Traveling with a Purpose and the Serenity Found Within

I wanted to leave these 4 blog posts with some final thoughts on finding serenity, joy and appreciation for what we have in our daily lives.

Over the past few years I have had the honor, yes the honor to travel to Central America and now the Caribbean (post Hurricane) and see what most people who reside in the U.S.A. and other "civilized" countries never take the time to see.  We think that we know what "poverty" is and how lucky we are that we live in a country where we have homes, cars, lots of food, we can go out to restaurants when ever we want, we can go on vacations, etc, etc...but are we ever grateful that we have water, a roof over our heads, walls that stay up, electricity at our beck and call?  I think not.  Even as I write this blog, I'm not worried about the fact that my electricity is flowing though my laptop or that there is a glass of filtered water sitting in front of me, but I have seen many, many, many people in many areas of our own hemisphere where this is a daily concern.

When I went to the Civil Defense Group in Puerta Platta, Dominican Republic their unique building was actually without power that day due to grid issues on the island.  When asked about it they said it was a common occurrence, but they didn't seem to notice or be worried about the issue, they just mustered on and if you haven't thought about it also realize that no electricity means no water, water in these areas requires pumping and filtration all requiring electricity.

My take away from this "mission" cruise and other trips I have taken is that even though we would be overwhelmed by what we saw, I saw nothing but people going about their every day lives filled with joy that they live on a beautiful island, that they were surrounded by family, by friends, by strangers who care and by nature who maintains our balance in the world.  They do not focus on the negative, they focus on joy.  You hear it in the music, you hear it in their words, and you see it on their faces and in their souls.

Serenity can surround you at every turn in our life if you just let it in.  Don't focus on the negative, don't focus on what can't be accomplished, focus on nature, focus on the beauty of the world that surrounds us, focus on joy.  By focusing your mind, your soul will find serenity.  Of this I'm positive.

Traveling with a Purpose and the Serenity Found Within - Island #3 Puerta Platta/Amber Cove

To continue the serenity saga and mission cruise, the last island we traveled to was the Dominican Republic-Amber Cove Community in Puerta Platta.  Here we broke into 2 separate groups, 1 traveled to 3 separate locations for community interaction and the other group poured concrete flooring in 2 homes for families that lost everything during the hurricanes.

I will first write about my experiences in the larger community interaction group and then tell you about my spouse's experience with concrete flooring.

Not having known a lot about the Dominican Republic I learned that while Haiti (the other side of the island) has cut down most of their natural vegetation the D.R. has remained committed to maintain natural balance, the proof of this was in the last part of the day.

Our first stop was a school deep in the mountains up very rocky narrow roads.  Here the school kids were awaiting our arrival on their small play yard, they stood in a large circle around the perimeter and greeted us with hugs, handshakes and hellos and welcome (they spoke mostly Spanish) but this was all in English.  After some introductions and an interactive song with hand movements, also in Spanish we moved inside, small groups of our group with small groups of the kids.  Here we sat on the floor with the kids and taught them some English words using worksheets and pictures, they taught us the Spanish words and then drew pictures of what was taught for us to take home.  We then took a large group photo back in the play yard and hugged goodbye and moved onto the next stop.

The second stop was at a re-purposed train station, built in 1860s by the Germans to meet members of the Civil Defense for the Island.  This amazing group are all volunteers, they are tasked with maintaining a defense warning system with natural disaster is imminent.  They usually have about 80 volunteers at the ready at any given time, but during prior to the hurricane they swelled their ranks to several hundred in order to properly prepared.  They were an amazing group of men and women.  They were presented with 2 new high powered chain saws, to replace the ones that died in the aftermath of cleanup from the 2 hurricanes.

The third stop was one of my favorites of these 3 islands, here we visited a nature preserve high up in the hills.  The Dominican Republic is major producer of mahogany, as well as various tropical fruits, when the hurricanes hit a large portion of fully matured vegetation was destroyed a with that a way of life.  As cleanup began, they made the choice to collect as many seeds, seedlings and live shoots as possible from the mahogany trees and nurture them for replanting.  That's what we did.  We replanted 490 seeds and seedlings in less than a hour and half.  We also learned about an incredibly delicious fruit called sour sop, really odd looking outside and sticky gooey sweetness on the inside.

I promised you in the beginning that I would tell you about my husband's concrete flooring mission.  Along with about 30 others (including volunteers from the community and the cruise line staff) they mixed and laid down concrete floors in 2 homes that had been rebuilt just that morning by Habitat for Humanity volunteers.  Family #1 was a family of 7, mother, father and 5 kids, their home had been destroyed by the hurricanes, they picked up as many pieces as possible strung them together with tarps as their roof, not really full walls and lived that way until last week.  The home now has a kitchen, living/dining area, bathroom and 2 bedrooms (1 for the parents, 1 the kids).  They were overwhelmed with gratitude and through interpreters expressed their thanks.  While my husband was working on the floor, one of the young children came up to him and kept pointing at his ears, with a confused look on her face.  My husband realized that she had never seen hearing aids (his are actually quite small and in the ear), through an interpreter they explained to her what they were, she smiled, shook her head and moved onto the next thing.  My husband was very affected by this small interaction and I always believe that it's the small interactions that sometimes have the greatest effect on us.

The second family was a man who was 103 years old and lived in his house with his daughter and her family.

These experiences of moving within worlds that we don't usually inhabit provide us with the ability to not only help whose who need it most, but also see how overwhelmingly lucky we all are and how much we take it for granted in our every day lives.

This blog is about finding serenity in our lives and these experiences have enabled me to breath deeply, locate the joy the surrounds me and find serenity within myself.

Find your serenity by taking a hard look at the world that surrounds you and locating something inside that we give you the opportunity to give back!