This last weekend, Brennan, Ava, and Mike went to the North Coast of the D.R. to partner with some fellow missionaries while Melissa was out of town for a women’s missionary conference. We drove to Sosua to work with our dear friends, Nate and Rachael from love restored, as well make some new friends, Tim and Holly Garland from Raiz Ministry and a team of other local missionaries from GoMAD. Tim and Holly have been working in the Haitian village of Loma Bajita (about 10 minutes outside of Sosua), where they have been engaged in humanitarian work. Their end goal is to always share the love of Christ through relationship and to share the freedom and joy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. During their time in the village and through their communication with the village leadership, they had discovered that almost every household in Loma Bajita was dealing with a Scabies outbreak. In order for them to effectively treat a village-wide outbreak, all 300 homes and 1,500 individuals must be treated at the same time, which is quite the undertaking.
The kids and I joined the crew on Sunday and were able to walk through the village and meet some of the residents, attend an organizational meeting regarding the distribution of the sanitary kits and the education plan (in order to prevent another Scabies outbreak in the future), shoot some hoops with the kids, and assist that night with the preparation of the Scabies kits by loading up medicine, personal cleaning supplies, and household detergents.
Monday afternoon, we split into four teams combined of American Missionaries and local residents. (My Creole is a little rusty (aka nonexistent), so I would have been no help communicating.) We were able to deliver kits to all the houses in the village that we had access to. The people in the village were extremely appreciative of our efforts and our willingness to assist. The team delivered the remaining kits this morning so the entire village could treat themselves and their homes all on the same day for maximum effectiveness of the treatment. Additional cleaning detergent and other materials were also left behind in the effort to purge Scabies once and for all.
The three of us felt blessed to have this opportunity to serve in a way that is atypical of our usual weekly routine. While we have been able to serve impoverished people during our first nine months, this was the largest block of time, and the most direct contact that the Brennan and Ava have had serving. Both of them were just beaming afterwards and were so excited to be able to be some of the Lord’s hands and feet. The two of them received many compliments from the local missionaries for their positive attitudes and willingness to engage and serve. The three hour ride home was filled with various stories of the last two days, thoughts about how God would use the two of them in the future, and the multiple ways that we felt that God had, and would continue to bless the community of Loma Bajita.
