Giving Cat a Voice

Several days ago we celebrated the end of our third year of the GO Seminary of the Americas.  We invited the students, teachers and their families as well as other collaborators to join us for a day at the public beach in Sosua, celebrating a year of hard work, theological discovery and a deeper understanding of the Churches call to overcome the culture of the broken world with the culture of the Kingdom of God.
Kerlyn giving instructions to the Seminary crew at the beginning of our day.

Kendrix and Kerlyn Pena, brothers who are third year students that will soon lead a church plant in the town of Tamboril where they grew up, joined me for some hang out time down on the beach away from a lot of the hustle and bustle.  We met our waiter, Richard.  He’s Dominican but was raised in Queens, New York from the time he was 10.  Richard explained that he continuously made poor decisions.  That he was frequently in and out of trouble until he got into real trouble some time ago.  He did 17 years of hard time of a 27 year sentence.  He got off early for good behavior and was immediately deported.  He’s been back in the DR for a year.  He’s a year younger than me.

We invited Richard to join us.  His transparency allowed us the opportunity to be quicker friends.  He didn’t know who we were yet but he didn’t apologize for his past and we didn’t shame him for it.  We continued to hang out.  This is incarnational ministry… being present with cultural outsiders, with sinners, with what the self-righteous religious identify as “those” people.

We were overlooking the beautiful beach and ocean.  A geographic location whose beauty is compromised by the brokenness of humanity, it’s reckless drunkenness and drug abuse, it’s prostitution, it’s exploitation and failure to live up to its own dignified expression of God’s image.  Some Dominican women came and sat down next to us.  I noticed a young Haitian girl on the beach near the water’s edge.

She couldn’t be missed because some Dominican men that worked the beach were heckling her and chiding her.  She couldn’t have been more than 15.  She had stripped down to a bikini and was arranging herself, scowling at her hecklers and then redressed.  I heard her vocalize and then saw her sign.  It became clear that she was deaf.  My heart sank.  Not with pity, but with understanding.
This girl has the misfortune to be a young woman in the context of the Dominican Republic.  It’s a life hard enough already for Haitian women, being positioned on the lowest rung of the sociological ladder.  Added to this is her deafness.  Deafness here means absolute vulnerability and on a public beach in a country known as the Thailand of Latin America for its own brand of sex trafficking it means that she is at risk if she is not already being exploited.

The reality of her deafness becomes clear and it hits.  It’s like I’ve been struck by a bolt of lightning.  I have two deaf, American daughters with cochlear implants.  They know sign, they speak, they hear crudely but have as much access to all of the world, hearing and deaf, that one can currently imagine.  They are not at risk.  They are protected, insulated from the sex trade, loved, cared for, not alone… in part because they were born to Vicki and I, but also because they were born in America and not Haiti, or not of a Haitian couple in the Dominican Republic.  This young woman, this girl, could just as easily been one of my own daughters had soul been sown to flesh differently.

Kendrix, Kerlyn and Richard continue to speak.  The Spirit is speaking to me.  “Go get her.  Feed her.  Silence the hecklers with your love and treat her like a queen for this next hour or two.  Show her love and hope and care without exchange.”  And so I excuse myself.

I walk down the steps to the beach through the continued sounds of men being less than they are intended to be and walk out to her near the water’s edge.  I start signing to her. At this point I don’t know if she knows an actual sign language or just a more general kind of charades.  But she does.  It shows that given her life she’s more blessed than others that face her same challenges in this context. She’s been to some kind of school.  I sign to her that I have children, girls, that two of them are deaf too.  I ask her if she’s hungry, if she wants some food.  She does and I motion for her to come with me. 

We walk back through the same on-lookers, hecklers before, now silent and watching.  As a perceived tourist and American in particular, there is
a certain amount of influence you seem to just have, whether it be legitimate or not.  Part of being a Christian means leveraging power and influence for those that don’t have it.  You take the Enemy’s weapon to divide and use it to unite instead.  This is how those charged to be peace makers by their Master do the work of justice and silence the Enemy behind his own lines.   I sit her down next to us.  I ask Richard to give her a menu.  It just happens to have pictures which makes it a little more useful for this girl.  She points to what she wants and we get her a drink.  I sign to her asking her name.  She acts like she’s pulling a whisker across her face from her nose to her cheek.  Her name is either “Cat,” “Chat,” or “Gato,” depending on whether or not you’re interpreting into English, French/Creole or Spanish.  I finger spell my name for her and that it’s nice to meet her.

At this point I’m concerned that Cat will think I want some kind of “compensation.”  I don’t know that this is the case but that’s the problem, I don’t KNOW.  So to be safe it’s time for me to excuse myself, pay the bill and leave.  Earlier Richard pulled me aside asking for some specific financial help because he claimed to need a few more pesos to purchase a phone.  I told him that I’d see what I could do.  But now my concern was that if I don’t leave, Cat will think I want something but if I do leave they will run Cat off and just keep the money spent on her behalf.  I pulled Richard aside, “Promise me you’ll treat this girl like a queen for the next two hours and I’ll help you with what you need.  Deal?”  “Deal.”
I said good-bye to Cat and left.  As I got to the other side of the beach I realized that I’d forgotten to ask for the receipt.  I went back 10 minutes or so later and Kerlyn went with me.  When we arrived back at the little restaurant Cat was feasting on a huge platter of food, Richard was sitting by her and looked up at me, smiled and said, “I’m taking good care of her, man.”  And he was.

