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This past Saturday, 18 youth and adults from our congregation returned home from the Dominican Republic with sore muscles, grateful hearts, and a deeper understanding of what it means to welcome the stranger. In just one week, we worked side by side to build a house for the Reyes family—replacing their small wooden shack with a sturdy home that offers safety, dignity, and hope for two parents and their five children.
What we experienced in the remote village of Buena Vista was unwavering welcome. We arrived as foreigners—strangers in language, culture, and place—yet were received with warmth, generosity, patience, and joy. Neighbors worked alongside us, children stopped to greet us, and the Reyes family opened not only their new home to us, but their lives. On our final evening, we invited the family to have dinner with us, and through the gift of translation from our Bridges to Community guides, we were able to listen to their stories and their hopes for the future, and learn about the new opportunities that this house will bring.
We came to the DR to serve, yet we were also profoundly received, and that welcome now stays with me as both a gift and a challenge. In a time when our nation’s leaders often respond with fear and apathy towards immigrants and foreigners, this experience calls us back to the heart of the gospel: that we are to welcome the stranger, serve our neighbors, and recognize Christ in people both near and far. In that small mountain village, we were the outsiders and we were embraced. We were the ones in need of guidance and we were accompanied. We were the strangers and we were welcomed.
This service trip, and the relationships formed around it, were made possible through the generosity of this congregation. Your donations quite literally raised walls, laid floors, and placed a roof over the heads of the Reyes family. Thank you for trusting our youth with this work and for investing in a mission that changes lives on both sides of the experience.
We returned home tired, stretched, and grateful. This trip reminded us that the church is larger than any nation, and that Christ is present wherever people build, welcome, and hope together. May the welcome we received in the village of Buena Vista continue to shape how we speak, how we respond, how we serve, and how we receive the stranger in our own midst. In welcoming one another, we welcome Christ.
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