Chiropractors With Compassion
The hard work of Chiropractors With Compassion has helped transform the community of Batey Angelina from a place many wanted to leave behind into a model community in the Dominican Republic.
With a network of nearly 100 doctors of chiropractic throughout Canada and the United States, committed to donating U.S. $20.00 for every new patient that comes into their clinic, Chiropractors With Compassion have been able to raise around $1.2 million dollars since their founding in 2004.
By partnering with Compassion Canada, they have funded a number of major projects around the world and Batey Angelina is one of these.
Continue Reading ›Inside a Healing Waters International Project
Since the Healing Waters International water project opened at the Comunidad Cristiana El Santuario Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Church in 2006, church members have had more opportunities to decide on matters that can benefit the ministry and the community of Barrio Mexico in southern coastal town of San Pedro de Macorís in Dominican Republic.
The church’s leadership calls for periodic members’ meetings where all ministry managers update the assembly on their ministry. Since all the ministries overlap in some way, these reports help the church make the best decisions.
The ministries include Compassion’s Child Sponsorship Program, the Healing Waters International water project, a school and a community holistic vocational center.
These church meetings have become a forum at which the community, represented by the believers, can discuss the best ways to manage resources.
Milqueya is a mother of eight and grandma of seven. She and her husband still live with 11 children and grandchildren at home. Milqueya and her large family enjoy the benefits of the decisions she’s been helping her church make as a voting member. One important decision was the incorporation of the Healing Waters International water project.
In the past, even the least harmful water source wasn’t safe enough for Milqueya. She bought water from the trucks that drove past her home.
Miqueya paid only RD$20 for a 5-gallon water bottle, avoiding the RD$35 price at local stores. But the truck-bought water was making her and her family sick.
“The water caused us stomach diseases. But after we began to drink the water from the church, we are always healthy and we don’t have any stomach problems.”
After the Healing Waters International project began, the community’s health has improved. (more…)
Continue Reading ›Leadership Development in the Dominican Republic
César Antonio Beltran is the first graduate of the Dominican Republic’s leadership development program,* graduating summa cum laude with a degree in computer engineering in February 2008.
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.”
How Drug Running Affects a Community
Like in any place where drug smuggling is done, a strong clandestine support structure is needed. A list of packers, sellers, messengers, gunmen, guards, lawyers, policemen, drug-storage-home owners and front men are supposedly kept on payrolls, and the financial benefits are still enough to make the capos richer. Gualey is no exception.
