Marriage

It is typical in many Dominican families, especially in the poor communities, that the man and woman are not legally married. Most of the time a man and woman move in together, have children, and call themselves husband and wife, but they are not actually married. There are several reasons for this. One is simply that it is a cultural thing. Another is that the cost of marriage (and divorce) and fairly high. Thirdly, the esteem of marriage is not very high; adultery and separation are very common. It is pretty normal for a man or woman to have 5 children and they are all from a different spouse.

This is one of the cultural things that was hard for me to accept/understand when I got here. How can these 2 women in El Callejon have children from the same man and still be good friends? Or on the other extreme, how can this man and woman have 4 children together, have been faithful to each other for 20 years, and not be married?? I try to explain this to the students that come down, but it's just one of those cultural things that we can't really understand. This was especially challenging for a group of 3 American women that came down from a church in California in August. Through discussions and interactions with these women, we came up with the idea to legally marry some of the couples in El Callejon.

We first presented this idea to the Dominican women one day at Bible study in September. But because this is such a counter-cultural idea, a lot of the women just thought we were crazy. But after we got them excited about the idea of a wedding with cake and dresses and flowers, a handful of women started to consider the idea more seriously. We started to have weekly meetings with the couples where we would watch movies like Fireproof or have an outside speaker come in and give a sort of "pre-marital counseling." We continued this until December when we finalized it down to 3 couples. We have spent the last 2 weeks figuring out all the legal paperwork and details; figuring out food, cake, and decorations; and helping the women prepare by giving them facials and manicures.

On Thursday we had the formal ceremony. It was very simple. It was just outside of the Social Work site, but the couples came dressed to the nines and glowing with joy. One of the Students International leaders, Luis, gave a talk on marriage. We ate sancocho (a Dominican specialty). We had a beautifully decorated cake. It was wonderful!

















Our prayer is that God blesses the 3 couples. That they understand what God's will for marriage truly is. That this may be an example for other couples in the community to take this same step for their relationship.

We know that things like this that are so deeply ingrained in the culture we cannot change. Only God has that power. Please pray with us that God will change the culture's view on marriage.



On a totally separate note....we will be in Virginia Dec 19-Jan 16. We will be in Newport News most of the time and will be taking a short trip to Harrisonburg. We would love to see all of you, so let us know how we can make that happen!!