The Dominican Republic has a population of around 9.6 million people; 73 percent of the population is of mixed race, 16 percent are Caucasian, and 11 percent are of African descent. Around 95 percent of the population is Catholic. There is freedom of faith in the country, which allows around 2 percent of the population to practice Voodoo.

A typical Dominican family has four people. Statistically, while 42 percent of the homes are run by both parents together, about 31 percent are run by single mothers, and the rest are run by relatives.

The Dominican Republic is divided into 31 provinces; 14 are in the northwestern region of the country: Dajabón, Duarte, Espaillat, Hermanas Mirabal, La Vega, María Trinidad Sánchez, Monseñor Nouel, Montecristi, Puerto Plata, Samaná, Sánchez Ramírez, Santiago, Santiago Rodríguez and Valverde.

Each province depends on the central government. Each, however, also has its own local authorities: governor, senators, deputies, mayor, etc.

Nationwide unemployment is around 15 percent. To help fight the situation, the government has created and granted a debit “Solidarity” card to more than 800,000 families across the country so they can get food for themselves and their children by using money allocated by the government every month.

Free-zone industries have closed in some towns causing unemployment to rise even higher. Unemployed parents don’t have many options; most try to find small jobs each day. The most common regular occupation in the urban areas of these provinces is that of motorcycle-taxi driver, which allows a man to make between $6 and $15 daily.

When family income is not enough, it is quite common to see children in the streets begging, cleaning windshields at crossroads, shining shoes, or selling pirated DVDs and CDs to generate income to help their families.

Children are also involved in scavenging in the dump, drug trafficking and child prostitution. Some of the worst cases of child labor and exploitation can be found at the Rafey garbage dump near the community of Cienfuegos in the province of Santiago. Entire families search the garbage to collect cardboard, glass, plastic and metal waste materials and anything they can sell or barter.

Given that many homes in Cienfuegos serve as warehouses for the variety of sorted waste materials brought from the dump, good hygiene is a challenge. But health consequences are dramatic and include skin diseases and other related illnesses. Even the street dogs get fungus that cause them to lose their hair.

A similar form of child labor and exploitation can be found in Dajabón, a border town where unemployment is high and the children often stop attending the Compassion-assisted child development centers because the parents take them to the local Haitian-Dominican market to help carry goods. The Haitians sell items like shoes, clothes and personal care products to the Dominicans. The Dominicans sell the Haitians foods such as corn, wheat, rice, beans, chicken, eggs, spaghetti, oil, herring, vegetables and others.

Families living in extreme poverty in the northwest usually have one meal a day. To help keep the children from going to bed with an empty stomach, the meal is eaten at around 5 in the afternoon. Many families use firewood to cook their meals, and the smoke will sneak through the gaps in the wooden walls and the tin-sheet roofs of homes.

Primary and high school education is generally available in the northwest, but not all students can afford it.

Thousands of families in the Northwest become homeless each year due to the tropical storms and hurricanes that hit the island of Hispaniola between May 1 and Nov. 30. Their poverty worsens when their homes are destroyed, and the small amount of money they have must be used for relocation.

Examples of child development centers located in areas like this include:

DR-125, 127, 208, 242, 251, 254, 255, 293, 294, 300, 303, 306, 307, 313, 324, 326, 337, 346, 361, 380-383, 386, 388, 404, 406, 430, 466, 459, 500-505 and 600

To help you when writing to your sponsored child, here are some commonly used phrases in the local language of the northwestern region of the country:

• Mi niño (My child – when writing to a boy). Mi niña (My child – when writing to a girl). This phrase is received very dearly because it is generally used by people who love children a lot.
• ¡Hola, campeón! (Hello, champion!). This phrase is used to speak to boys. It highlights the competitive qualities of a boy.
• ¡Hola, princesa! (Hello, princess!). This phrase is used to speak to girls. It is an encouraging phrase that links a girl to fairy tales, success and the qualities of somebody who is dearly loved.
• ¡Hola, estrella! (Hello, star!). This phrase is used to speak both to boys and girls. It pertains to the children’s talents, good school performance, etc.

Mangú Recipe

A typical dish in the northwest is mangú. This Dominican dish can be eaten at any meal, especially when having a complete breakfast. This is how it is made.

Ingredients: fresh green plantains, water, salt, onion and oil.

Remove the outer peel from the plantains with a knife and slice the plantains into chunks for faster and more thorough cooking. Place the plantain pieces in water in a deep pan that allows the water to cover the chunks. Add salt to the water to taste.

