By Deborah J Cook
March 09, 2010, 9:00AM
Courtesy of the Smit family. Members of the Smit family, of Martin, Mich., build a home for a family in the Dominican Republic.
Little did Deb Smit know that serving as a chaperone on a high-school mission trip would lead to the family Christmas of a lifetime. Wife and mother of eight, Smit says of her trips to the Dominican Republic, “You just can’t come back away from there and not change.”
After all but her oldest traveled to the D.R. at least once with groups from Tri-unity Christian School in Wyoming, Smit saw the transformations in attitude and direction that voluntourism brought about in her children.