Library of Love

A Children’s Ministry Journal Reflection

by Denise Spanos

May 3, 2025

On my second Sowers mission trip in 2020, I spent most of my time at Los Niños del Reino, the private primary school founded by Sowers of the Kingdom. There are about 50 children enrolled at the school. There were posters on the walls with words and the children were reading words from the blackboard. There was not a textbook or storybook in sight.

I began to wonder how children could learn to read without books. I asked my friend, Barbara, who was a teacher, how they could learn that way. She didn’t think they could learn much that way either. So on our return, we started talking about building a library at the school.

We asked Bruce, founder of Sowers of the Kingdom with his wife Ellen if we could build a library at the school. He immediately said yes and asked what we needed. We knew we could get books but needed shelves, so Bruce got two large shelves built for us. We raised money from family and friends to purchase the first 100 books for the school.

We decided to dedicate the library to Terry Dickinson who, with his wife Lidia, had supported the school since its inception. We planned a dedication ceremony for our next trip. Barbara and I decided to do the dedication speeches in Spanish. We wrote what we wanted to say and had it translated.

We practiced for weeks to deliver the speeches. When we spoke in Spanish at the ceremony, all we saw were smiles from the Dominican families. Our Spanish was not great, but good enough for them to understand us. They were very happy to see us trying to speak directly to them instead of using a translator.

Unbeknownst to Barbara and I, a Director of Education of the Dominican government was at the dedication. Before we left that week, we found out that he was so impressed with what we were doing for the children that he personally walked through textbook approvals for the school. It still gives me goosebumps to think about the massive improvement this brought to the school.

In later mission trips, we were able to see that the books were often being read. The library now contains approximately 250 well-loved books.