Place the pan on the stove and let the plantains boil until they soften (around 20 minutes). If you can easily pierce the plantains with a fork or knife point, they are well cooked.

Remove the plantains from the water and put them in a bowl. Mash well by using a potato masher or even the flat bottom of a bottle or cup. As you mash the plantains, you can simultaneously pour in a little cool water and you will notice how soft they become.

On the side, pour some vinegar in a bowl; slice an onion and dip into the vinegar for a short while. Also, pour a little oil in a pan and place the pan on the stove flame.

When the oil is hot, remove the onion slices from the vinegar, place them in the hot oil, and stir for several seconds, avoiding burning.

Turn off the stove and pour the onion-vinegar-oil mixture over the mashed plantains, and mash again to allow all ingredients to mix well.

Serve hot either with cheese, fried eggs, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, fried sausage, or any other food desired.

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On Sunday evening, March 8, I flew into Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. I was picked up by Edwin Mendivelso, who became my host for the following six days. He and I got to know each other real well.

Edwin brought me to my hotel, and the next day he was waiting to take me to visit my first child. His name is Julian, and he lives on the outskirts of Bogotá.

We took a taxi to Julian’s child development center. One thing about Colombian drivers is that they are some of the most amazing drivers I’ve been with, or they are just very lucky not to be dead. We weaved in and out of traffic, broke about every traffic law imaginable, and managed to arrive at the center in one piece. Every taxi driver afterward operated the same way.

We were heartedly received at the center and several children put on small performances for us. One of the most amazing performances was by Julian himself.

Julian had learned how to take old paper, recycle it, and with a juicer, some water and additional material turn it into new paper.

Afterwards I went to visit Julian, his mother and his sister, and then returned to the center to enjoy a meal with the staff and some of the children.

That afternoon we visited the child development center of a child that I found a sponsor for. Yesmin is sponsored by Bob, my roommate at Florida Bible College.

At first Yesmin was a little shy, but as time went along she warmed up to me and was very happy I was there.

Yesmin had just found out that she was sponsored. I was blessed to show her pictures of Bob and his wife Donna, and tell Yesmin all sorts of stories about them. I went to visit Yesmin’s home and took lots of pictures and video for Bob and Donna.

Around Yesmin’s home, different children came up to me and asked me what the time was. When I left her home, the same children kept coming to me and asking for the time. These, by the way weren’t Compassion children, but children that lived in the area.

It became clear to me that they really didn’t want to know the time, but they were intrigued by this big guy that came into their slums. They wanted to spend time with me. It was a huge blessing, because I got to sit down and just share with them the gospel, and they were so eager.

What also became apparent was that the area had a lot of gangs and they were watching me, and supposedly, though I didn’t see this, they were calling each other trying to figure out what to do with me. Oh, well …  ignorance is bliss.

The next day, we woke up early to take a whole-day bus trip to Medellín. This was a unique experience that I will never forget. The bus looked very similar to a Greyhound bus, but the experience wasn’t similar at all.

The trip took about 10 hours. The drivers of the bus and the passengers were separated from each other by a darkened thick glass wall. And for some reason, the drivers liked to really put up the air-conditioning in the bus. It was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The drivers also liked to play very loud pirated action films in the bus. And the shocks of this bus weren’t always working properly, and the roads weren’t that smooth.

On top of that, drivers took us through the beautiful mountains, frequently using the brakes and weaving in and out of traffic, much like the taxi drivers. The bus drivers went around the curves of the mountains and crossed the double lines, right in the curves — this all with fairly busy traffic. All in all I felt like a James Bond drink, “shaken, not stirred.”

My stomach wasn’t happy with this. Without going into great details, I suggest to everyone, if you go on a visit like this take a roll of toilet paper with you. Trust me, you will thank me later!

Outside of that, the countryside of Colombia is breathtaking. You see the coffee being grown and the most beautiful green mountains with streams in between. I really didn’t regret having taken the bus.

The next morning, I woke up early to visit the child development center of Santiago, my next correspondence child, and two children that I helped find sponsors for.

When I arrived at the center. I was led into a room full of children. I was brought to the front to sit down facing all of the children. Six girls, in three rows of two, started walking towards me, as if they were getting married that day.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but all of a sudden, they moved aside and behind them was Santiago, right in front of me. We hugged and I was so glad to see him.

Santiago’s parents came to the front. I turned my chair around and the pastor started addressing us. He shared how he was so thankful that I was there and that I was helping the poor of his country. All the while, I was thinking about how I was really the one that was blessed and if anyone was rich, it was them, because they were the ones who were totally dependent on God.

