A Sweet Story from the Dominican Republic
One of our partners in the Dominican Republic, Every Home For Christ (EHFC), have been distributing shoes from a large container in villages throughout the beautiful tropical country. Our contact, Daniel, at EHFC, recently set us this story as they served there. You don’t want to miss this sweet one:
Moises Paul is a 10 year old boy from Batey San Joaquin la Victoria in North Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Batey San Joaquin is a village that was populated by Haitian immigrants brought in the 70´s to work in the sugarcane fields when that industry. Now, this industry no longer exists and the senior immigrants are submitted to deep poverty. The new generations are involved in other kinds of poorly paid jobs since they have low access to good education. The father of Moises is a drug trafficker and is separated from the mother of Moises, leaving her as a single mother with three children.
Despite this reality, Moises’ father is his role model and sadly for many other young people of the village. In the beginning of December, our EHC local team wanted to reinforce the task of sharing the Gospel in the village by giving the shoes provided by Samaritan's Feet to the dwellers of the village, especially the children. It was also a great opportunity to outreach and provide scriptures to those in need.
We gathered the kids in the local church and pastor Daniel Oscar led a discovery Bible study based on the Scripture passage of foot washing found in John 13:1-20. Concluding the lesson, in the application section, Pastor Oscar asked the audience, “who would you like to wash feet and who would you not like to wash feet?” Moises Paul answered promptly in a mockery tone, “I will never wash the feet of the girls, they have to wash my feet.” This answer by Moises presented the teacher with the opportunity to teach the great value and dignity of girls and women created in the image and likeness of God as boy and man.
After that incident, the program advanced toward the section to wash the feet of the participating children. Pastor Ruth del Carmen Luna, a female pastor on our team, chose to wash the feet of Moises. Just after being washed, Moises, very touched and moved by that situation, said, “me too, I want to wash the feet, even of the girls.” Moises had the opportunities to wash the feet of a couple of girls. At the end, he opened his heart to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. He also confessed that he could learn from the teaching of Jesus as He washed the feet of the disciples. Being a servant of God means seeing the world with the eyes and heart of God and not of this lost world where he is growing.
