Advent 4

Keep the commandments
and the covenants to which you have bound yourself,
and I will cause the heavens to shake for your good.
The Evil One will tremble,
but Zion will rejoice on the hills
and flourish.

Then will come the time
when my people will be redeemed.
They will be led by my power,
and nothing will stand in their way.

Lift up your hearts! Be glad!
Your redemption is close at hand.

Do not be afraid, little flock.
The kingdom is yours until I come.
And I am coming quickly.

(D&C 35:24-27)

Advent 3

In former times,
we were slaves to the powers of this world.

But when the time had waxed full,
God sent the Begotten One,
born of a human mother—
born, like us, in subjection to the law,
yet with power to set us free.

Through him, we have been emancipated!
We have been adopted into God’s family!
God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of the Begotten One,
so that we, like him, may call God, “Abba! Father!”

Once you were slaves;
now you have become God’s children.
And because you are God’s children,
you are also God’s heirs.

(Gal. 4:3-7)

Advent 2

A voice calls out:
Prepare a path for the Holy One through the wilderness!
Pave a road for our God through the desert!
Fill in the gullies; level the hills;
smooth out the rugged ground and the rough places.
Then the Holy One will appear in glory.
All who live with see it!
So God has decreed.

O Zion, herald of glad tidings—
climb to the highest peak!
O Jerusalem, herald of glad tidings—
shout with all your might!
Do not be shy, do not hold back.
Let everyone for miles around hear you proclaim:
Here is your God!

(Isaiah 40:3-5, 9)

12/4/91 - La Romana

On this day 20 years ago I was serving as a missionary in the town of La Romana, out on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic. The red dot on the map below.

Wikipedia informs me that La Romana is the third largest city in the Dominican Republic, after Santo Domingo and Santiago (which is the headquarters of the LDS mission that covers the north of the country). I find that claim fishy, though, since according to the 2002 census, the population of La Romana was 191,000, which put it 9th on the list of cities ranked by size, after various cities in the Santo Domingo metropolitan area, Puerto Plata, and San Pedro de Macoris. I suspect someone's trying to inflate La Romana's importance for the sake of attracting business to the Zona Franca (which I'll be talking about in next month's post).

Anyway, let's go with an estimate of 200,000 for the population, though it could conceivably be closer to 250,000 now (which is the estimate Wikipedia gives). To put that in perspective, it's twice, or more, the size of Provo, which has a population of about 110,000. That surprises me because La Romana wasn't as crowded as I'd expect a city of that size to be. Of course, it's bigger now than it was 20 years ago, but when I look at YouTube videos of people driving through the streets, it still has the look of a town, not a big city. Low buildings. The streets not too crowded. And clean.

I wonder if that has to do with the fact that La Romana is a company town, owned mostly, as I understand it, by the Central Romana Corporation. They own the gigantic sugar factory at the south end of town, at the bottom of the hill the city is built on. During the months of peak production, the lower part of the city fills with this sugary smoke which as missionaries we tried to avoid; people who actually live in that part of town don't have that luxury, of course.

I'm going to poke into the economics of La Romana more in next month's post. For now, let me just try to give you a more concrete picture of the city, as I experienced it.

First, a map with places that loomed large in my experience of the city.

1. The stake center.
2. My apartment, near the downtown city park.
3. The meetinghouse where my branch met. It's now located next to a jumbo supermarket, which wasn't there 20 years ago.
4. The sugar factory.
5. The Zona Franca—the Duty Free Zone. Apparently there's a newer one operating as well just north of the city (a little beyond the upper border of my map).
6. Casa de Campo, the major tourist resort. A common P-Day destination for missionaries.

The outlined area was my assigned mission area. The easternmost part, the neighborhood across the river, was so affluent, we never worked there—too intimidating. There was a very poor neighborhood hugging the western bank of the river—we also didn't work there. The area around the city park represented a typically developed area. The westernmost part of our area was the least developed. Twenty years ago, its streets hadn't been paved, though satellite images suggest they may be now. I would certainly hope so.

Here are a couple YouTube videos of people driving around the streets. I can see signs of development—e.g., new businesses—but otherwise it looks not too different from my memories. In the first video, the camera operator is riding a motoconcho (motorcycle taxi) downhill from the part of the town where the stake center's located in the direction of my apartment. In fact, the video ends about a block from my apartment. In the second video, they start not far from my meetinghouse, near the sugar factory, and drive uphill toward and around the city park where we missionaries used to go to buy breakfast from Freddyburgers, an egg sandwich vendor. (Oh, how I want one right now.)

