In all my travels, I have never experienced anything like what we experienced in the DR. I have never seen such poverty and people with so little and yet they are filled with so much love and acceptance that I think I came home with more blessings than what I gave to them.
Typically, when I go on vacation or on a trip, I am ready to come home at the end of it. This time, I wasn't ready and could have stayed a lot longer. We cried when we left our friends and this was just after a week. There was so much love and friendship that despite the language barrier, I feel like I made friends for life.
Here's one example (and unfortunately, our pictures are on a camera that we don't have a chord for to get our pictures off of so pics will come later). Our first day in this community, we took a walking tour of the area (which I'll describe later). As we walked, the kids just poured out and walked with us. Two little girls grabbed a hold of Case and held his hands for probably 2 hours - one girl on each side. The poor kid was too nice to say he was done holding hands.
But, one girl in particular was drawn to Siahna. She literally grabbed her out of my arms (she was probably 8 or 9) and carried her for the next hour. Siahna wasn't too sure of this, but let the girl hold her and didn't fuss.
We didn't see this girl again until 4 days later and she asked me where Sisi was. We had left Siahna at the house that morning with someone else from our group. She was truly disappointed that Siahna wasn't there and disappeared.
The last morning we were there we went into the community briefly to deliver some final gifts. I had one picture of this girl holding Siahna that I wanted to deliver but she wasn't around. I found another little girl and asked if she knew the girl in the picture and if she would deliver the picture for me. She said yes, took the picture, and ran off.
We all loaded on our bus and were waiting for the rest of our crew. I just happened to look out the front window of the bus as we were ready to leave and saw three little girls running down the street - one of them was Janelly, the little girl who attached to Siahna.
I burst into tears, grabbed Siahna and jumped off the bus. This girl had come running just to say good-bye and had just barely caught us. She grabbed Siahna from me, gave her a big hug and we took some pictures. I don't think she understood why I was crying.
But what kept going through my mind was this: Because of Siahna's delays and the way she interacts with people, she really doesn't have any friends or other kids who love on her like this girl did (besides Case, of course). The language barrier was actually a blessing in this case, because the girls couldn't communicate so there wasn't any indication that Siahna couldn't talk or was different from other kids her age. Janelly just loved her and wanted to be with her. All she could offer were open arms and to me, it was everything.
The picture of these three little girls running down the street just to say good-bye to a three year old is something I hope I never forget. How our Father must love when we come running to Him and the little we have to offer Him means everything to Him.
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