Time In California

Hello =)

Life post Dominican Republic has been a very trying time. Life just seems so precious that emotions will try to make you reorder a lot of your prioritize: whats worth sacrificing, whats worth spending time on, what is worth fighting for. These things are what I been trying to order in my head during this time in California

It has been a great time just catching up with old friends and really just having so much more time that comes with the single life. I bought 2 devotions journals; one is for me since I need a new one and the other one is going to be my future wife. I have decided to really hold onto my singleness for a while and during those times where it gets hard I'm just going to write letters to my future wife (if I'm going to get married haha)

God has sincerely challenged me to understand a new heart of love. In the Dominican Republic (DR) that seemed to be a very distinct message he was teaching me. Everywhere from my work site, to my site leaders, to my new friends, interns, my own team, and my own personal devotion time drew me back to this profound sense of Agape love.


Now, there are 3 types of love in greek: Philios, Eros, and Agape. My site leader Fransico put this quiet simply yet extremely profound.

Philios - A love that seems to be tied into time together and family like ties. For example, friends, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and sisters and brothers. These relationships are genuwine, but they are also circumstantial; based on time together. How deep a friendship goes depends on the amount of interaction together. A father can love his son so much and play with him all the time. But if the father leaves the family for 5 years and comes back, one can imagine that its hard to show sincere love again. Even some family members who grew up close together lose their love for each other if they are seperated for a long time. Im not saying all family members but I hear stories all the time of brothers who dont talk and like wise with parents and children.

Eros - People automatically jump to the conclusion that this love is "erotic" love. Sex is just one form of this love. At the core, this love is based on the give and recieve aspect of relationships. If I buy you a gift then you would show me you love me by responding to the gift. Sex is the ultimate act of giving and recieving but we show this love between a lot of people we are interested in. Like if I give a girl flowers, I would expect the response of at least a thank you and at most another gift back. Sounds awesome. But, again its circumstantial. Sometimes, i'll give flowers to a girl on a bad day and she wont even say thank. I might not even be able to have a lot of money. That would just make it so much harder for me to love since Im getting nothing back.

These types of love will ultimately run dry. You can only give so much and not recieve. You can only wait for someone so long untill they are not worth waiting for. But, heres a thing. We were not ment for these kinds of love. They are nice, yes, but when people say they want true love they aren't really asking for flowers every week, that butterfly feeling in the stomache, or even great sex. They want...

Agape - Love for the sake of love. Love because one simply decides too love apart from all circumstantial things. Hence why wedding vows consist of "For better or worst". A love that goes above what is seen in the belief that people are worth loving because they just are. Do not try to think logically about this love because it is illogical by its very nature. The grace shown by God for us is illogical. Grace in general can be seen as illogical. But I have come to this conclusion
The greatest love is shown where the greatest acts of grace are needed

Its something that one has to freely choose daily. They can not say "I will love this person because he/she does _______ for me". That seems more like a relationship based on benefit. Agape loves is what causes firefighters to rush into burning buildings to save people they dont know and risk their own lives. It is the kind of love that creates a foundation for an awesome marriage. It is the foundation for great friendships. It is the foundation for a great relationship with Christ and His Church.

I have dedicated myself to express agape love as much as I can. This has lead me to develope a really close relationship with my mom in these past 12 days I have been here in cali. It has allowed me to pray constantly for those who have hurt me. It has been my motivation to prepare to serve my church back in Boston. And it has become the foudation for which I am comming to meet my friends with and share awesome times together. This love is all freeing. I am not longer hurt because I have no expectations of how someone should react to this love. This love is just ment to be given with out expecting anything in return. ALTHOUGH I am still human but I found that if I just think about the love God has shown me and how that is true agape love...and how that has changed my life...then it becomes easier to share that love with everyone else in my life.

So, I found a sudden passion to share this love with all the girls in my life. Just because I feel that guys are still stuck on eros love and I want to start encouraging girls to hold guys to a higher standard of love. The world has been broken by the failings of philios and eros love. Agape love is what will change lives. So, right when i get back to Boston I want to start ministring to the girls in my church.


I just finished this book called "God's Gift to Women" by Eric Ludy.

It has made an excellent point in saying that the way a man treats the women in his life shows a lot about what kind of man he really is. If you see how Christ encountered the women he ministred to, his interactions fully ranged in challenging them yet also being compassionate and tender. Thats the kind of men the world needs. So I encourage that all the guys get that book and read it.

