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Just a wee note from the administrators of this website.
When we kicked off the current site, we had to make some hard choices about what to do with all the old content. Back then it was too hard and time consuming to transfer all the old archived stories and blog posts to the new website. So we set up an archive site. There will be some people here who fondly remember being the the RLPASS - the RLP Anti Spam Squad. That was a bunch of volunteers working on the old site that had been comment spammed - some 140,000 bad comments were manually removed.
Since then the old site has sat here getting dusty.
Gordon asked us to see if we could transfer the content over into this site.
That is now in progress. The bulk of the data has been transferred.
There is some clean up work to do on it. Apostrophes didn't come through right among other things. We will run automatic scripts on these things as we can. Feel free to let us know if you find weird things. As much as you can you run trials on non production servers, and Rohan ran so many tests I am now calling him a crash test dummy. In real life there is always something that gets you!
So please be patient as we clean these up - and if you come across anything that doesn't look right please let Gordon or me know.
Peace
Tim
New Website news - this is now the RLP Archive
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One final note, there are still some broken things in these archives. If you come across links that don't work or images that are missing, feel free to drop me a line and let me know. We are working hard to fix those for you.
rlp
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rlp
Brother Scientist
There were two great, abiding
mysteries in my life when I was a young boy; mysteries that I puzzled over for
years but never solved. I discovered them while lying in bed trying to fall
asleep. Bedtimes are convenient for adults but they may or may not align
themselves with the sleep patterns of a child. I was an overactive boy who had a
hard time convincing his cerebral cortex to shut down after a day of
full-throttled activity.
Many nights I lay in bed, watching
the shadows deepen on the walls and listening to Bible stories or music on a
record player. Waiting for sleep was grueling work. Minutes slowly ticked away,
and a single hour was an eternity. It was in these mysterious hours of waiting
that I discovered two mysteries which I could not explain or understand.
Click here to read the rest of this essay at
The Christian Century online.
Domincan Republic - Last Day
or
Is There Anything Else That Could Possibly Go
Wrong?
Note: I intend to conclude the water chronicles
with a piece on cultural re-entry and a final summary of the trip which will be
posted at ChristianCentury.org
But for now, the events of the last day
---------------
Unfortunately for me, there seems to be no end
to the things I can and do forget. I’m the one who still gets lost in his own
city. I’m the one who forgets what day it is; indeed, sometimes I forget what
month it is. Occasionally I’ll be so lost in whatever it is I’m doing that I
forget what SEASON it is.
Okay wait, is it like Fall and we’re moving
toward Christmas, or is it sort of in the Spring and we’re moving toward Summer?
You think I’m exaggerating for effect with that
last bit about the seasons, right? Think again. That happens to me at least
twice a year.
So of course I’m going to leave a couple of
things behind in Santo Domingo. Of course I am. That’s a given. The only
question is, will the things I leave be important things?
In this case, they were.
For some reason I was the only one on our team
flying out Monday. My flight was at 4 pm. The women from Murray State left on
Sunday. The others were to leave on Tuesday.
I took a taxi to the airport, stopping along
the way at a bank to get some money to pay for the ride. It was about an hour
drive in traffic, and the driver told me it would be 1000 pesos - roughly $30. I
went to the ATM machine and withdrew 1500 pesos. Foreign money is always
interesting to look at, and Dominican money is very colorful, so I was pretty
intrigued by it. A 1000 pesos bill and a 500 pesos bill, both with strange faces
and markings on them. I was fascinated and walked away staring at the money.
Dominican Republic Pesos
I was so happy. I was happy to be going home
and back to a culture that is familiar to me. Back to a place where I actually
understand what is being said around me. The taxi driver spoke no English, but
we managed to communicate a little bit. He bought us both a popsicle from a
street vender, which was nice of him.
When we got to the airport, I tipped the driver
500 pesos. I mean, what was I going to do with 500 pesos? And he bought me that
popsicle. There was that. He seemed pretty pleased with the tip and shook my
hand vigorously.
