Missionary 101 - a Personal Reflection
                                                                     by Doug Knutson                                    


Have you ever thought of being a “missionary”? I can’t say that I had. To me, the term
“missionary” usually brings to mind the image of someone standing on a soap-box
“spreading the Word” - or some poor chap sitting in a bubbling pot while hungry cannibals
look on! Sure, we all watch those “feed-the-starving-children” TV spots or news coverage of
famine after famine and wish we could help. But the problem is SO vast - what can we
possibly do that will make a difference??? Our Pastor, Miriam Uhrstrom of Victoria Avenue
Baptist Church in Belleville, is a veteran of several “Mission Trips” throughout the world -
her husband Karl is currently a missionary in Bolivia. Miriam felt it very important to
introduce the concept of “mission work” to her church. So with an incredible amount of
encouragement & support, my wife Carolyn and I, Brenda Sine, and Miriam from Belleville
joined 17 other Ontarians on, what was for most, our first “Mission Trip” in the Dominican
Republic.

The trip was organized by Judy Warrington of Power Trips Inc. Judy has been organizing
service trips to the Dominican Republic since 2000 mainly with student groups. The theme
of each trip is “Go, See and DO”. Power Trips partners with organizations such as
International Child Care, Rotary International and several other service & relief
organizations here and in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This trip was a rare “all adult”
trip and would be a new experience for all. We are a mix of Christians, Rotarians and just
people who want to help - yet we all bond into a remarkable group. Ours is what’s termed a
“soft” mission trip. We didn’t  “go native” - we stayed at a beautiful ocean-side hotel in
Sosua, near Puerto Plata. It wasn’t a 5-star resort (hey, I saw my 1st cockroach here!) but
still one of the one of the most luxurious places I’d ever stayed at! Yes, we felt a little guilty
- especially after seeing the poverty we would soon witness - but face it, we were soft,
middle-age to retirement-aged, white, middle-class Canadians and we probably just couldn’t
take anything tougher.

Our first day out and away we go in a bus barely able to manage a level road - however,
with our intrepid driver Pedro, we would soon be climbing mountains! Even on the main
roads and in the towns its obvious that “we’re not in Kansas (or Canada) anymore”. Lush
palm trees wave in the ever-present breeze, tiny shacks dot the roadside typically in blue or
pink paint, sides of beef hang on the street in the open sun, - and traffic patterns that  would
give an insurance adjuster an instant coronary!!! But once we turn off the main roads, the
scene quickly turns from quaint to sobering. The shacks now are literally made of any scrap
available - steel, cardboard, thatch. Naked children with swollen bellies stare up at us as we
pass. The road turns to mud with monstrous pot-holes - slowly our bus inches its way to
the village of Caraballo, in the heart of the Sugar Cane fields near Puerto Plata.

Many of us have seen poverty - some have even experienced it. Often  we “feel poor” -
especially after Christmas or at tax time! But poverty here is a whole order of magnitude
greater than what we generally experience in Canada. It’s more than a lack of wealth - it’s
almost a living,  malevolent force that stalks, feeds on, and eventually kills its victims. I
might have expected this in Africa or parts of Asia - but not here in the Dominican
Republic, vacation destination for so many Canadians - a mere 4 hour flight!?  We are met
by Elio Madonia, a Canadian businessman who founded the El Samaritano Foundation -
since retirement, he has devoted his life to improving the lot of these poorest of the poor.
Elio starts off with a tour of Caraballo and we are instantly faced with people living in
conditions that I had never even imagined before. Whole families live in 10' square hovels,
often with no roof, no floor, or no windows. Sewage flows in the street, malnourished
children are everywhere, some with horrible injuries....... Miriam, in all her mission trips,
says she has never seen such poverty. Caraballo was built by the government to house
seasonal sugar-cane workers. The concrete barracks have never been maintained and lack
even a window for ventilation. However the cane cutters often don’t (or can’t) leave and
stay with their families in a growing sprawl of shacks surrounding the barracks.