Well, I will be updating this as much as I can and sharing you guys how my journey in expressing agape love has been. Please pray for me to continue to get plugged into my ultimate source of agape love daily

Untill next time
God Bless =)

- Benjamin Le

PS sorry for the typos

Dominican Republic Mission trip

Hey everyone! I come to see that blogger would just be a way better way to connect with others. A lot of the people I have met in the DR use blogger =P

WELL! I am back from my 2 week mission trip in the Dominican Republic and it was an amazing experience. It blew my mind to see how Jesus was the exact same person in the DR as he is here in the states.

The week before I left was a tough one for me (to say the least). I was worried about not having a good experience which just so many burdens on my heart. I prayed that God would just let me forget about them for the two weeks so I could be of better use. I thought it be better that I just deal with them when I come back. To my surprise, God met me in my pain and suffering in the DR. He opened me up to this incredible understanding of true love and true happiness.
So let me share a little bit about what happened.

This is the beautiful city of Jarabacoa. It is the main city we were working in. Notice at just how green everything was. It was weird coming back to the states and not seeing that much green.

Here was our main base. We were the first summer team to use the base after its completion just last year. Pretty fancy eh? haha it was funded by a very generous donor and thank God. The basket ball course to the right was a great place where some people in the community could come and play to get to know the ministry better



So, Yours truly was was assigned to serve the community at the art site. Here are some pictures:

This is where are art site base was. Here is where we had all the paint and other stuff to carry out our ministries such as...

Art in the park with inner city kids. The boys I am with here are shoe shine boys. They wait around all day in the park to see if anyone would shine their shoes for them for about 50 cents. Given how young they are, this is not what a typical kid would like to do in the park. So, the art site would create art projects for them to do in the park and we just hang out and play with them.


I thought it be fun for them to do that one art project where you use your hand to make a chicken. YEE YEE im soo fresh =P haha naw actually it looked like they had a lot of fune with that.

Next is probably the biggest project we have at the Art site

Here you see a the art team painting murals in a slum called El Callejon. This is squaters land (land that basically anybody can just come on and start building homes) that was created after the hurricane George in the 1990s. The hurricance devistated the land and it became a place that was open to the poor to come and live on. On one side of the slum you have a golf course and on the other side lives a very wealthy man. Funny isn't it? The man built a wall for legal reasons; he wanted to make sure none of the poor people would come onto his property and build homes. The wall itself is logical, but it has become a symbol of "This is how far you can go. You are not wanted here. Stay away from us." A daily reminder of how isolated they are from acceptance.

SO the art side thought it be great to turn this wall, a symbol of division and hate even, and draw murals on it turning it into a symbol of God's love and and to minister and share biblical truths with non traditional images.

This is my mural. Top left is the phrase "Donde estas Papa? " which translates into "Where are you daddy?" Before drawing the murals, we walked around the community to learn more about it. It broke my heart to learn that it was nearly expected that fathers would walk out on their famalies. It was not uncommon for a young mother to have 4 kids all from different fathers and non of them are taking care of their kids.

That is just not right....

So the mural challenges men to step up in the community and walk away from the pollution of the world (gambling and alcoholism are typical things the men would be involved in there) and turn their hearts back to their famalies, their wife and kids, through the direction of Jesus Christ.

Upon learning about this, a young by name Mikael connected with my mural. One of my site leaders Nate told him the meaning of this mural. He starred at it and told Nate to tell me to finish the painting the kids (at that time i didn't even start yet). I asked why the urgency? And Nate explained that Mikael's father had walked out on his family when he was very young.

At the moment the whole ministry just proved itself to be God influence and God was moving artist to minister to this community. I can not express the great amount of meaning I felt when God use this mural to minister to this child. And better then that, that mural is still up today and Hopefully it will continue to minister to the community and challenge men to take up their responsibilities as fathers.

I also just had the greatest ounce of wisdom giving to me by God when i was thinking about what i was doing. This wall was meant to be an obstacle. BUt the ministry made it something that would help people overcome obstacles...so the question GOd asked me is "Ben, what are you doing with the walls other people have put up against you?"

That i will answer in another blog. But yes all in all this was a great ministry. I STILL HAVE so much to share but I think I'll save it for another blog.

I just want to leaving sharing this,

This was the team that challenged me, held me up, prayed for me, help me see God's plan, and ministered God's love to me in so many ways. It proves that true love is shown where God is the center. The boston team defenitely had Jesus and the Center and i was blessed to reap the benefits of peace, hope, fath, and love by being such great people.

So let this be a lesson, with great people by your side and a community centered on Jesus, One can change the world and your life can be changed for the best.

Keep growing in community everyone! I'll be sure to share more next time =)

God Bless,
Ben