As I got my receipt I asked if I could get a photo with Cat and she signed, “Yes.”  I signed to her that Jesus loved her and said good-bye again.  When I looked at the photo later I discovered that she had signed “I love you.”  I hope she knows or learns to understand if she doesn’t already that the one she actually loves is Jesus.  I was just trying to follow him and I’m not sure how well I did.  But I hope it further awakened in her, her own dignity as an image bearer of our God.


Pray for Cat.  I don’t know her story.  I can only guess at the hardships she faces.  I don’t know where she is today, who cares for her, etc.  I know that she’s at risk.  I know Jesus loves her and pray God has put and will put other Christ followers in her life to build into her, to lift her up, to honor the image she bears.

One Clean Windshield Worth 7 Lives…

We have a saying at the GO Seminary of the Americas: "The fingerprints of the local church should be all over its neighborhoods. The community should love the church so much that even if it disagrees with what the church believes, it would grieve if it were gone."

We want to plant and lead the kinds of churches in our communities that would leave those respective communities feeling diminished by our absence because our redemptive presence was so strong.  When Jesus walked into a village things changed for the better.  When a church is established in a neighborhood things should be positively different not because of us but because of who we follow and how we follow him.  

In our Incarnational Ministry and Strategies II course students are challenged to develop ways of creatively engaging their culture with the Gospel and ever-serving presence of the local church.  We want to pour ourselves out for others and invite them to be a part of us if they are so led.


Today something completely unexpected happened.  Today we hit the streets with squeegees, sponges, cold bottles of water and fliers.  We thought we were just washing windshields and reaching out to public transportation drivers that serve our neighborhood.  We later discovered that we were also saving lives.

Public cars labeled with the same letters follow the same routes and are a form of public transportation here in the Dominican.  We have a circuit that runs directly through one of our neighborhoods.  They pack their cars full of fares and their passengers can get from one side of Santiago to the other and back by following the connecting routes.  These men drive all day long in crazy traffic (they make a lot of the “crazy” themselves) and it’s thankless, hot work.  Because the “A” car circuit goes through our neighborhood daily for up to 12 hours at a time, these drivers are considered a part of our community.  One of our students asked “What if we serve them and let them know that we care for them and are grateful for their work?  We could wash their windshields and give them water.”

It was a fantastic idea!  Culturally, here in the Dominican, when a windshield gets washed at an intersection or elsewhere there is an expectation that the driver will pay for the service, EVEN if the service was initially refused.  They almost always have to pay something.  The students wanted to turn the system upside down.  We’ll serve them at no cost AND we will give them a bottle of water as a thank you for their service and invite them to the neighborhood church.

So we prepped, got materials together, and set out to the “A” car route.  It went like this: 1. Student hails the car and begins immediately washing the windshield 2. While another student sticks his head in the car insuring that the service is free and 3. Hands them a bottle of water 4. While saying, “We’re able to clean your windshields for free because Jesus cleaned up our lives for free.  Your windshield will get dirty again but Jesus can clean up your life forever.  If you want to know more about it, come visit us one Sunday.” 5.” Here’s a flier with a scripture, address of our building and times of service.  Have a great day!”  The scripture is from John 4:13-14 and reads: “Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,  but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

We did one car after another… more than 80.  But one was unique.  The driver took the flier after we finished and handed it back to a passenger as he drove off.  Towards the end of the street the car stopped and the passenger got out.  He walked back to the students.  He asked them to wash the windshield of his life.  At first they were confused.  He broke down and confessed, “You guys are here for a reason.  For me.  I changed my mind.  I changed it in the back of that public car after I heard what you said and read this verse.  I need that water.  I’m at the end.  I had made up my mind to murder my family and kill myself today but now I won’t.  I’m not going to do it.  I was going to do it tonight but now I can’t do it.  He went on to tell of extreme financial difficulties, that he had not been able to provide for his family, that he can’t find work to provide for his wife who is pregnant with twins and the twins and singleton they already have together.  He was at the end of his rope, desperate and ashamed, believing that they would all be better off if they were just dead.  All together there are 7 of them.

The students prayed for him.  They took up a modest benevolent offering to get him through the night.  They confirmed where he lived and got his contact information so that they could follow up with him the next day and connect him to the church and pastoral staff.

Something as basic and ridiculous as a squeegee saved the life of two adults and 5 children today.  We never knew weeks ago when this plan first was born that it would be used in such a miraculous way.  The church, the People of God, went to the streets today and a difference was made.  Lives were saved.  It’s an encouragement to be sure but the question follows, how many has the Church lost due to its preoccupation with comfort and complacency?  How many more will die?

Today the fingerprints of the Church were on a squeegee that taught me that pouring ourselves out in small and great ways is a matter of life and death.  We only discover this in the act of serving.  There is a real battle going on that cannot be fought from a posture of comfort.
 
May the Church reject complacency in favor of a commitment to grow in its service and its redemptive engagement of the culture and community surrounding it.


Redeeming, Renewing, Restoring.