Of all athletes in American sports today, two of the three highest paid professionals are Dominican-Americans. Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, who both lived in the Dominican Republic, are under contract to earn a combined $435 million.
We kept up with the Olympics and it was intriguing that Caribbean sprinters dominated the track. The men’s 100m dash final—won by a Jamaican—featured two American and six Caribbean sprinters. In the women’s 100m dash, Jamaicans took gold, silver, and bronze.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti have few things in common, but they are on the same Caribbean island: Hispaniola. Isn’t it fishy that one side of Hispaniola produces the highest paid athletes in the world, the rest of the Caribbean produces the fastest men and women in the world, and Haiti barely produces a competitor?
When people in abject poverty face difficult decisions, good options seldom exist—the choices are simply bad or worse. When a mother has more children than she can feed, where does she find help? In Haiti, there is a culturally acceptable and clandestine child-trafficking arrangement resulting from these difficult decisions and those who prop-up and benefit from the structural evils that force these decisions in the first place.
Restaveks: 300,000 child-slaves blend into the landscape here. They are visible only by understanding what to look for—most foreigners do not. Conversely, tens-of-thousands of families in Haiti rationalize this form of trafficking by promising food, shelter, and education in return for household help. Unfortunately, in too many instances these arrangements fall victim to human depravity, and children are exploited.
The following video was produced by Compassion UK:
The following letter was mailed to our family and friends in December. Since then we have received a considerable amount of positive feedback and felt it appropriate to post online.
December 4th, 2007
Dear Family and Friends,
There’s a story about two farmers who desperately needed rain. Both of them prayed for rain, but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. Which one trusted God to send the rain? God will send the rain when he’s ready. We must prepare our fields to receive it. (more…)
When mom and dad were visiting us last month, they met and quickly fell in love with, Naomi, who works for us, and her two children. Recently, my parents sent us some Christmas packages, overflowing with goodies! Naturally, one of the packages contained some gifts for Naomi’s family. My mom had bought an adorable little doll for Eman, Naomi’s five year-old daughter. Though my parents had sent these gifts with the purest of intentions, it presented us with a dilemma.