Santo Domingo Sunrise

~ hen I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I was an education promoter with a social ser- vice agency in the remote high desert of western Dominican Republic. After a particularly fren- zied Friday visiting volunteer-run preschools, I stopped at the post office in San Juan de la Maguana to pick up my mail and paused at a patio café to read it.

To celebrate the close of the week I had an icy Presidente (the local beer) and my favorite snack, a basket of fried plantains. I shuffled through my correspondence and saved the best for last, setting aside a letter postmarked Anti- gua, Guatemala. I glanced at the newest edition of Newsweek, mailed weekly to volunteers the world over. I decided the next time I got to Santo Domingo, I’d take it to the Epiphany Church for Father Luis.

Next, I read a note from a hometown friend in California. She wrote how much she envied me every time she saw Club Med ads on television. I must be having a marvelous time in the D.R., a true island paradise. I smiled.

I worked with women who lived in mud huts and carried water from the river. They cooked vats of “43 44 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD beans and rice on makeshift stoves made of rocks in their yards. I was hours away from the nearest beach by “chicken bus.” I might be on an island, but I was far from paradise!

Finally I opened the gauzy blue international airmail envelope and read that my boyfriend of a decade had met someone else. They would marry in May. I sat stunned, tears trickling down my cheeks. Instead of the usual salsa or meringue, the café that afternoon was playing an Air Supply tape.

So as I read my Dear Jane letter, I soaked in the haunting chorus of “All Out of Love.” All out of love! I guessed I was . . . and all out of faith. My dreams for the future had just dissolved in the wilting heat of the Dominican afternoon.

For so long I’d prayed for a happy ending to this relationship. How could God let me down? I felt as if the sun had set on my world forever. I finally gathered up my mail, stuffed it in my tote bag, and stumbled toward the house to the room I rented from a Dominican family.

I threw some clothes into my duffle bag, scribbled a note for my landlady, and galloped to the bus depot to catch the last evening guagua for Santo Domingo. I had to see Reverend Luis. I needed to ask him how to prevent bitterness from finding a permanent home in my heart. Though I’d not been a regular churchgoer since child- hood, I always attended the 9:00 am English service on Sundays.

Reverend Luis, the interim pastor, a priest from CHALLENGES 45 Puerto Rico, possessed a keen wit, a sparkling smile, and an abiding penchant for peace. We’d met on one of my library forays, when I saw him eyeing my tote bag with a recent copy of Newsweek sticking out the top.

I knew that English language magazines sold out quickly in the few stores that carried them. I promised to save my cop- ies for him and deliver them when I came to town.

As soon as the bus stopped near Peace Corps Head- quarters on Avenida Bolivar, I dumped off my duf- fle bag in the volunteers’ lounge and headed for the church. Perhaps Father Luis would still be in his rectory. I had my Newsweek in hand. Praise the Lord, I murmured to myself, as I caught him just as he prepared to lock the doors of the parish hall for the evening.

“Could I have a minute?” “Child, you look as if you’ve lost your best friend. Come on inside.” He listened patiently as I spilled the story of how I had loved this man in Guatemala for nearly a decade, through our early days together in California, through another Peace Corps stint in another Caribbean coun- try, and how I’d planned to join him in a few months when I’d concluded my service in the D.R.

“I thought he loved me, too,” I concluded, fishing yet another tissue from my tote. I felt a bit foolish, almost as if I were asking the priest to explain why bad things happen to good people. I thought of myself as good .. . at least I was doing good deeds. “Dear, he may love you but may need this other woman now.

She’s there, and you’re here,” Father Luis finally said. “Romantic love ebbs and flows. But maybe God has another plan for you, and you can count on His love forever.”

“Another plan? What could it be?” “It will unfold,” Father Luis said. “Just open your mind and heart and wait.

Direction will come.” I thanked the priest and handed him my crumpled - Newsweek. “Please excuse the wrinkles. It got a little squeezed between two gamecocks on the ride in.”

“Sometimes it feels like life is like that,” he said. “Sometimes we can get squeezed, too, but God has a way of smoothing things out for us.”

The next morning as I strode along El Malecon, I noticed a squadron of husky Dominicans jogging toward me, surrounding a small gray-haired man in blue sweats. As they neared, the man glanced my way and lifted a hand in greeting. I waved back, trying to place his face. He looked so familiar.

About a hundred yards later I realized it was former President Jimmy Carter. I’d heard that between his visits to Haiti he’d stayed at the American embassy in Santo Domingo. I figured it was a sign. If Carter, then seventy, could continue to serve his country, so could I.

When returned to the Peace Corps office I asked the director if he could send a fax to headquarters offering my ser- vices to yet another part of the world when my time in the Dominican Republic was finished. It took God a while to smooth out my life, but He did.

I got a chance to serve in the Peace Corps again. And this time it really was in paradise: the Republic of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, after my former boyfriend’s new marriage failed, we rekindled a friendship that lasted until the day he died.

My life unfolded in a way I’d never anticipated, just as Father Luis predicted. I eventually married some- body new, somebody who just happened to need me. I probably never would have met him had it not been for the priest’s encouragement, and that morning in the Santo Domingo sunrise when I passed Jimmy Carter on the Caribbean shore . . . and regained my faith.