Acabamos de arañar la superficie. (We just scratched the surface.)

Acabamos de arañar la superficie. (We just scratched the surface.)
  It was our third day; we were weary - they kept coming. We served, examined and prayed with over 200 people, plus making home visits and walking the streets with scores of children.  What a lesson in persistence - to have the same patience, compassion and intentionality in our prayers with patient #165, 190 that we did with #1, 10, 22.
  The needs are real, unending and overwhelming - an 80 year old grandmother with 4 grandchildren and no food, a 49 year old mother of 6, with 3 grandchildren, who's been widowed 10 years and has no income (who offered me a bowl of rice when I visited!), three unemployed brothers, one in his 60s paralyzed by a stroke, one (maybe 45) who just lost a leg to diabetes, the younger (maybe 35 or 40) caring for the other two, everywhere young, single mothers with multiple children, no fathers and no work (many having given birth in the early teens). I could go on, and we just scratched the surface.
  Everywhere in the DR there are baseball fields; Angelina is no different - no paved roads, no clean drinking water, no work, sparse medical care, the monotonous oppression of poverty - but there's baseball.
   At lunch, after 20 kids hung around the church's side door and watched us eat our PB&J sandwiches, our team's young medical intern walked with me to the two fields; we were swamped by a dozen dirty children, holding our hands, running the bases, playing pretend baseball (I've got a mean slider!) and asking us questions. They all new one English word - "hungry"
   "Tienen comida en sus casas?" Do you have food in your houses. They all shook their heads, no, so for less than $10.00 I bought them some food.
   Anna, from the church, walked with me to a corner store, where we bought 5lbs. of rice, a pound of ham, some oil and two bags of beans, and we carried it all all to Olga, the 80 year old with all the kids. We gave her the food, prayed and walked back to the church/clinic. We had just scratched the surface.
  We made house visits, cleaned and wrapped open, diabetic sores, dispensed medicine, prayed some more, pulled teeth, gave out clothes and glasses. Then we got on our bus and went back to our lodging. We had simply scratched the surface. We had our hot showers and two helpings of our hot meal, then had our evening service in our air conditioned meeting room.
   We have three services tomorrow (starting at 6:30!) then two more days in another village filled with Haitians, back to Santo Domingo, a day of rest, and then Delta taking us home; knowing that one person at a time we may have made a difference, but we had just scratched the surface.

"For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me." - Jesus
“One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” - Jesus
"And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." - Paul
"Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?"  - James