Art and the Multitudes

We have been in Hato del Yaque for 6 months now.  New home, new family, new job description. It has been a little like art.
The definition of art is the act of creating something that stimulates emotion through one or more of the senses.
..... Is an artist that uses hundreds and thousands of dots to create a picture. Close up if you put a bunch of red and green dots together they are individual strokes of paint, but if you stand back you can see a field of green grass.
I think before, when I was commuting out to HDY, I only saw the big picture. A picture that sometimes seemed sad, like when Pastor Aristides died, or sometimes felt glad, like when we had the inauguration of the new building and the whole community showed up.

I took a couple art history classes way back when and I remember studying the artistic movement of post-impressionists to cubism and abstract and on from there. I remember looking at a piece of work that was basically a large rough red square and not being a little bored. The professor began to tell how the artist painted this after Germany invaded Italy in world war II and suddenly I saw it. The crumbled buildings, blood in the streets, fear and pain. All of that in the rough red square.

This boy is pulling a rock around for entertainment.

Living in Hato del Yaque has been like looking at a piece of Art and suddenly seeing it. Really seeing it.

I always understood that the people living in Hato del Yaque battled against poverty and its effects, but now it is at my doorstep and I battle many of the effects too.

"Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

~Matthew 9:35-38

Singing with the kids in Hato del Yaque

Jesus saw the multitudes, yet he saw the crowds for who they were. He healed them and shared good news with them. But when he saw them he saw them for where they were. He had compassion on them.









I think Pastor Elido, his wife Modesta and I, since we moved to Hato del Yaque at the beginning of the year, we have learned to see the crowd. We have been proclaiming the good news, feeding children and working with teams to bring Medical clinics etc. for years. But since we have been living there, we are beginning to see where people are really in their lives, economically, spiritually and physically. We are learning what compassion means and what Jesus saw.

Thank you for working along side us in this harvest field.