Edwin had mentioned to me that as a sponsor, I was in a sense a representative of all of the sponsors, and so I brought some postcards as little gifts for each of the children. It was a huge blessing to give each of the children a postcard. I got to do this at all of the child development centers I visited.

That afternoon, I had the privilege of visiting Kevin, my pastor’s sponsored child. Kevin is 16 years old and was probably 6 feet tall, which is huge in Colombia.

Kevin is a real sharp young man. He wants to be an engineer, and I would not be surprised if he becomes a Leadership Development Program student. We spoke a lot and I also met his family. Santiago was with us the entire time, which made it even a bigger blessing.

The next day, Edwin and I took the bus from Medellín to Cali. This time I was prepared. I made sure to eat a very dry breakfast. I also had a thick sweater on.

All in all it was a pleasant 10-hour drive. They were showing Nicholas Cage films. I was hoping to see my friend Hunter Gomez on television in Colombia, they didn’t show National Treasure.

One of the first things you notice when you get to Cali is the three crosses on top of the mountain. In the midst of so much deep poverty, the answer was right there on top of the mountain for all to see.

We arrived in a beautiful child development center. Jessica was my correspondence child there, and I spent the whole day with her.

Just three weeks before this, the pastor had been bound by the gangs for several hours, because they wanted to find out if he had money. They eventually set him free.

The pastor took us through the neighborhoods near the center. It was tragic to see the little shacks under the bridge. We had police protection with us, because it was too dangerous to be there alone. These were the very areas that the children were coming from.

Many adolescent boys get involved in the gangs and spend their evenings robbing people and doing drug trafficking.

It was so encouraging to see the light that Compassion was in the midst of this. I even did an interview with a Compassion-assisted child, now 15 years old, who had gotten involved in a gang but then he had gotten saved and was now a light to his surroundings.

Jessica was a delight. She was so excited to be with us. She absolutely loves Hannah Montana and was happy to hear that Hannah Montana got started on DOC, a show where her dad’s character became a missionary with Compassion.

The next day, I took the bus back to Bogotá. I was prepared again, and this time, there wasn’t a big glass wall between the bus drivers and the passengers, and the bus temperature was quite pleasant.

Being in Colombia and having walked through its slums, it is obvious that there is such a deep spiritual need in the country. People eat from the trash piles. Gangs are all over the place, and drugs are in abundance. Despite this, I felt very safe.

For one, Compassion made sure that they kept me safe, and at times we even had police protection. Also, Edwin Mendivelso was a constant guide. I would never have been able to take this trip if it wasn’t for his guidance and friendship. We actually got to know each other quite well, and we had a great time!

If you can, I would encourage you to visit your sponsored children. It makes such a difference. The child is no longer just a picture on a refrigerator, but he or she is a real child with personality. There is nothing quite like it.

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He has now traveled to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in Arts in Spiritual Formation and Discipleship at the Moody Bible Institute (MBI). Out of 47 students participating worldwide, César and two other LDP graduates received the Wess Stafford-Moody Scholarship last June.

While in Compassion’s child sponsorship program, César searched for his spiritual gifts by participating in almost all church ministries, and he realized that his field is working with the youth and adolescents. “With this in mind, MBI is going to prepare me specifically for this type of church work,” César says.

César’s parents see this learning opportunity as a result of his love for the Scriptures. “Since Tony (nickname for César) was small, he wrote Bible verses on a piece of cardboard and put it up on the wall,” recalls his father. “And many times, he met with his brother and his sister in his bedroom and they made contests of quick Bible search, text memorization, text analysis and things like that.”

Also, his mother, Ana Mercedes, explains:

“Tony took some very good Bible courses with a missionary who taught himwhat a Christian youth should be like and encouraged him and other youth by having them transcribe Bible books with their own handwriting. He gave them new Bibles for a prize.”

Small Tony helps with the family income

When Tony was eight, his family went through a difficult financial time. To help alleviate the situation, his mother started to work as a part-time school teacher, and she made iced drinks and arepa (a typical Dominican corn pie), which she sold at school.

When Tony was not in class, he helped his mother with the sales. He stacked the arepa pieces on a tray and filled the frozen drinks in a thermos and waited for the school break to sell the snacks to the students. “We lived in a very precarious condition,” remembers Tony, as he explains the context of his entrance to Compassion. “My father was the pastor of a small church, and because of the financial situation of the members they couldn’t offer us enough support.”

It was a sad thing for Tony to sell snacks to other students and not be able to have the snacks of his preference. In the face of this scenario, he asked his father to make him a wooden shoe-shine box so he could make extra income for his needs.

