Day 5: Light for the World
¡Hola a todos! Ready to learn about all the exciting, new things we’ve been experiencing since the last time we updated you here in La República Dominicana?
During our stay here, we’ve been working with a youth-led organization called CARP, which stands for Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles. This group strives to raise young leaders globally by sharing the Principle values of God, Peace, and Family in the world. By promoting such values in a campus setting, they work to encourage personal development and growth for seeking students.
One of the things that we’ve been working towards is a cultural event in which we’ll be promoting universal values and true love. By putting together various cultures around the world and sharing the idea of one harmonious world, we hope to bond with and empower the youth of Santo Domingo. Working with the CARP members, we decided to go to schools to invite young people to participate in this event, grow personal connections, and express our raw excitement towards this vision.
We received powerful guidance from a sister of CARP, Shaniella Hernandez, about the heart we should have as young people trying to guide other youth toward this path of faith. Afterward, all GPA members seemed excited to reach out to these potential youth seeking to learn more about God and how we can grow for a better world.
Stepping foot inside the gates of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, our gazes fell on the friendly faces of the students of this school. This chance to interact and engage with young people from a new country doesn’t come so often, so all our conversations were a bit nerve-wracking, especially since many of us are not fluent in Spanish! Yet we were eager to learn more about each other and were able to surpass our language barrier. We went out for around two hours, approaching students and sharing our vision. We also listened to their answers to fundamental questions in life to help them open up and think more deeply about faith, personal standing in the joy they feel, and their purpose in life.
The next day, we switched gears to interacting with children by visiting an all-girls orphanage called the Madeleas Foundation. They had around twenty girls in total, all with different backgrounds.
Since we knew these children were unfortunate not to have parents, we were determined to give even more joy and even the smallest bit of love in their hearts by the end of the visitation day.
The seemingly shy and quiet little girls instantly turned into the brightest and most cheerful kids once we started picking them up and running around the courtyard. The orphanage was soon overflowing with waves of laughter and Dominican pop songs, dancing around, braiding each others’ hair, and playing interactive games like “Red Light, Green Light.”
Seeing the pure and innocent hearts of the children simply dancing, playing around, and trying to converse with us the best they could with the limited English/Spanish, impacted our worldview. How blessed we are to be born with basically everything necessary in our lives, even the most fundamental thing we don’t even think about so often, a family. This day will remain in our hearts as we also hope this seed of love will continue to blossom within these young girls’ hearts.
(Group photo at orphanage and picture of Joshua with baby)
The following day, greeted by bright sunshine, was a Sunday! We all attended the Sunday Service of the Family Federation in Santo Domingo, where Rev. Cruz, the pastor of the church, shared his desire for young people to see beyond the world trapped by screens of technology and learn to create God-centered families. One of the points I felt touched by was his line, “Of course, God as a parent wants the best for us—even to the point of us being better than Him.”
Moving forward, these words and inspiration we’ve been receiving the past four days will be the rock we’ll be holding on to for this upcoming week which will be filled with even more activities at the university. Stay tuned for the next chapter on our journey! ¡Ciao!
Generation Peace Academy
Rie Horii
Blogger, Dominican Republic