Sugar is one of the main industries in the Dominican Republic - rivaled only by tourism.
Sugar cane cutting is one of the most grueling jobs in existence - it is cut by hand, with a
machete, during the hottest part of the year when temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius.
Days are up to 12 hours long. Each man has to cut 1 ton of cane a day with no food and
only what water he brings with him. All for about $3/day!??? It is such a tough job that
even the poorest Dominicans, who are poor enough, won’t do it - workers from
neighbouring Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, are lured across the
border to do the back-breaking work - or just to escape the turmoil in Haiti. Dominicans
are racially Hispanic and speak Spanish - Haitians are very African and speak French - they
are looked down upon by the Dominicans and occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder.
Once here they can’t afford to leave. Haitian children born here have no citizenship - they
are “non-persons”. Sugar company overseers, armed with shotguns, patrol the villages on
donkeys to “keep order”. Sugar was the main reason why slavery really took off - for all
intents and purposes, it still exists here. I ask a cane-cutter to demonstrate how he cuts the
cane for some pictures (I am trip photographer & videographer) - as soon as we step into
the cane, the breeze disappears and the sweat starts pouring. I am able to give a few whacks
(without cutting off a foot!) and soon realize that I better keep my day-job.

Just over the river from Caraballo lies hope - Villa Ascension - the 6th in a series of villages
built by Elio’s “El Samaritano Foundation” for these desperate people. The contrast is
stunning. Ascension has a school, a church, a CO-OP, a mission centre, a work shop and
200+ homes rising up the side of a hill. The houses are made of cinder-block about 20'
square with 2 rooms, a steel roof, electricity and a toilet - what we might call a shed or out-
building - but to these people it is quite literally a “casa”! The people here are still
unspeakably poor - yet there is a sense of optimism and hope. The setting is spectacular.
Everyone smiles and greets you with a slow, gentle “Hola”. Children swarm around us,
hold our hands and follow us all over the village - something you certainly don’t see in
Canada anymore!

Our group raised enough money to build 3 houses and some of our group assist in the
actual construction. Elio says that choosing which family gets a house from an endless list of
applicants is his most difficult task. Yet presenting these homes to 3 lucky families is
probably the most gratifying thing most of us will ever do! Our group participates in a
number of projects - putting a shelf in every house, painting doors & windows, painting the
church, teaching sewing classes, assisting a medical team, building 100s of slates for a
school, etc. We also pay for uniforms and supplies so that all the children can attend school,
we support sewing & woodworking micro-enterprises, a pilot Community Health
Development project, etc. The aim of our work is to empower - to give a hand up to help
them help themselves. One can see this working in the attitude of the people - and in their
smiles. You can see the community starting to form its own structure & little enterprises
start to appear - an English school, a music school, a wood-working shop, a food stand. I
wondered if they might in a way resent our presence - but they are so desperate and so glad
that anyone from the outside world is taking any interest in them that this feeling soon
disappears.

We spend most of our time & energies in Ascension but Judy takes us to other locations to
broaden our experience of the challenges here. We visit Agua Negra, -  “black water” - a
slum area in Puerto Plata that perches along the San Carlos River which is quite literally
Puerto Plata’s sewage run-off. The squalor here surpasses that of Caraballo  - the river
empties into the Atlantic through a delta of garbage which has become the children’s
playground!? Yet the community is fortunate to have Sandra Tineo - a brave, young woman
who has started a new school, is pastor of a church, organizes health workshops and
medical clinics, started a cottage sewing industry, and more - as she guides us through the
muck-lined streets it is clear that she is the community’s leader.

In the village of Pancho Mateo, we take part in a “milk-ministry” where we distribute milk
& some food to children who sing (and can they SING!!!) quite literally for their supper.
We also visit some of the wards in the Puerto Plata Hospital - don’t think I will complain
about our medical system again! Patients have to supply their own bedding & food and
need someone to look after them so that each bed has at least 2 people in it!? We distribute
those little boxes of goodies you often see being collected at Christmas - just crayons,
colouring books, balloons, little toys - yet they bring bigger smiles than any iPod or X-Box
ever do with our kids. Even a brief visit seems to brighten some very sick faces.

And then there is the dump.

After a painful, tedious and somewhat dangerous bus ride into the city dump we find the
unimaginable - people making their living in the filth of a Dominican dump. In 1492,
Christopher Columbus said “this is the most beautiful land that human eyes have seen” - to see
the contrast between tropical splendour and human corruption is sickening. One thing that
struck me was the fact that in the Dominican Republic you put the toilet paper in the
garbage as the sewers just can’t handle it. So a dump is also an open sewer. And people live
here! Kids live here!! We help Jana Amelingmeier from “Dominican Crossroads”, a local
missionary organization, set up an impromptu feeding station for a hungry line-up . The
only thing I can compare this experience to is like being at an accident scene - the body goes
in auto-mode and the reality doesn’t sink in until afterwards.  The buzzing of countless flies
and the crack of an impending thunderstorm seems to say, “God is angry”! It is the only
place we see no smiles..........