Ana Mercedes narrates:

“His father made him his shoe-shine box, and he began to get up quite early to shine shoes at the homes of the school teachers and other homes so he could buy what he wanted with his earnings.”

Tony and his interest in computers

Tony remembers that it was Compassion that set up the first computer lab in his community of Luperón. “To the surprise of all, it was the poor population that was developing in the area of technology,” he says.

It was at the age of ten when he began to discover his passion for computers. Ana Mercedes remembers how the engineer in charge of the lab chose him to be his assistant.

“Because the engineer lived in the town of Santiago, he couldn’t travel to Luperón every time there was a problem with one of the computers. Tony called him on the phone, and the engineer gave him directions to do the repair; this helped Tony a lot.”

Tony’s father laughs and says, “You know that passions bring their consequences. Several hard discs were damaged and the ink packages filled into the wrong cartridges. But we realized that it was a good hobby.”

As a result of his dedication to technology, Tony neglected some of his key school subjects, for which his mother admonished him. Getting an 88 mark where he expected to have a 93 caused a lot of tears, and he was determined to make changes to come to be in good shape again.

Moving to the East

In 1997, Tony’s family went through some hardship and moved from the northern coast in Puerto Plata to the eastern city of La Romana. Within a short time, Tony’s father began to work as an assistant pastor at the Bíblica Cristiana Church, for which he received ministry support. Ana Mercedes started the business of selling clothes in different communities on weekends.

At the age of 13, Tony started high school. He was transferred to a different child development center, where the director got Tony’s cooperation as a computer tutor for the youth and adolescents in the program. The english courses that Tony had taken at his first Compassion center in Luperón were an asset to him in this.

Grown-up Tony helping with the family income

Upon nearing the end of high school, Tony saw how tough his family’s situation was with his father without a job. Tony’s extracurricular technical degree in refrigeration allowed him to get a job as a refrigeration department assistant at the Central Romana Sugar Cane Industry, where he gained his supervisor’s confidence and friendship. But one year later, Tony quit this job so he could have enough time to study.

Tony’s involvement in his local church

Tony’s sustained leadership training in LDP helped him be better prepared for ministering to the youth of Compassion’s church partner at La Romana. The church pastor gave him room to lead small Bible study youth groups in which he preached the Word. “He bought books to do research in order to fight against sexual immorality among the youth,” Ana Mercedes says.

Moreover, the pastor brought computer equipment into the church, and Tony was appointed manager. Tony trained several young people from the church in the use of these computer devices, and after his recent trip to Chicago, these youth have remained in charge.

Tony in the Leadership Development Program

Entering Compassion’s leadership development program (LDP) wasn’t in Tony’s plans because the program had not been launched yet. So, after he finished high school in 2003, Tony began to study computer engineering at Central Eastern University through the support of a North American missionary family that came to the country to build churches. They offered to help him with the costs of his university education.

Just when he was starting his second semester, he heard about the opening of LDP and the chances he had of being chosen. However, he didn’t want to apply because he feared he could be taking the opportunity away from somebody else who had no support at all. Finally, after the urging from his center director, he filled out the applicationand was admitted to LDP in November 2004.

“I felt a bit guilty for two months, but later I learned that it was a plan from God because right after I entered LDP, I lost contact with those people who were helping me.”

Even today, Tony keeps a grateful heart to the Lord because God saw beyond his understanding.

One of the most amazing blessings to Tony was to learn that his Compassion sponsors decided to continue to sponsor him through LDP.

“All my family was filled with joy. I can’t forget my mother’s countenance — full of gratitude. My sponsors made me part of their family. I know that they were selected by the Lord to sponsor me, and listen, God does know how to do things right!

In his letters, Tony kept his sponsors updated on what was happening in his life and around him, and they shared with him their family news.

“My sponsors have been an inspiration to me. They encouraged me when I needed it most, and they served as mentors. I told them about the small things that I was doing, the girls that caught my attention, the ministries I was involved in, how I was doing in my preaching, the impact the LDP activities made in me, and so on.”

Today, Tony can reflect and understand that it is God who has led him through.

To paraphrase the mindset of the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament, Tony describes how he managed to graduate with honors:

“But Tony laid on his heart that he would not defile himself with the king’s food . . . I decided to be faithful to God in my career by not cheating on my exams or submitting someone else’s research as if it was mine. It was difficult to swim against the current and not do what most students do, but the satisfaction of having done good is greater than the sacrifices made.”

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