This is the point where everything started
going wrong.
The first person at the Delta line said,
“Passaporta por favor.â€
That’s when it hit me. I didn’t have my
passport. We put our passports in a safe at YWAM when we first arrived, and I
never gave it another thought.
If this was a movie, there would be a
fast-motion camera replay of the taxi drive going backwards, ending with some
sort of swooshing noise and a close-up of the door of the safe at YWAM.
Here is something you should know to fully
comprehend my predicament. While in Santo Domingo, I never paid attention to the
location of the YWAM house. While we were driving around, I was too busy looking
at traffic and houses and people to worry about where we were. I was like a
child in Santo Domingo. Other people were driving, so I felt free to just look
at things. What can I say? I like looking at things and then writing about them
later.
I didn’t know the address of the YWAM house. A
lot of the streets didn’t even have names, so it never seemed important to me. I
didn’t even know what part of town it was in. And I didn’t know their phone
number either. I never had to call them.
I had nothing. I had no idea where I had been
staying for the last 5 days. And I didn’t know enough Spanish even to explain to
anyone that I didn’t know where I was.
Strangely enough I didn’t panic. I think this
new reality was too shocking to accept. I just couldn’t emotionally comprehend
the fact that I was in a foreign country, in an airport without my passport, and
with no way of explaining to anyone where my passport was.
The only thing I could think of was that I
needed to find a way to call YWAM and get them to send my passport with another
taxi. There was no time for me to ride there and back again, and I wouldn’t know
what to tell a taxi driver anyway, even if I could find one that spoke English.
I opened my wallet to get out my ATM card,
knowing that I was going to have to pay for another taxi. No ATM card.
If this were a movie there would be another
camera shot in fast motion, going back to the bank and wooshing up to the ATM
machine. The camera would show a delighted Gordon, so amused by the pretty money
that he walked away staring at the money and left his ATM card in the machine.
Now I panicked.
In my wallet were 100 pesos - about $3 - and a
$20 bill. Not even enough for a one-way taxi drive, even if I knew where I was
going. I have to tell you, I’m not sure I remember a time in my adult life when
I felt more helpless and vulnerable.
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time
for a little good news. There was one bit of saving grace in this story. When I
got out of the taxi, I noticed one of the YWAM staff, a man named Ony
(pronounced like only but without the L), who was there with a group of medical
missionaries who were also flying out on Monday.
All I could think of was, “Find Ony!â€
I ran through the terminal, praying that I
would find him before he said goodbye to the team and headed back to YWAM. If
this were a movie, the camera would circle around my panicked face, surrounded
by a blur of
airport people going every direction.
I went back to where I had seen Ony, but he
wasn’t there. I looked all around and had just given up when Ony saw ME. He ran
up to me and said my name in his rough, Dominican way. “Gorrrrdown.â€
I could have hugged him. He doesn’t speak much
English, but he understood “No have passport. Passport at YWAM.†His response
was one I heard many times in Santo Domingo. It is a colorful phrase with many
meanings.
“Ay yi yi!â€
The crazy thing is, everything worked out very
quickly once I found Ony. It’s amazing how easily things work if you speak the
language and know your address and phone number. He called YWAM and they
immediately dispatched a taxi with my passport. A quick international call to
Jeanene from the airport cost 12 pesos. She cancelled the debit card. Ony stayed
with me until the taxi arrived. I bought a Diet Coke and a cup of coffee for Ony
with my last 100 pesos, gave him a huge hug, and got to my flight with about 5
minutes to spare.
Ay yi yi!
The last thing I said to Ony was. "SO glad I
found you." He pointed to the sky and said, "Es El Señor," which is the
delightful Spanish way of saying, "It was the Lord."
I did not argue with his theology.
It’s amazing how an experience like this can
change your perspective. When I got to San Antonio, Delta had lost my luggage. I
went to the luggage counter to report it, but who can worry about lost luggage
when you’ve been a lost man in a foreign land?
