This is just an essay I wrote for school. I hope you guys like it. This is completely one hundred percent true.
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The sky was a dark grey as I looked out of the bus window and felt the ground switch from paved to dirt. The hour-long bus ride was almost over. The scenery had changed throughout the drive from a nice neighborhood to a run down city with people bathing in the dark brown mud puddles on the side of the road. I was in the Dominican Republic for a missions trip and as challenging as the trip had been the last few weeks today was going to be the hardest.
We were going to a leper colony to reach out to these people who had been outcasts the majority of their lives. We pulled into the gated drive and it felt as if my stomach had dropped into my feet. I stepped out of the bus and into the humid air. When I looked around I saw what looked like a one story cheap motel with a courtyard of some sort in the middle. Almost all of the salmon colored doors were open and people started filing out of their small rooms. Keeping with the group we went to the courtyard and plugged in the sound system that we had always carried with us. A few of the people started to do a drama that we had prepared before we left. The rest of us however took that as our first opportunity to really look around at the people. Everything looked normal as we looked at the people with their tanned skin that looked almost like leather, until we started to realize that people were missing limbs other parts of their bodies.
The drama finished and I knew what was coming next; we were supposed to go mingle and simply love on these outcasts. Once again my stomach dropped into my feet. Leprosy was always something that I had heard about in Sunday school and bible class. It was a dangerous disease that separated people from society. We were told that it was almost impossible to catch leprosy but at the same time I was, plain and simple I was terrified. I was so overcome by fear I could hardly move. My mother grabbed my arm and I felt my feet moving as if someone else was controlling them. A translator came with us we started talking to a woman without multiple body parts. She was missing a leg, fingers, and even an eye.
She started talking in rapid, muffled Spanish. I looked towards the translator helping my mom and I with a questioning look. He looked at us and told us, “She says you smell good.” I muttered a “gracias”. My mom asked me about the lotion and body spray that she knew I was carrying around with me. I handed it to her and she started putting the spray, with the lady’s permission, on her leathery neck and arms. Something clicked in my mind at that moment. If my mom wasn’t scared why should I be? I was there for a reason and I shouldn’t be afraid of it. I knew I had been called to be there and I would be protected as I was there. It was also at that moment when I stopped letting fear rule my life.
