Resilience | 11.13.2025

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Have you kept a resume from your High School years to now? Include every job and move? I have one.  It is a very strange map.  But it shows where the opportunities were and where my mind was. 

I get to add a line to that resume. Missionary to Barahona, Dominican Republic, January 2025 -November 2025. Never back when I worked in the Howard County Library System would I have believed that this would be in my resume.

I’m moving out of my apartment and flying home November 13. I want to spend the holidays with my family. So I am ending my time here a little early. 

7 years ago I came on a trip with the youth of Westminster United Methodist Church and fell in love with the people, country, and the Mission: The Least of These Ministries. After many trips down here, God called me to spend a year here. 

I’ve learned the language. I can now order pizza. I’ve learned to navigate travel using a guagua and pampara.  Water and electricity, someday we just do without. I’ve helped to establish a senior activity for adults in the Bateys. We continue our distribution of food and have the best five guys I’ve been honored to call friends. I now know all the Bateys and have become very close with both leaders and pastors. 

I have become friends with other Missionaries who live here. 

I’ve attended multiple houses of worship. All genuine in the Love of the Lord. 

I’ve seen Barahona during all its seasons. And they do have seasons. Summer is the most difficult.

I keep coming back to the word resilience. Resilience refers to the ability to successfully adapt to stressors, maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adversity. It’s the ability to “bounce back” from difficult experiences. The joy on their faces shows such genuine feelings even when it is 106 degrees and the Sahara dust is so dense you can’t see the sea. Or when it rains 6 inches in 3 hours. 

I give so many blessings to Anny and Ricardo for taking this white-haired 64 year-old lady and letting her learn what it is like to be Dominican. Their hospitality, love and hope are immeasurable. 

Thank you Marty for your added job of the financial portion of this adventure.

Thank you to my monthly donors for helping me to live this year.  Your generosity sometimes when I think about it, overwhelms me.

My Mom, Dad, Malcolm, and my family have been my biggest cheerleaders and supporters. I miss my mom incredibly but I gave out crosses she ordered in the summer. She is right here with me.

I ask you to pray as I transition back to Westminster.  Pray for safe travels. Pray that the next line in my resume becomes clear. 

I will return to Barahona in January as a team member. Join us January 10 to 17.

Love and Hope,

Jacki