Summer is Missions season! A few weeks ago we dropped our final mission team off at the airport and now we’re thrilled to share highlights from our memorable time together.
The children, and everyone at Dorie’s Promise, already miss our visitors!
This year, we worked with communities surrounding Santiago, Fraijanes, and Santa Rosa, about a 2-hour drive from Dorie’s Promise. The weather was hot and sometimes humid, but our teams were always excited and energetic.
Impacting Communities
The five teams who worked with us this summer greatly blessed the families and children they served.
almost importantly, we want to say THANK YOU.
Their work, love, and support truly changed lives. By building new and better-functioning kitchens, bedrooms, and living spaces, we reached the hearts of the people who needed both encouragement and relief found in a more comfortable home.
Together, we served 9 families, equipping them with stoves, beds, water filters, bags of groceries, new kitchens, new houses, and concrete floors. In total, this summer’s teams donated 121 water filters and 53 bags of groceries, in addition to clothes and much-needed supplies within our local communities. One very special community was surprised to receive a little library as well.
These donations make a tangible difference.
Before receiving these donations, many families cooked over open fires or with homemade stoves and risked breathing toxic chemicals and getting burned daily. Those conditions are especially dangerous for younger children. Cement floors and new sheet metal walls create cleaner, safer, leak-free living spaces.
In these areas, most homes don’t have clean water. The water filters allow families to live healthier and avoid common ailments. Because so many of these families struggle to earn enough to meet their basic needs, bags of groceries are received with much joy and gratitude.
Helping with physical needs makes way to meet emotional needs.
Leonarda’s Prayers are Answered
Leonarda, or Doña Nayita as the community knows her in Santa Rosa, was both impressed and surprised by our visit.
As a widow, she has been living alone for many years and the conditions in her home were dire. When we arrived, she was cooking on a makeshift stove built with rocks, right next to the chicken pen. Her previous stove inside lacked an exhaust pipe, filling her home with smoke and blackening the walls and ceiling. With her new stove, Leonarda is now able to cook in a cleaner environment with a stove that will last for many years to come.
Leonarda also got a surprise. A new bed was waiting on the bus for her. Looking around, we know this is going to be great. As we hoped, she was excited and couldn’t believe it!
“Never in my life I could afford a new bed,” she says as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I have been praying every night for help. You never met me and I never met you, and here you are helping me. You have come such a long way for this, I know for sure this is God’s work.”
A bed, a stove, and a bag of groceries changed her life.
The work we do in missions matters.
As we left the house, Leonarda stood in her doorway praising God, shouting blessings, saying thanks, and crying.
Every Project is Important
Weeks before every team visit, Bertha is hard at work visiting communities, talking to the community leaders, and getting all the logistics planned.
When asked to describe the most important project we completed, Bertha says it’s impossible to pick one over the others. “Every project is important” and no two projects are ever the same. They all matter, they all care.
Every year, we try to reach those who need our help most. Through these visits, we get to know the community and are reminded of the conditions our children had to face previously, or would have to face, without our care.
Most importantly, working in communities gives us the opportunity to help families. The generosity of our mission teams makes an everlasting impact on these families.
Time with Our Kids
Everything we do is for our children, and we know that spending time with them is the highlight of most mission trips.
After the pandemic shutdowns, being able to travel and share feels like a treat, now more than ever! For many visitors, this was their first trip in three years. A lot has changed.
Many of them are already teenagers, making interactions so different from previous years. Several new kids joined us in the last 2 years, including 4 little boys this summer. We are running a school on-site for many of our children and Myra is now in college.
Even with all the changes, enjoying our time together is a fantastic part of every trip. We love it when you play, share, laugh, run, work, eat and enjoy your time with our kids. This is what Summer Mission trips look like for us: an amazing and perfect time to spend time with family.
This year we were able to play basketball on our new concrete court, play baseball thanks to a gift from one team, blow lots of bubbles, and of course, play soccer. It felt normal again.
Of course, the children enjoyed their special trips too! They went crazy at the trampoline park, enjoyed some fresh air and room to run at the ecological park, and had a special party in the backyard.
In short, we had fun!
Share your favorite mission moments
Care to share pictures and tell us what was your favorite part of your mission trip? Let us know!
It has been a fantastic season and we can’t wait to see you again!