Hero Team

Well, I'm back in the United States, and I have been back for a total of about 48 hours. I can't believe I'm not in the Dominican Republic right now doing camp and hanging out with those kids. I miss them all so incredibly much. I can't believe that I have access to hot showers and any kind of food I want. It's all a bit bittersweet. Well, I promised you a more intriguing blog this week, and I've been trying to process and think through everything that I want to say. So though it may be long, I hope that you will enjoy reading it, and that it will hopefully call you to action, or at least get your mind working.

First, we'll talk about this week. It was a great week at camp, I thought it was going to be a hard week because of it being my last week, but it actually ended up being a great week. We had the most amount of volunteers all summer long (102) and so we had three different teams. I ended up leading one of the teams out to a place called Hatillo Palmas during the morning, and to numerous locations during the afternoons. It was a great experience being there. It was the first time we had done camp there this summer, so the kids were excited to see us, even though they were small in numbers. On the second day, we had a young man by the name of Ivan come to camp and he was 17 years old. He was handicapped and was in a wheelchair. He had a huge smile on his face because he was there learning English and able to draw pictures. As the group hung out with him more and more, we realized that there was something unique about his chair, it had no seat. It had fallen apart, so that he was sitting on the medal frame. The church group then decided to come back the next day with some temporary repair solutions for him. They had brought coat hangars, duct tape, old drawstring bags as well as a unused tent flap to try and completely fix up Ivan's chair. It was amazing to see the team come together to make this boy an incredible chair built from extremely random parts. In all of my time down there, I'm not sure if I have ever seen so much joy in a face. He was so thrilled that when he got into his chair, he went as absolutely as fast as he could and did his own version of a fish tail.
Also this week we got the chance to visit a Haitian batay that was funded by the Dominican government. This place was full of Haitians that were allowed to be in the country because of the work they were doing. I will tell you all what, this was a place that I truly will never forget in my entire life. People were living out of aluminum shacks and cardboard. People walked around without clothes on, not because they wanted to, because they did not have clothes to put on their backs. You had to watch your step to make sure you didn't step in human waste among many other things. It was truly heartbreaking. To see people living in a position like this, and knowing that God has created all of us equal to them, because he loves us all equally. There is nothing that I can have or do that will make me better than any of the people living in that community. Nothing. And God loves us all the same and has chosen to bless me ridiculously with an incredible family and house among so many more things. But he has also blessed those people as well. Just because their standard of living is not what my standard of living is does not mean that their life sucks. I believe it actually means that my life sucks. That sometimes I believe that I need this certain thing or possession in order to be happy. How selfish and materialistic. These people truly are some of the poorest people on this planet, and yet they still greet you with a smile and want to play basketball or soccer with you. The kids would cling to my side left and right because they knew I would give them affection. I wish there was more I could do for this community, but I honestly do not know where I would start. They need a clean water supply. Their current water supply is believed to be a canal that supplies water for their bananas and probably has the pesticides from the banana fields from it inside the water, along with piles and piles of trash that fill the banks of the canal. This is their drinking water! The biggest thing that I believe anyone could do for that community though would just to be living there with them, and experience life with them and come alongside them in order to help make their standard of life better. To help teach and learn the process of getting clean water to avoid diseases, or anything like that. Not to come in and build a huge latrine and this and that, and leave. That does nothing to help them out but give them clean water. They did not help themselves, and in turn cannot learn life skills to help continue to make their life better. I believe the thing to do would be to experience life with them, and show them the love and hope that God gives each and every one of us. I understand that I may be contradicting myself here in this paragraph, but if you are confused or would like to talk to me more about what I mean, please email me (Jmendrala@gmail.com)