To finish today's post, let me list the first names of a few people who stand out in my mind from my time in La Romana.

Isabel. A convert. A young mother of two children. She lived with her brother, who repaired TVs out of their home though he never seemed to have much work. A former Pentecostal. Later in my mission, I met her at a regional conference, where I learned she was in the Primary presidency. Then she disappeared. I asked a missionary friend to look her up, and he reported back that she had dropped out of church because she became pregnant. I assume her relationship with the man was driven by economic necessity; I was—and am—sad about the situation, not that I think she made the wrong choice, but sad that she had to make that choice.

Of the people I knew in La Romana, Isabel is the only one I've seen since my mission. That was during a trip in 1998. She had moved from a hut in the back patio to a narrow apartment looking out on the sidewalk—an economic step up, I presume.

Irma. My maid. A middle-aged woman with children who were young adults. She cried when I left and quit the next day, which I take to mean that there was a mothering thing going on. One of her sons was getting ready to try to sail to Puerto Rico by yola, a small boat. Quite dangerous, though I can think of two people I know off the top of my head who succeeded, then got caught and deported back to the DR.

A great story about Irma: When she was a young mother, she worked as a maid at Casa de Campo. One day she took her children with her. The security guard didn't want to let the kids in, but Irma said, "These are my children, and this is their country, and I want them to see how beautiful it is." The guard backed down.

Luisa. One of those investigators who likes having the missionaries over though she isn't interested in converting. She ran an illegal lottery: I never understood how that worked (I thought it better not to ask), but it had something to do with a lottery in Venezuela.

Rando. A friend, though never an investigator. He was of South Asian descent. I don't know what he did for a living, but he had what I would consider a comfortable middle-class life. (I don't know how he himself would describe his socioeconomic situation.) He was Hindu, a devotee of Krishna.

Thanksgiving - Advent 1

MARK 13:31-36

All my words will be fulfilled,
but only God knows when that day will come.
Do not lose hope, then.
Watch for the promised hour, and pray.

You are like the servants of a householder
who has gone away on a journey.
He has assigned each of you your work
and has instructed the doorkeeper
to be on the watch for his return.

Stay awake, then,
for you do not know
when the master of the house will come.
It might be in the evening,
or at midnight,
or in the dark hours of the early morning,
or at daybreak.

If he returns unexpectedly,
will he find you attentive at your post?

************

I saw my mother for the last time, alive, at Thanksgiving a year ago. Memories of that Thanksgiving and the one before that, which I also spent with my parents, are jumbled up in my mind.

I feel sad, but less so than when she was alive.

Contemplative prayer - November

This post is a week late, but here's the Gospel reading from the first-Friday contemplative prayer service for November. The theme was the Communion of Saints, in honor of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. I reused the same readings from last November, except that I created a new rendering of the Gospel reading.

It was a very small service—me and a cellist—but I hope God was honored by the offering.

Next month's theme: "Christ the son of Mary."

************

LUKE 6:20-23, 27-28

Jesus said:
Congratulations to the poor!
You have God’s kingdom for your inheritance.


Congratulations to the hungry!
God promises that you will eat your fill.


Congratulations to those who grieve!
God will give you cause to laugh for joy.


Congratulations to those who are hated,
excluded,
reviled,
or defamed in my service.
When this happens to you—celebrate!
They are treating you
the same way they treated the prophets;
therefore, God will award you the same compensation.


But listen:
Love your enemies.
To those who hate you—do good.
Those who curse you—bless them.
Those who mistreat you—pray for them.

11/6/91 - My first day in the Dominican Republic

Twenty years ago today, I woke up for the first time in another country. We'd flown into Santo Domingo late the night before, drove to the mission home through dark streets. At the mission home, we elders, 8-10 of us as I recall, slept on mattresses in an upstairs room. I remember lying there in the heat, listening to the night noises outside, feeling as if I was drowning in the humidity, and realizing there was no way to escape it. I was in another place now, thousands of miles from home. (Or is it just hundreds?) It was sink or swim for me here.

I imagine that immigrants must experience something like that.

Here's a map I created that shows the Dominican Republic in relation to the continental U.S. I've highlighted various places important in my life, in addition to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. (I visited the latter in 2007.) The San Francisco Bay Area, where I was born; Seattle, where my mother died; Idaho and Utah, where I spent most of my growing up years; North Carolina, where I did my doctorate; Ohio, where I am now. The idea here was to give myself a picture that integrated the DR into my mental map of other locations important to me, to prevent the DR from being a far-off, foreign place detached, in my imagination, from the place where my "normal" life occurs.