The woman behind the counter was speaking a
language I understood, and I was home. I had to have been the nicest person she
had ever dealt with. She told me the luggage was probably somewhere between
Santo Domingo and Atlanta.
“So what happens next,†I asked. “You’ll call
me when you find it?â€
“Yes sir. We’ll find it and deliver it to your
home.â€
“Really? Thanks, you guys are great!â€
I walked off whistling, with no luggage and not
a care in the world.
Taxi driver and popsickle.
Ony (right), his two friends, and me waiting in
the airport.
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Edge in the Domincan Republic - 2008 Entry 6
Saturday Afternoon, January 12, 2008
This entry was meant to be posted Sunday,
but Internet outages made that impossible.
As usual, I have pictures with captions posted
from Saturday afternoon and evening at Flickr. Pictures
here, slideshow
here.
One of the most important things Edge Outreach
does is sanitation education and training. It’s well and good to setup some kind
of purification system, but if people don’t know how to use it or if something
goes wrong with it, they can be worse off than they were before. They could be
trusting water that isn’t clean.
Saturday afternoon half of us went to the home
of a man that everyone here calls pastor Antonio. He lives in a very poor part
of town, and though he is confined to a wheelchair, he works and ministers in
this little community. 80 to 100 people come to his house to get clean water
from an Edge system that was put in a few months ago.
Pastor Antonio's house. This room and two small
bedrooms.
The system is on his tiny back porch. One tank for
purifying, two on the roof for storage. He purifies three or four tanks of
water, two days a week for the community.
On this day pastor Antonio found a group of
children from the area to come and learn about water cleanliness and general
sanitation issues. There were a number of adults that showed up as well, though
the presentation was definitely geared toward children.
Edge has a set education program for children
in other countries, based on pictures. All you need is children, the pictures,
and a translator.
This was about as poor a neighborhood as I’ve
seen here in Santo Domingo. There is a vacant lot next to the pastor’s home
where they meet for church services if it is not raining. That vacant lot is
also, apparently, the local trash dump. There was a smoldering stump no more
than 5 yards from the stage.
And yet the children were spotless and dressed
in their finest clothes. Truly, these families take great pride in their
children.
I suppose the teaching would seem rather
obvious and simple to many, but the fact is, great numbers of people in poorer
areas do not know that bacteria in water cannot be seen. Just because water is
clear does not mean it is safe.
In one part of the training, the team uses a
little wooden doll, jokingly referred to privately as Diarrhea Debbie. Her
stomach is a clear baggie of clean water. Something dark is introduced, clouding
the water and making Debbie sick. The bag is punctured and she loses her water.
At this point the team talks about the necessity of hydration if you have
diarrhea.
Well, Debbie’s bag got punctured in the wrong
place on this day, and she sprayed water sideways on Amber and all over the
stage.
The children were delighted. Howls of laughter!
But apart from that, things went very well. We
broke out some balloons at the end and got mobbed by the children. I made as
many balloon sombreros as I could before we had to get on the bus.
At this point, all of our work was done. Both
purification systems were in place, and we had visited this previous
installation to check on it and do further education.
Saturday evening, we went out to eat at a Dominican
restaurant, treating ourselves, our driver, and our interpreters to a fine meal.
Not wanting to miss out on the experience of Dominican food, I ordered a lot and
then shared it with anyone who wanted to try things. I had boiled Yuca
(pronounced “Jooka†here), fried plantains, rice and beans Dominican Republic
style, and skewered chicken. It was all delicious. The plantains were not sweet
at all, more like fried potatoes.
Click for larger view
Sunday morning, the women from Murray State fly
out. The rest of us will attend church with our hosts and do a couple of final
things. Monday morning I'll try to post some final pictures and thoughts from
the trip. As always, internet access is irregular. I'll post when I can.
Edge report 6 & 7
Sunday night: Internet very spotty tonight. I have reports for Saturday along with many pictures. I also have four slide shows with music I'm trying to get online at Google video. Will be working on this for three hours Monday morning, IF the Internet cooperates.
check back.
