the road to sosou

The road to Sosou was more than a journey on a min-van from one beach to the other, it was  an immersion of a cultural experience with twenty-one of my closest Dominican comrades.  It was the road towards understanding the heart beat of the world.

I must admit there is adrenaline in learning something new when you are in another country.  You have somehow become the master of taking the motorbike taxi and actually getting where you need to go.  Or perhaps you have excelled at lighting the propane range without catching yourself on fire or even gracefully won over the pump on the water bottle. Its in these experiences that you realize the heartbeat is loud and strong of the world.  It radiates hope, pain, encouragement and creativity.

So although my journey on the gwa gwa from Cabarate and Sosou felt like an adventure, it really is only a piece to a complex and gigantic puzzle that connects misshapen worlds, cultures, and genders together.

So today, as I sit reflecting on how I am going to take this experience back to the United States with me, I think of the little boy that sits by me at the concert or the woman standing outside the house begging for money, I am reminded that it is compassion and humbleness that I believe God has called me to.  He has ordained me to be a grace give, as he extends grace to us, his children.  I can look around and life seems hard here, but its life and it is lived passionately, gracefully and intentionally as Christ would want. I am reminded that I need to live my daily life experiencing ‘the adventure on the road to Sosou’.  I need to approach my life with just as much excitement, compassion, humbleness and wanderlust as I had on embarking on this trip.