For example, I'm a bit startled to realize, as I look at this map, that when I flew from North Carolina to Seattle to be with my mother, I traveled farther than I would have if I'd gone from North Carolina to the Dominican Republic. Seattle "felt" closer to me because it was in the U.S., whereas the DR was an ocean and a customs transit point away.

So here's a satellite view of the part of Santo Domingo where I woke up twenty years ago, the way it looks today. I know this probably means very little to anyone else reading this blog, but I never cease to be amazed that I live at a time when I can do this.

And here's a "cleaner" map of the same area:

Let me identify some places. For future posts in this "mission reflection" series, I promise I'll hunt up somewhat more interesting things online, like YouTube videos or photos.

1. The Santo Domingo temple. I've never been; in fact, until today I wasn't entirely sure where it's located. It's built just a few blocks west of the major avenue that marked the border of my mission (which had the east side of the city).

2. The Olympic Stadium. During my mission, Thomas S. Monson and James E. Faust came here to speak at a regional conference. I just had a "Duh" moment: Monson is now church president. So in an anticipatory kind of way, I saw a church president speak in the Dominican Republic. Whatever that's worth.

3. The location of the mission office, at least 20 years ago, when I was there.

4. The location of the mission home. That's where I woke up this morning 20 years ago.

5. The stake center where missionaries serving in the capital typically gathered to watch General Conference. I don't know how old this stake center is in the scheme of Dominican Mormon history—I wish I did.

Let me point out here that the mission office and home and the stake center are located in Gazcue, which is one of the older, nicer neighborhoods in the capital. It's adjacent to the colonial zone (the eastern end of this map), which is a major tourist attraction. Gazcue includes or is in proximity to government buildings. It's the kind of place where government officials would have lived in the Trujillo era—they may still, for all I know. Some of the nicest hotels are located on Gazcue's stretch of the coastline. In establishing its presence here, the LDS Church was making a bid for social respectability.

6. It's not clear to me if it's still there, but 20 years ago, there was a Marriott hotel here, where my parents stayed when they came to come pick me up after my mission. Next door is the Jaragua, a posh hotel where the mission's Christmas conference was held one year. In the mission photo we took outside the hotel, the hotel itself takes up most of the picture: the missionaries' faces are little specks. It makes for odd iconography. At some level, conscious or unconscious, the elderly American missionary who took the photo was keen to show off our relationship to this luxury hotel.

7. More or less here was the Hotel David, a tiny hotel that I stayed at during a return visit to the Dominican Republic in 1998. More on this below.

8. Location of the first cathedral built in the New World, 500 years ago.

9. Location of the Columbus house, now a museum: A big tourist attraction.

Let me say this about the Hotel David, and I'll end this post. I was searching online just a little while ago, trying to find the exact location of the Hotel David. And I learn that it's apparently changed hands, and a new hotel is being built on the spot. And then I Google my way to a reference to that new hotel on a discussion board for gay men vacationing in the DR. And one of the topics they're discussing is hustling, and whether and where you can meet Dominican men who will sleep with you without expecting you to pay for it. A couple posters made these sober comments about how where there's a sharp economic disparity between the sexual partners, it's to be expected that money will trade hands.

No. No. No no no no no. I am sitting at my desk, spluttering. Whoa. I know I'm naive about the ways of the world. But my God. This is not... the DR is not your sexual playground, you assholes. That someone can be so... sober about the fact that you're paying for sex because you're richer than your partner—which is to say that you know this is an exploitative relationship, but you're just shrugging your shoulders over it because that's just how things are... I can't finish that sentence by describing what I think you deserve to have happen to you, because I'll regret it.

The first person I ever baptized in the DR was a young ethnically Haitian man living in La Romana, a town on the eastern peninsula that has a big resort attached to it. We'll call him N. N was a huckster; he used me in various ways that I'm still rather angry about. But at one point he got a job working for the resort. The fact he spoke English was key to this job. The way he explained it to me was that he was supposed to hang out, basically, at the resort, approach vacationers, make small talk... I don't remember if I suspected at the time that he was supposed to make himself available for sexual favors, but I've suspected that for many years now, at least.

God cannot be pleased by this. But I figure God has to be a lot more unhappy with the people who are paying than the ones who are being paid. Caveat emptor.