Edge in the Domincan Republic - 2008 Entry 5
Note: It appears that anonymous commenting
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Saturday, January 12, 2008
Yesterday half of our team came very close to
completing the purification installation at Cure Hospital in Santo Domingo. If
you'd like to see the hospital using Google Earth, plug the following coordinate
string into the search box that says "fly to."
18°28'30.14"N 69°54'26.27"W
I have pictures from yesterday's work at the
hospital online at Flickr
here. Slideshow
here. There are a fair number of pictures
with captions and explanations of the work that was done.
Today we're at the hospital finishing up some
electrical work and preparing to train the hospital engineer in the use of the
system. The system is easy, but constant testing of the chlorine levels is
essential. You have to carefully test each batch of purified water. Obviously,
if you do not, you're worse off than you were before. You're trusting the water
from the tap and it isn't clean. But the engineer is clearly an intelligent
and educated man, so it will be no problem for him.
The original pump house
Working on the pump house
The new pump house
Our team in the tank enclosure
Later today half of our team is going to an
previous installation to continue health training. I'll be with that group and
will report on that tonight or tomorrow morning.
Mustard Seed Thoughts
This whole situation reminds me of something
Jesus once said. We'll leave soon, and the hospital will have a continuous
supply of clean water. Someone from Edge will return in time to see how things
are going. Edge is committed to following up all of its installations. This one
is unusual because there is an engineer here who is capable of fixing the
system. They will probably be fine. In any case, most of us will never come
back. Children will come and go in this place. Some lives will be saved because
of the clean water. Other lives will be enriched. Suffering from infections,
etc. will be lessened. None of us can look into the future to see what will
come.
Jesus once said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like
a mustard seed. It is the smallest of seeds, but when it is planted, it grows
into a large tree and the birds of the air nest in its branches." So it is with
goodness and with evil. Seeds are planted, either in selfishness or in goodness
and service. What grows from those seeds is only known to those who are there.
The ones who planted the seeds often never know what good or evil comes of their
actions. Further, the idea of sin suggests that all of us have planted seeds of
evil from time to time. I know that I have. Grace is being forgiven for the evil
I have begun in this world. Redemption involves the changing of my heart and
life, so that I can be a part of goodness.
Pretty simple deal really. I don't know why we
Christians have made it so complex.
rlp
Edge in the Domincan Republic - 2008 Entry 4
Friday, January 11th, 2007
Our team was split for the entire day today.
One part went back to the hospital. They didn't get back until late, so I'll not
be able to tell you about their work until tomorrow. The other team was the five
women from Murray State University who were in charge of the YWAM installation,
which is the one we paid for here at rlp.
Hooray for us!
I was hanging out with the young women, helping
some and taking pictures too. It was a basic installation. Two tanks in a
pumphouse, chlorinating the water and providing access at a spigot. It's not
fancy, but instead of buying 5-gallon bottles of water, they can fill them up
themselves at their pumphouse.
This installation was done almost entirely by
these young women, lead by Courtney. We were all so proud of them. And I thought
you'd like to see some pictures of the water purifier you made possible with
your gifts. I have a lot of pictures up at Flickr, but I'll include a few here
as well.
Courtney working on a water line.
Amanda working on the external spigot.
Putting together the Purifier
The finished system!
The team that put in YOUR purifier!
The hospital team ran into some...issues. So
we're a little behind there, but I'm sure we'll catch up tomorrow. The whole
team is going to the hospital, then the Murray State women and I are going to a
previous installation to do some continued water health training.
Please do check out the Flickr photos. They
show you more detail about the YWAM installation.
Pictures here.
Slideshow here.
I've got a couple of free minutes here, so how
about some personal stuff?
1. Dominican Driving - Driving here in
the Dominican Republic is unlike anything I've ever seen. At first I was
terrified. People pull in front of each other with the smallest amount of space.
Motorcycles weave in and out of cars. Two cars will merge into the same lane,
barely missing each other, horns blaring. And yet, we saw no accidents. My
theory is that there are several elements going on.
