Many of you are aware that our youth go to the Dominican Republic every year, but few of you know what we do while there, what we have accomplished over the years, how this all started, and how meaningful your partnership in this ministry has been to the youth of this parish. Today I am here to fill in those gaps.
I arrived at Redeemer, the first time, on January 11th, 2009, and mission trips to the DR were nothing new. In fact, the high school group went to the DR every four years. As well as our youth going to the DR, a team led by our DR trailblazers, Chuck Miller and Doris Schweppe, were leading immensely successful campaigns to build, repair, and finish churches all over the island for years. The work of the adult teams was my inspiration for what would become our youth mission in the DR.
Soon after I arrived, I received a call from Doris Schweppe, who asked if I could talk to her about our youth teams’ mission work. As we met, Doris said these words to me, “Chris, our youth have done fine work in the DR, but we need to improve on it. True mission work is when you choose to partner with another community for the long run when through Jesus you develop relationships, and as you return each year see the progress your work together in Christ has accomplished.” Doris then suggested we go to the DR, and continue to go every year to the same place.
That was the goal we set out to accomplish in 2009 when we went to a city called Mao. Unfortunately, because of some political happenings in the DR, we were unable to return to Mao. In 2011, however, we reconnected with Padre Bienvenido Lopez, the priest we worked with in Mao, who was now in Puerto Plata. That year the goal of developing a mission for which the Dominicans and the Americans entered into a symbiotic relationship, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to change lives in the DR, began and it continues to this day.
Puerto Plata is a nice city in the DR; it has an impressive downtown area where tourists spend time, it has two Episcopal churches named Christo Rey, and San Simon. When we arrived in 2011, Christo Rey was an established church, and San Simon was a church growing out of an extremely impoverished neighborhood in Puerto Plata called San Marcos, which was the community where we would begin our work.
The church in San Marcos was the leftovers of a closed soda store on a street corner, and that year alongside the youth group from the Dominican Republic, we painted 25 houses in 4 days. Of course, the houses we were painting were quite small, but the impact that painting made on the people who lived there was huge. The paint we put on the houses bought them years of protection from the elements, however that was not what the most important thing the paint accomplished. We were doing something else, something special, and we didn’t even realize it.
After spending each morning painting houses we had a small lunch, and with our Dominican teammates, hosted a VBS for 150 children from San Marcos. Our gifts to the children were things they could not get themselves, crayons, toothbrushes, shampoo, soap, pencils, backpacks, and even the clothes off our backs. The children and their families were even more appreciative of the VBS than they were for the painted houses. The community began to rally around the Church of San Simon, even though it was meeting in a soda store.
While we were doing all this community building, another church in Michigan took on the ministry of replacing that soda store and building a church for this new swelling congregation to worship in. The church was completed in 2013 and is now is a thriving congregation, seeing over 100 parishioners worshiping there every Sunday.
We are blessed in partnership with the Dominican youth group, numerous people, over 100 houses painted, two churches painted, a new structural wall for one church, 20 pews completely refurbished, a new sidewalk installed at one church, a day care built and added onto a church, and 150+ children in VBS every year, supplied with their needs for the school year, and a renewed love of Jesus Christ, all done by our youth and their chaperones.
While we are able every year to bless our friends, and partners in Christ in the DR, with things that have monetary value, we did much more than that, even though we didn’t realize it at first. Have any of you ever thought you would hear a priest tell you that a coat of paint saved a soul? That a coat of paint helped to bring a neighborhood of people to love Jesus Christ?
All of the houses we were painting in our first year were houses of people who were in need and members of San Simon church. Their neighbors witnessed what was happening and asked, how do we get our house painted? The answer to that question was, meet our priest Padre Bienvenido. The next year we painted more and different houses, and again more people asked to be to introduced to Padre, and Padre introduced them to Jesus, and this continues to happen every year.
Our mission in the DR is twofold: introduce unchurched to Jesus through construction projects, and empower the young to know Jesus through VBS, and for going on 8 years, we have accomplished those goals in partnership with the many youth and priests we have worked with in the DR – thanks to all of you, and your generosity.
A brief side note, we do still have an adult mission team, currently building a church in the DR. It is led by Derek Anderson, and Andy and Alex Dorr. If all this sounds interesting and exciting to you, talk to them, and go with them to do God’s work in the DR.
In 2009, I came up with, as I always do, an over-complicated and stressful fundraising idea. Thank God, Marsha Devitt told me it was the dumbest idea she ever heard and gave me a new idea, which we have used every year since 2009. Every Youth Sunday we have sold you all stock in our youth.
Today I have told you how that investment has paid off, and today, while we continue to ask for your monetary support, to assist us in our mission work in the DR, we deliver to you your dividends. As you exit the church today you will notice Gillespie Hall has all its doors wide open, please come in and go to one of the four stations marked by four pictures. Each a scene from our time in the DR. You will notice one of them on the screen, which shows you what the San Marcos neighborhood looks like, you will also notice three sketches done by Rich Hill, the sketches are not colored. That is for a reason, as you approach each scene, and make a donation to help our mission team this year, you will be met by someone who has attended one of our youth mission trips, they will fill in the color for you, by telling you a story, of how they saw Jesus at work, or about a child, or a friend thy know in the DR. Those stories are your dividends, those stories are for you to take from here, and give thanks to God, because without all of you, none of these stories would exist.
On behalf of our youth, and those they have loved, and helped to know Jesus in the DR, thank you.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Christian M. Wood
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Floirda
2 Epiphany
14 January 2018