Breath of Life International

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Making a Difference in Equipping the Poor with the Gospel of Jesus Christ

In 2012, many years of doing missions, we realized that we were not having sustainable grow in the work we were doing. So, we took a year off doing any ministry activities to pray for a whole year, read the gospels to see how Jesus transformed communities, and investigated what was happening in the Dominican Republic by interviewing young people all of over the island trying to understand what were the most pressing needs in the whole country. After all of this, we found out that most Dominican students in rural towns who finished High School did not end up going to College or University because it was not accessible to them. Most Universities are located in the major cities and they do not typically have housing. In order to attend, the students would need to rent rooms. We came across hundredths of horror stories of students who rented rooms and ended up being sexually, physically or emotionally abused by the house owners. One of our board member was such student. We realized that even though the university is basically free, poor rural students did not have a real opportunity to obtain a professional career which will help them leave poverty behind and help their families break the poverty cycle. We also found out that many of these students who rented rooms, did not have the proper guidance to live in the city and will fall prey to city opportunists who will take advantage of them.

So, the members of Breath of Life decided that this was a big enough problem for God to deal with and through our praying time, God gave us a strategy to designed a program where the poorest students will have a safe place to study in the city and will have a Christian mentor who will help him become more like Jesus, navigate life in the city, and prepare them as leaders for their communities. In the process, the communities where the students would come from, would also be part of the program where Breath of Life partner with them to help them develop their town until the kingdom of God is visible; people are more healthier, physically, emotionally, spiritually and economically.

We believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ changes people and whole communities. We believe that when we demonstrate and proclaim the gospel of Jesus, there is transformation. We called it: the whole gospel for the whole person to the whole world. Breath of Life was born to address physical and spiritual needs where it is most needed and to whom it is more urgent, not through a quick fix, but through a lifelong commitment to train and equip the poor to become all who God created them to be.

We believe that it is better for a community to be equipped for they can fight poverty themselves as the leaders, instead of foreign help coming to provide what they need. In past projects, we brought doctors to help the poor people in Dominican Republic with their health issues but these doctors could only stay for a short while. After these doctors were gone, the community would still deal with the same health issues. We used to bring engineers and constructors to build the poor people houses, but after the team would leave, only houses which could be finished in a short mission trip were built and no more. So, now, by equipment the poor people to become professionals: doctors, engineers, architects, teachers, business people, etc. they can provide medical care to their own people, build the houses to their families and teach their own children.

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