First, all traffic boils down to official
rules and unofficial morays. In the Dominican Republic, it's more morays
than rules. Everyone understands that if a person can pull in front of you,
they will. And it's your responsibility to watch out for that. Everyone
knows there will be motorcycles weaving around and people walking in the
street selling things. The whole thing forces you into a constant state of
defensive driving. You can't eat a sandwich or talk on the phone and drive
here. You have to be watching because on every trip, at least 5 or 6 people
are going to cut you off and pull in front of you or edge you over in your
lane.
In the United States, we drive according to
strict rules and expect others to follow them. This leads to us being on
auto-pilot. Then when someone makes a mistake and pulls in front of us, we
might not notice it because we aren't expecting such a thing. I wouldn't be
at all surprised to find that there are less accidents in the D.R. than in
the U.S., though I have no figures to support that.
2. Cold Showers - There is no hot water
where we are staying. None. At first this seemed like a terrible inconvenience.
"How in the world am I supposed to take a cold shower?" I wondered. Well, guess
what - If you are dirty and tired, you'll take any shower you can get. That's
the first thing to remember.
I don't have much experience with this, but
there seems to be two theories to surviving the cold shower. The first involves
sticking your head under the water and getting it wet, the pulling away,
shampooing, and sticking it back under to rinse. You basically do this with your
whole body. Quick wetting, soap without the cold water hitting you, then grit
your teeth for the rinse.
The other option is to suck-it-up and stand
under the cold water until you get somewhat used to it. Then shower as usual. It
never feels comfortable, but you do get so that it doesn't bother you as much. I
recommend the second method, but then I've only been at this for 4 days.
rlp
Edge in the Domincan Republic - 2008 Entry 3
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Note: Rolling blackouts caused an
internet outage yesterday. As I said in the beginning, if you don't see a fresh
post from me every night, there was an internet problem. Here is Thursday's
posting:
Pictures of our day along with captions and explanations can be found at Flickr.
Read this but don't miss the pictures. They give more details about the work we
are doing.
Click here for a complete list of pictures
and captions.
Click here to view them as a slideshow.
(Note: clicking a picture in the slideshow
displays the captions. Clicking again hides them.)
We actually began work on the hospital
filtration system today. We placed three large, 400-liter tanks on a platform
right above the existing pump for the hospital cistern. We’ve dropped a pipe
into the cistern that will pump the water through our chlorination system and
into the tanks. Then a pipe will go from the tanks back into the main hospital
pump, allowing clean water to be pumped throughout the building. In a short
time, even the pipes will be cleaned by the chlorinated water.
There were several little glitches here and
there, nothing that Kurtis couldn’t figure out. We had to drill a hole for new
pipes into the back of the concrete housing for the existing pumping system.
Most of the morning was spent getting the tanks positioned and busting a hole
through 6 inches of concrete into the pump housing. During a slow time, some of
the team folded bandages and helped sort medical hardware in the pharmacy.
At 2 pm, our team split in two. Half of us
continued working on the water system at the hospital. By the end of the day
they had run pipes from all three tanks to a central location where the
purification unit will be housed in a box of its own.
The other half (I and the 5 women from Murray
State University) went to visit an orphanage in a very poor area of town. The
place was spotless on the inside, but very simple and poor. There didn’t seem to
be any area for the children to play outside, as far as I could see. When we
arrived they were lined up waiting for us. A fair number of these children have
disabilities of one kind or another.
The street outside the orphanage
They sang us a couple of prepared songs, which
made me really uncomfortable. I don’t think children like this should be made
into a dog-and-pony show. But this is their world and their country, and I
wasn't the one making those calls. So I listened to their sweet voices and
clapped appropriately.
We brought balloons and candy and crayons and
coloring paper. You’d have thought Santa arrived in person and gave them the
whole world. We sang and played and hugged and made balloon hats and flowers and
swords. I took pictures of the kids with my digital camera, then turned it
around and showed them their pictures. They were delighted by this and crowded
around, wanting me to take more pictures. Courtney got attached to a young child
and held her in her arms most of the time. We connected with this crowd of
children in a whirlwind hour of delightful chaos.