An oasis in all this is the mountain-top retreat of Crossroads. Jana, her veterinarian
husband, “Dr. Bob”, and their family, have set up an incredible complex of tree-houses,
grottos, pools, gardens and pathways for visiting mission & service groups to stay at while
working in the area. The view is breathtaking! Crossroads works with Elio and other
mission & service groups doing milk-ministries, feeding programs, medical & dental clinics,
child sponsorships, Bible-study & fellowship groups and of course the dump ministry.

We also visit some of the older villages that Elio has built as well as a future village just
being landscaped now. At this stop we are all quite tired and just a little cranky - we have
seen & done enough for one day and are just looking forward to a swim and a drink at the
beach. But just as we are about to leave an older man walks up and the help he needs is
instantly obvious. He has a HOLE in his chest the size of a fist - the underlying flesh is
wide open to the flies and infection! How this happened I will never know but he is clearly
a walking dead-man. Luckily we stop there that day. Luckily we have an American nurse
with us that day. She had never seen such an injury but she manages to swab it out with
disinfectant. We leave some medicine & Elio arranges for future medical attention. But
what does his future hold???

Life here is brutal, hard and short. The climate is the only thing these people have going for
them. When asked where their “Papa” or husband is, the reply is often a slashing motion
across the throat. You don’t see many older people - and they are actually suprised when we
tell them our ages!? Terrible injuries are common and often go untreated. One adorable
little girl had 3rd degree burns on her belly from a boiling pot! Malnutrition is ever-present
and makes it easier for other diseases to get a foothold. Malaria is on the rise. It struck me
how chickens, pigeons and other birds were live so close to these people -  right in their
houses. If/when Avian-Flu arrives, these people will be VERY hard hit! And then there is
an older plague ravaging these communities - HIV/AIDS. In Acsension 25% of the people
have AIDS!!! One in four!

One day, in the church, I hear a little four-year old boy, Juancito, crying. He will not stop. I
never heard someone cry so hard and for so long!! People try to hug him, to give him a
teddy bear - I always got a big smile from the kids by showing them on the video camera -
but not with Juancito. He is truly “inconsolable”. I ask Judy what had happened with him -
apparently his mother had just died of AIDS before we arrived. Not only had he watched
her die a slow, painful death but their neighbours had shunned them and then burned all
her belongings after she died. Haitians are very superstitious (Voodoo is still very
prevalent!) and they simply don’t understand this disease plaguing their community.
I hold Juancito’s little hand and it seems deformed - I was told that he was born with 6
fingers.  Other kids made fun of him so someone cut off the extra finger - probably with a
machete!?! His skin is covered with little bumps. He had been cared for since his mother’s
death by some missionaries but now they are about to leave - this is just more than he can
take.  Juancito has NOTHING - not even a future - for Juancito also has AIDS. This does it
for me - my heart BREAKS! I wake up the next morning hearing his cries - and I still hear
them. I am definitely not a “touchy-feely” guy, but the people I meet here -  Juancito and so
many others - really break through and “get inside” me.

So - back to the question - WHAT can I do to help? Well, we are told that our work and
our very presence have helped immensely - it is important to people who have been
forgotten by the world to know that someone cares. Probably a more significant  impact
will result from what we bring back with us - through talks, presentations, pictures and
video, and just 1-to-1 conversations, we will take our stories to innumerable people at
home. Maybe some will be encouraged to go on a mission/service trip of their own - or at
least become encouraged to sponsor a child, send a Christmas box, donate some clothes....
Anything we can do or send, no matter how small to us, matters to those who have so little.
Yet, whatever we did for the people we met, I would bet that they have done far more for
us - they change our lives. They re-align our point of view - show us what really counts in
life. Our trip finishes on a high point with a Palm Sunday church service in Ascension.
People who usually wear rags or, in the case of the children, often nothing at all, show up in
their “Sunday-best”. Girls spend hours doing their hair in beads. Families of up to 6 arrive
on the family vehicle - a “mo-ped”!? The service goes on for hours with singing that still
rings in my ears. How can people with so little express so much joy!??? The first thing I
noticed on my return to Canada was how morose and distant we are - we have so much yet,
in some ways, so very little!?

Have you ever thought of being a “missionary”? My recommendation is DO IT! Do it for
God - do it for your Service Club - do it to help your fellow man - do it for the children -
but most of all, do it for YOURSELF!