark go off in my eyes as we held each other’s gaze for a silent moment in time. That moment may have been for only a few seconds, but I will never ever forget that little girl and the joy she had within her as she shared with me the love of a Savior. I may never interact with that little girl ever again here on earth, but I look forward to the day when I can look her in the eyes in Heaven and remember the moment I shared with her in a village tucked away in the back roads of Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.

-Rachael