We just visited them and played. No big deal,
right?
Well, it was obviously a big deal to them. And
yet, I couldn’t help thinking, “Yeah, but what are we doing for these kids,
really?†And one answer to that is - not much. They need money and food and
clothing and parents. And we came with our resources and time dedicated toward
our two water projects. This was a quick side-trip that we put together because
we had some spare time and we were asked to go. I mean, what can you do? Not go
because you’re not going to make a full commitment?
So for this day, there was nothing we could do
except love them and play with them. And trust that when you love and play with
a child, it is a goodness that requires no explanation and no justification. You
don’t have to explain yourself to anyone.
Two sisters caught my eye, both in wheelchairs,
both terribly small for their ages. Stephanie is 11, the same age as my youngest
daughter Lillian. But she has the body of a two-year-old. Her older sister Clara
is not much bigger, though she is 15. That’s the age of Shelby, my practically
grown and healthy middle child. In very crude Spanish I tried to tell them that
my own children were the same age.
“Uh...Me Nina es (I tried to think of
the word for 11 but couldn't) eleven... tambien?" I’m really
embarrassed that I live in Texas and don’t know Spanish well enough to get out
such a simple sentence. That’s not correct, but maybe the idea got across.
Stephanie and Clara and Pauline each colored a
picture of Jesus, signed their names on them in crayon, and gave them to me to
keep.
Gave them to me to keep. Gave them to me to
keep. For a moment, it seemed like the whole world narrowed to that instant in
time. Gave them to me to keep.
Okay, just stop for moment. Stop your busy life
and think about this with me. What did it matter that we visited an orphanage
today? And what will it mean, ultimately, in the lives of these children? What
will this hour of fun mean to them? And what am I to do with these cheap,
coloring book pictures of Jesus? What value would you place upon them? Or what
would you give me in return for them? Wouldn’t you agree that in the eyes of
God, these pictures are worth more than the Mona Lisa?
Do I really believe that? Yes, I think so. What
am I to do with the pictures? I don’t know. It’s quite a dilemma, isn’t it? I
can’t treat them like ordinary pieces of paper, right? I can’t throw them away -
God forbid. And if I take them home and tack them to the wall of my office at
our church, what does that mean? Does that mean I’ve committed something to
these little girls? Will I look at these drawings sometimes and tell people,
“Oh, those are from two little girls in an orphanage in the Dominican Republic
that I visited once upon a time." Will people who see these pictures think I'm a
nice guy because I spent an hour in an orphanage one afternoon?
See, there’s no good answer to this. I ask you,
what am I going to do with these pictures?
Hurting children have a way of doing this to
you. Their presence demands some kind of response. I wish I could give them
enough to care for them for the rest of their lives. But I’m pretty used up
these days. Long on ideas and feelings but short on time and strength and money.
And my oldest daughter is talking about a trip to Moldova this December that
will likely end with our family making a commitment to a child or two for the
next decade or so. That’s the problem with the depth of the need in the world.
It is endless.
But listen to me now. You just CANNOT let that
get you down. Or at least you cannot let is stop you from giving yourself to
every small act of goodness that you can. Don’t worry about the big picture.
Just find something good to do for someone, and DO IT.
If enough of us commit ourselves to small acts
of goodness, the world really does begin to be a better place.
And if not, well, then the hell with the world.
Live in your small moments of goodness. Just live there and let that be your
highest reality.
Okay back to those pictures. I truly do not
know what to do with them. I've placed them carefully in my backpack with my
computer, in a place where they cannot be harmed. I'm going to carry them back
to San Antonio. And then, I'm going to figure out what to do with them.
Something about these pictures is bothering me. I can't figure out a decent
response to their obvious value and meaning. Maybe you'll have some suggestions.
Think about it, will you?
Oh, and I finally figured out what this day of
play with these children means.
It means everything.
rlp
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