Twenty years ago today, I was turning 20 years old. I was also serving in a new mission area. After spending six months in Guaricano, a squatters barrio at the northern outskirts of the capital, I was assigned a rather small neighborhood in the eastern part of the capital--Santo Domingo Este (which Wikipedia tells me has been an independent municipality for a little over ten years now). Officially, the name of my new mission area was Los Minas, but we missionaries most often referred to it as La Milagrosa, I presume because that's what the residents did. La Milagrosa was the name of the Catholic parish in the neighborhood.
As I was walking down the street one day, someone passing me pressed into my hand a little plastic replica of the Miraculous Medal for which the parish was named. (Strangely, I cannot find an online picture of the medal with the inscription in Spanish, although the copy I was given was in Spanish.) It's the only time I can remember when a Catholic tried to do fly-by evangelism to me. Passing evangélicos did it all the time, in the form of telling me that Jesus loved me and/or that I should repent.
So here's a map of the area (click to enlarge). La Milagrosa is the neighborhood tinted pink. The part tinted green is Alma Rosa, which is where I served the final seven months of my mission. (More on that a few months from now.) I attended the same meetinghouse both when I was working in La Milagrosa and later when I was working in Alma Rosa: it's the meetinghouse indicated in the middle of the map.
The red dot is where my companions and I lived while I worked in La Milagrosa. Note that we lived outside our proselyting area--a first for me. That area was called Ozama. It was the most upscale neighborhood I lived in during my mission: note how square and regular the blocks are. By distinction, La Milagrosa represents to my mind an "average" Santo Domingo neighborhood, but I have no idea if Dominicans would agree with that assessment. Alma Rosa struck me because of the way poor families would live immediately adjacent to more affluent ones--cobbled-together shack literally alongside the fancy house behind walls.
The blue dot on the map is where I think the Ozama meetinghouse was located. It was a converted house. According to the oral history missionaries passed down among ourselves, that house was the first building the Church obtained in the DR for holding services; but the sources I have ready to hand as I'm writing this don't confirm that. If the building does have the historic status I was taught, then it pains me that it doesn't show up on the Church's meetinghouse locator. It was still being used the last time I visited the DR, around 2000.
I have fond memories of various church members in La Milagrosa, who I won't name here for privacy reasons (i.e., since what I know are last names). I'll mention, though, by first name, the baptized converts who stand out most in my memory from this area:
Pedro and Marina: Parents of seven children, as I recall, who lived together in a one-room tin shack, sharing a single bed. They had already been scheduled for baptism when I came into the area. It was one of those "relationship with the missionary" things: my first companion was passionate about getting them baptized; they were accommodating but never integrated into the ward; as soon as they were baptized and that companion got transferred out, they shifted to the list of inactive members my new companion and I were trying to reactivate. Classic. At Christmas, my new companion and I received donations from family and ward members back at home, which we used to purchase school supplies, clothes, toys, etc., for the family. In retrospect, I feel deeply ambivalent about that. There's an icky paternalism to it.
Carmen and Mercedes: Sisters, single mothers. We worked with Mercedes first, then Carmen asked to be taught. I grew quite close to Carmen. She's a "rushed to baptism" story that's my fault. She was a smoker; she hadn't really kicked the habit by the time her scheduled baptism came; I pushed, she accommodated; she felt guilty about still smoking after baptism, became inactive. We met at the meetinghouse months later (while I was working in Alma Rosa), when she'd gone to hear her niece give a talk or somesuch. I told her I knew now I shouldn't have pressed her to be baptized. She laughed ruefully. Te lo dije, she said. I told you.
Carmen was trying to keep her kids fed while at the same time finishing a degree--in journalism, I think it was. For a while she had a supervisory position in a clothing factory. I saw her during a return visit to the DR after my mission. She was involved by then with the 700 Club, which makes me grit my teeth--but it seemed to be a community that was working for her, and that's what matters. I'm sad that the LDS Church couldn't be that community for her. I'm tearing up as I write that.
Pedro and Marina: Parents of seven children, as I recall, who lived together in a one-room tin shack, sharing a single bed. They had already been scheduled for baptism when I came into the area. It was one of those "relationship with the missionary" things: my first companion was passionate about getting them baptized; they were accommodating but never integrated into the ward; as soon as they were baptized and that companion got transferred out, they shifted to the list of inactive members my new companion and I were trying to reactivate. Classic. At Christmas, my new companion and I received donations from family and ward members back at home, which we used to purchase school supplies, clothes, toys, etc., for the family. In retrospect, I feel deeply ambivalent about that. There's an icky paternalism to it.
Carmen and Mercedes: Sisters, single mothers. We worked with Mercedes first, then Carmen asked to be taught. I grew quite close to Carmen. She's a "rushed to baptism" story that's my fault. She was a smoker; she hadn't really kicked the habit by the time her scheduled baptism came; I pushed, she accommodated; she felt guilty about still smoking after baptism, became inactive. We met at the meetinghouse months later (while I was working in Alma Rosa), when she'd gone to hear her niece give a talk or somesuch. I told her I knew now I shouldn't have pressed her to be baptized. She laughed ruefully. Te lo dije, she said. I told you.
Carmen was trying to keep her kids fed while at the same time finishing a degree--in journalism, I think it was. For a while she had a supervisory position in a clothing factory. I saw her during a return visit to the DR after my mission. She was involved by then with the 700 Club, which makes me grit my teeth--but it seemed to be a community that was working for her, and that's what matters. I'm sad that the LDS Church couldn't be that community for her. I'm tearing up as I write that.
Other posts in this series:
8/12/1992 - A year after the call
7/1/1992 - FEDOPO
5/6/1992 - Guaricano
4/1/1992 - First day in Guaricano
2/5/1992 - The Zona Franca
12/4/1991 - La Romana
11/6/1991 - My first day in the Dominican Republic
10/9/1991 - Entered the MTC
9/4/1991 - Waiting to serve
8/1/1991 - Mission call