Well, I told you I had a lot to say, so that last paragraph was definitely not the end of it.
After being gone for 3 months, you learn a lot about yourself and about who you are and where you want your life to go. This is no exception for me. I came into the summer thinking I wanted to pursue a career right out of college into the government or law enforcement. Boy has my thinking been flipped, turned and re-routed. This summer was an absolutely incredible and life changing summer for me, to say the least. To try and sum up all of my experiences and lessons learned and how my life has been impacted into one blog is just not possible, but I will try and give you a short version of it.
I have learned what I believe is a true and more defined definition of love. What Christ's love looks like to us, and how his love is equal among every human on this earth, as well as how his love has no bounds. I have seen the joy on kids faces just when they see that I am wearing a t-shirt that says "Orphanage-Outreach". I don't even have to open my mouth for them to get excited. I've seen kids be thrilled just to be able to play basketball with me, or to have me read them a book, or to have me watch them play basketball. You name it, the people and children of the Dominican Republic have successfully impacted my life forever. To see the orphans that I spent all summer with so happy and so content with life, after being abandoned or even left to die. How their life seems so much more complete than my own, and yet I have everything that I could ever dream of having in my own life. Opportunities for me are never ending, and yet time and time again I find myself saying that life is so hard, or that I don't have enough things, when there are children all over this world that have a flat basketball and are more than content with playing with it all day long. I have experienced relationships with people from the States down there that will truly be life long relationships. I could name them all by name, but I'm sure I would leave someone out, and I do not want to do that. But being able to be lifted up by friends when I was down on myself in Jaibon or staying up until nearly 2 am sometimes just talking about life or drawing out maps of the United States. The people there that I connected with, leaders, interns and volunteers was incredible. This blog would definitely not even be close to being complete without mentioning Graystone. That place has been incredible to me and I am sure they will continue to have an incredible impact on my life. I am just so thankful for everyone that I encountered this summer, and I hope that I had even just a one-hundredth of an impact on them that they all had on me.

Now on to the part that I am the most nervous about writing. Being down in the Dominican Republic, you see a whole bunch of need that goes unaddressed daily. Like the people I have mentioned throughout my blogs, the country is in need, and it is not one of the worst-off countries in the world. Poverty is an issue that is effecting over 2 billion people on this earth. Just over that amount of people live on less that $2 a day. That number is absolutely crazy when I compare it to my own lifestyle. Even after being back for 2 days, it makes me sick. A cup of coffee at Starbucks costs more than what someone in the world could use to survive for an entire day. I am so thankful for everyone that has come alongside me this summer in supporting me through donations or prayer or just simple thoughts here and there. I would not have made it this summer without you. I would like to call you all to action though if you are still reading this incredibly long message. I have decided to take on what Orphanage-Outreach calls the "Hero Team" with one of the interns I met down there. We have set a simple goal of getting $250 raised a year for one of the orphanages that OO partners with. Akele and I hope to absolutely shatter than goal, and I hope that you would consider helping us out with this goal. Now understand that the kids at these orphanages that OO partners with are very well off inconsideration, but compare what I have explained about their lifestyle to your own. I know that I am in college, and I may not have a whole lot of money to give, but I plan on giving absolutely everything that I can to help eliminate the issue of world poverty. Donating to Orphanage-Outreach with Akele and I will help to give orphans in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua a better life for themselves, and it will also help the orphans learn life skills so that they can grow up to be men and women of God, and knowledgeable men and women so that they can help their own communities get out of the spider web they are in that is called poverty. I encourage you to support some sort of mission field. If you are already involved in supporting an organization or child or something along the line, then that is awesome! Keep up the good work, and maybe consider giving more, or adopting another kid to support monthly. I plan on doing a lot of research for another organization that I can donate to that will help eliminate the issue that is on hand here in our world. I posted my email above, and Akele and I would be absolutely thrilled to hear that you want to help out with our Hero Team. If you would like any more information about it, please email me. I would love to tell you more stories and anything else you would like to hear, or answer any questions you may have.
If you're still reading this, then I must give you props. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen and read. I told you I would have a lot of thought to put down, and I am leaving out a whole lot that may come tomorrow, or later this week.
Thank you again to all of you who have continued to support me. I am eternally grateful.