I have a very big God. By my side, by my side.
Day three of our trip in the Dominican, we started running a sports camp at a local park. Our team had been split into different groups to run three-hour long stations, and I was with the crafts group. We had been planning this camp for weeks before we arrived in the DR, but the moment my group walked into the white room filled with twenty-something 8 to 10-year-old girls in plastic chairs, clapping, smiling, and staring at us as they awaited our instruction, our neatly prepared crafts agenda got thrown out the barred window, and the improvising began. After playing “pato, pato, ganso” and attempting to learn the girls’ names, we all gathered in the center of the room and started singing that song.
Tengo un Gran Dios. A mi lado, a mi lado.”
And those words pretty much sum up the trip.
No matter where we were or what we were doing, God was by our side and doing big things.
He was with me day one as I flew across the border and entered a bigger reality. Jesus was the answer as I lay in bed the second night, discouraged by the poverty I had seen and wondering the solution to it all.
God was the topic during devotional time with the kids at the sports camp. As Nadia and Angel met and spoke with women in the streets of Boca Chica. While my dad and Andy taught a bunch of young pastors about theology.
God was bigger than my insecurities when I had to use my three years of Spanish for something way more important than passing a class. He was by my side, letting me learn, when things were awkward and I didn't know what to say.
Jesus was the reason we handed out sandwiches to the window washers and armed guards and gas station workers from the street. Why we played in a dusty, trash-covered field with a group of little kids.
He was bigger than the stars I saw as I stood outside with my dad one night and tried to look for constellations.
He was with my team as we walked through the streets of the local villages, as we met so many people who recognized God as holy but didn’t realize what that made them. As I bought sandals from a lady who believed in the Gospel but didn’t think she was a Christian because the local church said Christians had to wear nice clothes. As we prayed with the Haitian refugee who lived in her house. As he, too, became a Christian.
God was in control as I stumbled over words while explaining what the colors of the beads on our bracelets meant to a circle of children. When I felt completely useless, God was still there.
He was listening as a group of us prayed with a man named Julio who lives in a village for Haitian refugees and uses a wheelchair. As Julio prayed for us. “My needs are small,” he said, “but their needs are big.” Wow. That was humbling.
The biggest thing I learned in the DR is that God is huge, and powerful, and the only thing that can meet our needs. Jesus is the answer to everything and, I’ve got to say it, the freakin’ best thing that ever happened. The trip was amazing.
Here is a video recap she created using photos and video from the trip:
