What I've been up to and what's around the corner

I have been home for about three months now. I think I have made as good an adjustment as is possible. I was asked by a friend recently to post about my time at home so everyone stay in the know. Here is the Cliff notes version:

Upon returning home, it looked like I had a job lined up with my previous employer. I interviewed for a position as a probation officer and was offered the position at the end of the interview. I accepted and my hire packet was forwarded to Richmond for final approval. While waiting for all the approval signatures, the Governor of Virginia instructed all state offices to suspend all hiring in process due to the current financial problems that state is experiencing. What seemed like a sure thing from God was removed as an option for work. So, I continued to look for employment. I have applied at a number of places with no success. I am now pursuing the option of substitute teaching for the Lynchburg City School system and that seems promising.

In the meantime, I have been volunteering at a local elementary school with ESL students, helping local Mexican immigrants with reading/speaking English and translating for them in various settings. I have also been doing some computer work for Cuirim Outreach and am working with another person to develop a website for Cuirim Outreach. I have been annoyed and then accepting of the uncertain situation I am in currently. It is very much a time of learning for me and I believe that God is using this time to refine my character. Even with the uncertainty, it seems to me that God wants me to wait and be patient for what he is doing with my life. And, instead of being pushy like I usually am, I am getting a little better at waiting.

To that end, it seems like a good idea to make a return visit to Nogales from January 14 through February 4. I will be helping to distribute the Christmas shoe boxes to the kids in Nogales as well as working a bit on the drug rehab center and watching for ministry opportunities to our neighbors in Nogales. I also hope to visit an orphanage south of Nogales.

Please pray for my time in Nogales. I am still trying to figure out what God is doing specifically with me and I believe that my trip to Nogales will move me toward a better understanding of what I should be doing in 2009. If you want to donate any money toward the costs of this trip, you can make a check payable to Cuirim Outreach, Inc. with my name in the memo line.

Thanks for praying for me and for caring about Nogales.

The Train of Death

This is a blog about our ministry in Mexico which includes an outreach to deported men and women in Nogales who have nothing and very little hope. I have been working on a story about this aspect of the ministry when I found the following interview on line at the website motherjones.com. This is really the beginning of the story that ends with deportation so I start with the story of how many illegals risk their lives to come to the U.S. This is an excerpt from the story:


The Train of Death: Migrants riding freights north from Central America risk their lives to reach the U.S.

by Lisa Wong Macabasco

Los Angeles Times reporter Sonia Nazario exemplifies the adage about “learning by doing.” In reporting a series that eventually won her paper two Pulitzer Prizes, Nazario spent five years hopping freight trains through Mexico, re-tracing the dangerous route from Honduras to the United States taken by a teenager named Enrique, who endured unimaginable hardship to reach his mother in the United States.

Thousands of parents and children make similar journeys each year, lacking the money to make it north from Central America except by clinging to the tops and sides of trains. Dodging Mexican immigration authorities, they must jump on and off the moving cars, which they call, generically, El Tren de la Muerte (the Train of Death).

Nazario's book based on the series, Enrique’s Journey, centers around an intimate portrait of Enrique and his mother, Lourdes, but it's also a larger story of broken families, poverty, and immigration, and the world of undocumented workers.

Mother Jones: What motivated you to write about the journeys of Central American migrants to the U.S.?

Sonia Nazario: In the late 1990s, one morning my housecleaner, who like me is Hispanic, told me about the four children she had left behind in Guatemala; how she hadn’t seen them in 12 years; how the youngest girl was one year old when she left. She left because her husband had left, and she simply couldn’t feed them. They would ask for food, and she couldn’t give it to them.
I was struck by the choice that women like my housecleaner make every day to walk away from their children and not see them for years on end in order to help them. I learned how often their children would become desperate to see them and would set off on their own to come find them in the United States. Some of them were as young as seven years old, coming up through Mexico the only way they could with no money, which was clinging to the tops and sides of freight trains. I thought it was an amazing story. I wanted to show how the face of immigration to the United States is changing. Most people think of illegal immigration as overwhelmingly male, and that has changed.

MJ: How did you meet Enrique and why did you think he was the best main character for the story?

SN: I knew that among the thousands of children who come into the U.S. alone without a parent each year that the average age of a child who’s caught is 15, and typically they’re boys. That’s what I was looking for. I knew that I couldn’t start in Central America and follow a child all the way up to Mexico because it would be too difficult and dangerous to stick with one kid. It would probably be impossible because they run from all these different dangers. I wanted to find a 15-year-old boy who had made it as far as the Mexico-U.S. border, but was still on the Mexican side, spend time with them and hope they reach their destination, debrief them on everything they had been through trying to make it through Mexico, and then go back and retrace their journey and try to flesh out the story in that way. So I starting calling all these churches and shelters on the Mexican side of the U.S. border, along these 2,000 miles, saying this is what I’m looking for, if you have somebody like that today. A nun at a church in Nuevo Laredo, which is across the border from Laredo, Texas, said, “Let me put this boy on the line,” and I spoke with Enrique. His story seemed typical, in terms of the harrowing things that I heard from so many children who had come up on the freight trains from Mexico. And he agreed to do it. He was very honest and forthright.

MJ: How did you prepare for the journey? Did you do any physical training?

SN: Not enough. I prepared in terms of interviewing in both INS jails that hold immigrant children and detention centers and immigrant schools in Los Angeles and elsewhere. I interviewed dozens and dozens of children who had made this journey, and I really tried to understand where they went, what were the dangers and possible pitfalls. I tried to understand the highs and lows of the journey. All along the way, these kids experienced incredible acts of cruelty but also equally amazing acts of kindness. I tried to really understand every element of the journey, and then I tried to build in as many safeguards as possible. I remember being in one detention center for immigrant children in Texas and hearing about what these kids had been through, including an 11-year-old Honduran boy saying he’d seen five people mutilated on the train as he was coming up through Mexico. I remember the director of shelter telling me, “These children set off not understanding what they’re getting themselves into, but you now fully realize the dangers. You would only make the journey on these trains out of sheer stupidity.” I had to concede that he had a point. I obtained a letter from a newspaper colleague who had connections from the personal assistant to the president of Mexico asking that I be treated well while I was in Mexico. That kept me out of jail three times. I got an armed immigrant rights group in southern Mexico -- which is the most dangerous part because there the trains are controlled by gangs -- to accompany me on the trains. I obtained permission from all four train companies that operate up the length of Mexico, and I would meet with the conductors so at least they knew I was on board. I had a signal to wear a red jacket that I had strapped around my waist and would tell the conductors to try to look back occasionally and if they ever saw me waving madly, then something really bad was about to happen, so they can try to do something. I took as many precautions as I could, but it was quite tense and dangerous at times.

MJ: Did you ever have to wave your jacket?

SN: No, but I had many close calls. Usually bad things happen so quickly that you don’t have time to wave a jacket. I remember on one of my first rides through the southernmost state of Mexico, Chiapas, it was raining and I was on a fuel tanker, and people had warned me about a lot of the different dangers -- the gangsters, the bandits, the corrupt cops, all the things that can maim or kill you along the way. But they had not warned me about the tree branches that are alongside the train. In the middle of the night, people started screaming from the front of the train: “Brama (branch)!” I didn’t quite understand what was happening. The branch hit me squarely in the face, and it sent me sprawling back. I was able to grab a rail on the train, but almost fell off. I later learned that a teenager on the car behind me had been hit by the same branch and plucked off the train, and people didn’t know if he had survived or not. The train often as it’s in motion produces a sucking wind underneath and pulls you into the wheels. It took many months of therapy after I got back to not have a recurring nightmare of somebody running after me on top of the train trying to rape me.

After the branch incident, I wondered, was that too close for comfort? I had a migrant try to grab me on a train, and I was able to run away. That was pretty scary. I had a train derail right in front of mine. I had heard many stories about train derailments and how migrants would be tossed off the train, crushed under the cars or buried alive in sand inside the hoppers. I felt in constant danger and constantly looking out for people who could hurt me. In Chiapas, in southern Mexico, even when riding with six armed members of this immigration rights group, and they had AK-47s and shotguns, there were gangsters on top of the trains who were still robbing people at knife point at the back end of my train. The danger was always very real, when you would have gangsters lurking around the train stations with machetes. Another day I was interviewing people along a river in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, and I interviewed a girl who described being raped in the exact spot I had been in a day earlier. There were a lot of moments where I felt I was a little too close for comfort. But, as a journalist, I wanted to put people on top of the train next to the boy I was writing about, to really feel what it was like to ride alongside him, and experience everything he experienced with all their senses. I felt that to do that, I had to make this journey.

As much as I experienced cold and heat and exhaustion, at the end of a long ride, I would get off the train, go to a hotel, shower, eat and sleep. Many of these immigrant children spend months and months trying to get through Mexico on these trains. They’re deported, and they have to try again. They sleep in trees or tall grass by the tracks. They sip from puddles of water along the tracks. What I went through which left me nearly broken only gave me a glimmer of what these children go through, which is truly amazing.

MJ: You took Enrique’s route more than once – how did subsequent journeys differ from the first?

SN: I realized when I went back the second time to retrace the train route that as much as I was moved by the horrible things that happen to these kids along the way, I was equally moved by the incredible acts of kindness that these children experience along the tracks. I sought out people who help migrants. For example, in Vera Cruz in south central Mexico, there are people along the tracks who are incredibly poor and live on a dollar a day, and tortillas and beans, and barely have enough to feed their own children. Yet they come out to the tracks. They’ve seen how hungry and miserable these immigrants are. They have a tradition of coming out to the tracks, maybe 20 or 30 people in a small village, running out as the train is passing and throwing tortillas or beans or water. If they don’t have any of those, they come out and say a prayer. It’s unbelievably moving, and I had never seen faith practiced in that way.

I sought out that more than the horrific things that happened to migrants along the way -- the gangster who rob and rape them, the bandits who do the same, the corrupt cops who deport them back to Guatemala. I had focused before a lot on the train itself and how because migrants get on and off the trains while they’re moving to avoid immigration authorities in Mexico, they stumble or fall from train and get cut up by the train. They lose arms and legs. There’s a lot of depressing stuff going on, but I wanted to focus on uplifting things they experience equally.

MJ: Is there much camaraderie among the migrants on the trains?

SN: Yes. A lot of the adults look out for younger kids. I rode with a 12-year-old boy who was going to San Diego to find his mother, who had left for the north when he was one year old. A lot of older teenagers and adults would look out for him. Children have certain advantages because they’re smaller, and they can run fast and they can hide. They also are more successful at begging for food and water. But they sometimes need the protection of these adults. Adults would share water or food, and look out for one another and yell warnings to one another. But ultimately often when authorities showed up, and it was time to run, it each man, woman, or child for themselves. It was survival.

MJ: There are so many stories written about undocumented immigrants, and the points of debate on both sides have been repeated ad nauseum. What were some misconceptions that you wanted to dispel with your story or some different angles that had not been explored before?

SN: I think one of the things that really struck me was the incredible determination among these immigrants coming north on the train. I remember interviewing one teenager who was being deported again from Mexico to Guatemala. He was going north to find his mother. He had been robbed by bandits along the tracks, and one woman in his party had been gang raped. He had been deported 27 times. He was talking about after being deported, he was going to try attempt number 28. And he was going to reach his mother. I found that difficult to get my mind around, the level of determination. When you see that up close, you really question how many border patrol agents is it gonna take to stop people who are this desperate to come. That’s relevant as the senate gets set to debate competing immigration bills that include stronger border enforcement and temporary worker programs.

In terms of the debate, two things that struck me were that unfortunately immigration most hurts the most needy Americans, Americans who are native-born and do not have a high school degree, and that means largely African Americans and previous waves of Latino immigrants. Their wages and their employability have declined as a result of the huge influx of immigrants. I find that troubling. Another aspect that surprised me and I found troubling was that a lot of immigrant women are coming to the U.S. and leaving their children behind because they want to improve the lives of their children. But when they reunify, these children often feel they were abandoned by their mothers and they grow resentful and grow to hate their mothers. Too often, these immigrant women lose what’s most important to them, which is the love of their child.

What a lot of folks who work with immigrants up and down the rails in Mexico say is that it would be better if the United States could improve the economies of countries that send a lot of immigrants here – Mexico, Honduras – so that immigration would not hurt neediest Americans, and these women could stay working in these countries alongside their children. And that there should be different ways in which the U.S. uses foreign policies or trade policies aimed at trying to help countries that send most immigrants to the United States. We must address the factors pushing people out of those few countries rather than simply building walls. The building walls won’t work unless other side of equation is addressed. That’s the point that I heard strongest from people who help and work with immigrants along the rails.

Hi folks. I'm making a short post just to let you know that I am still working on some more stories of life in Nogales. I have many more stories to share with you. The story I have been working on is about Mexican nationals who have been brought back to Mexico by U.S. Border Patrol after being caught illegally. My hope is that you will see all sides of this issue and will be able to make an informed decision about how you will think and act on the issue of illegal immigration.

I've been back in the U.S. for about one month and I am taking it day by day. The adjustment process is harder than I expected but, as a friend said to me recently, for something new to grow, something else must die. I do feel that way about leaving Mexico. I feel like the thing that I love doing has to change or "die" in order for a new opportunity to serve to emerge.

God bless all of you for your prayers and your support while I was in Mexico. Remember to sign up in the space to the right of this text to get notification of new posts.

¡Sale pues!

steve

¡Adelante!

In Spanish, adelante means “go ahead” or “move forward”. This is the best word I can think of to describe how God has made it clear to us to move forward with a Christ- centered drug treatment center in our neighborhood.

The pastor of our local church, Ramon and one of the church leaders, Miguel, have a heart for drug addicts. Ramon was redeemed out of a life of drug dealing. Miguel was rescued by God from a life of drug addiction. Miguel was once the director of a Christian drug treatment center near Nogales, Mexico before the center was closed for lack of funds.

Over a year ago, Brian Donohue joined in an on-going conversation with Ramon and Miguel regarding the need for a drug treatment center that not only addressed the addiction but also showed the way toward a real life in Jesus Christ. Late in 2007, a piece of land was found at the far end of our neighborhood. It overlooked the city with what I think is one of the most beautiful vistas of Nogales. This photo is courtesy of Ryan Thurman, a Cuirim friend.


It is in an area of our neighborhood heavily populated with drug addicts. As we prayed about this and waited for God to provide funding to buy the parcel of land, the owner decided to sell it to someone else. It seemed that God was putting the plan on hold. The call to help drug addicts has not changed for Miguel and Ramon. Again, they were in a position of waiting for God to bring to fruition the hope that He had placed inside of them.

We started the summer work projects. About half-way through the summer, a single mother named Lisabeth approached Brian with an offer. She owned the plot of land next to the plot that we had wanted for the drug treatment center. Her husband had begun to build a home for them before he abandoned Lis and their 2 year old daughter. Lis was willing to trade with us for a different plot of land. Within 2 days, we had located a house for sale up the street from her mother. The existing house was in poor repair so we offered to build her a new house as well. Here a group of volunteers surrounds the house before demolition, praying for Lis and the neighborhood.


The cost of the property we bought for Lis was $1,600. We can build her a solid home for about $2,000. The total transaction is less than $4,000 which is about what we would have paid for the land we had looked at last year. As we choose to not fret over our plans not working out, we learn to wait for God to work things out because He knows when it is best to move forward. Because we waited and didn’t rush through another land deal somewhere else, we got the plot of land directly beside the one we originally wanted. Additionally, a single mother now has property in her name and a house for she and her daughter. Finally, the location of the new plot of land for the drug treatment center is located next to another, larger plot that may become available in the future, allowing expansion of the center as God provides. Here is an action shot of the work:


The initial plan calls for housing for 6-8 men in a single dormitory. In front of the dormitory is a chapel and behind that the future kitchen/office and bathroom. In the picture below you see the chapel being constructed of cement block. The wood structure to the right is the men’s dormitory. The concrete floor to the right will be the kitchen/office area.


Miguel has been named the director of the center. He is currently the cook for the Kid’s Café. When the center is up and running, he will work there exclusively. We are looking for someone to assume the responsibilities of cooking for the Kid’s Café. It is hoped that an older woman in the neighborhood, Doña Mica, can begin cooking for the kids soon. In order to complete the construction and open the center, we will need to raise $1,500 to complete the dorm, $1,200 for the kitchen, $2,500 to complete the chapel, about $1,800 to complete the bathroom, $750 for the office, $300 for the gate and about $400 for a flower garden. Please pray about this need as it is brought to your mind.

No one is certain as to the cost of operating the drug treatment center. We are estimating that we will need $1,200 per month for operating costs, mainly for the director’s salary. As with everything, we look for God to raise up people to support this outreach. It is very much needed. While we worked on the construction of the first building, I was approached by a man who lives across the street. When he learned what we were doing, he told me that he himself was addicted to crystal meth and he asked to be checked in. His name is Luis and he is 26 years old. I think we are in the place where God wants us.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

It seems that a lot of time has passed since my last post (it has). Our last volunteer group left Aug. 8 to return to Maryland. That has given me a little time to relax after the fast, fast, fast-paced summer work and to write a bit for you. So as I sit with a cup of coffee next to me, I can briefly recount what has transpired this summer.

For this year, we had five weeks slated to operate. Half-way through those five weeks, one week was a “free” week; that is, free of groups but still full of work to prepare for the remaining groups to come. Our first group was the youth group from Grace Fellowship Church in Baltimore, Maryland. I think they brought 35 people, give or take a couple. The youth group is called Shockwave and they are usually the first group of the summer every year. The kids are great to be with and they work very hard. This was a week of many inside jokes (You’re getting a little saucy there!).

The second week came a group of leaders from Grace Fellowship Church. They brought about 35 or so people with them. This is the week that sewage backed up into junction box where the waste pipes from individual waste pipes meet. Not knowing what was wrong, I wrapped my arm in several trash bags up to the elbow and felt around to see what was blocking the pipe. Not finding the problem, Brian started hauling about 15 buckets of sewage to the septic tank at the corner of the property. Within 24 hours, we discovered the problem (rocks lodged in the waste pipe between the junction box and the fosa septica [septic tank]). Our guests took it in stride, God bless ‘em. This was the week of mainly family units and I think a lot of them got closer as they spent time praying and working together. One family shared with me how they see more clearly what Jesus means when he says he offers us abundant life. They are in the process of stripping themselves of material possessions they have accumulated in the mistaken belief that that is abundant life. As relatively new followers of Christ, they are now seeking to live more simply at the feet of Jesus. They are changing their thinking and choosing to believe the truth that as co-heirs with Jesus Christ, we already have it all. Here is a picture of the group from the second week:



The “off” week was spent fixing broken things, cleaning and arranging for the two weeks of huge groups to come.

During week 3 we hosted a youth group from Eastpointe Christian Church in Maine along with another smaller group from Baltimore. The total number of people was about 55. Counting the staff of the Cuirim House and the Donohue’s children, the total number of people sleeping here was 63. The interior space of the Cuirim House including sleeping quarters, bathrooms and the kitchen totals about 2,000 square feet. Imagine having 63 people sleeping in your house for a week. This was the largest one group of people here this summer and the largest number to date at the Cuirim House at one time. Eastpointe built the jungle gym and hosted a carnival at the Kid’s Café in addition to working on construction projects.




For week 4, we hosted a group of alumni from Cambridge School near Baltimore as well as the youth group from my home church, Grace Church in Lynchburg, Virginia and a group from Belcroft Bible Church in the Baltimore area. We had about 58 people sleeping here. This was the week we began construction on the drug treatment center. The groups jumped into the work and we put the fence in, put up the walls for the dorm, poured cement floors and began the chapel. This week also saw a stomach bug sweep through the Cuirim House. The picture below is of a local working with two of the Grace Church youth to pick up free tires to use to make stairs to someone's house.





For the last operating week of the summer, a small group of 8 people came from River Valley Ranch in the greater Baltimore area. Even though this was the smallest group of the summer, they worked very, very hard and much was accomplished on the drug treatment center. Here is Brian and I installing chicken wire for the cement to stick to. That's how you make stucco in Mexico.



I don’t have complete numbers of how many construction projects we completed this summer but I do think we poured at least 25 cement floors. In no particular order, we built tire stairs for several families, installed a large tire wall, stuccoed several houses, put on several new roofs, and built and installed screen doors for several families. The youth group from Maine built the slide/swing set/jungle gym at the Kid’s Café.

Additionally, we did several projects at the church to prepare to expand the church building as the numbers increase. We continued working on the soccer field including extending the fence higher to keep the ball in play and building new goals. Other projects included painting people’s wood houses with used motor oil to make the wood water-resistant. (I like to think that between using old tires for stairs and water-proofing with used motor oil, we are at the forefront of recycling here.) Finally, every week we made food for indocumentados (illegals) deported from the U.S. who are stuck in Nogales. This was by far what I enjoyed the most this summer. I was able to talk to many men and women who shared about their families and why they crossed illegally. I’m going to write more about this soon; there is a lot I want to say about it.

The daily rhythms of prayer, work and study helped to get us out of thinking about ourselves and into thinking of God and our neighbors. Being out of our comfort zones allows us to finally hear what God has been saying to us all along. I know of at least one teen from one of the visiting youth groups who responded to God, trusting his future to Jesus and putting his life in the hands of the Savior. I am also aware of another young man who visited with his parents from Baltimore. He made a great connection with a Mexican peer in the local church and made a last-minute decision to return for another week with the group from River Valley Ranch. We enjoyed having him here and we were very happy that he decided to come back again. I think that God has great things in store for these young men as they continue to respond to God’s leading.

All of you who pray for us and donate your time and finances have had a part in all of our summer work. Your involvement is vital in inviting God to hold back the darkness that seeks to engulf our friends and neighbors in Nogales. As we pray and ask for God’s presence, he fills our streets and homes with light and peace. If the local church is a beach head in the lucha (struggle or fight) to proclaim Jesus’ name in Nogales, then the Cuirim House, the Kid’s Café and now the drug treatment center are the result of God moving forward into enemy territory. It is really awesome to know that we join God in this. He is already at work and always is. God doesn’t want people to go hungry, to be without shelter or to be ignorant of Him. Of this, I am confident. It isn’t what he originally planned for us as his creatures. Now, He takes the initiative to bring us into a life that is way better than we could have ever dreamt. We long for peace and righteousness in Nogales. We long for everyone to know intimately the one who gave his life for them. This is why we live.

The very little town of Santa Cruz

Yesterday, I took a short road trip to a puebla (small town) called Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz is 40 kilometers east of Nogales. The town lay behind the mountain range that runs north-south to the east of Nogales. I have wondered what lay behind the mountains that I can see from the Cuirim House. Here was my chance to find out.

The only road to Santa Cruz is dirt, full of rocks and extremely bumpy. A good speed that wasn’t too uncomfortable was about 35 miles per hour. The mountains were beautiful and there were more trees there than in Nogales. There were several scenic areas with dry river beds full of small rocks, large deciduous trees and lots of small animals. The road wound up the side of the mountain higher and higher. There were rocks that looked like marble and rocks of red, yellow and orange. Some rocks we found looked like volcanic rock. The sound of the wind through the trees was musical.

One place we stopped there was a dry waterfall with a shallow cave next to it. Unfortunately, after discovering it, it didn’t occur to me to take a picture. It reminded me of hiking through the Blue Ridge Mountains in autumn. By lunch time, we entered the town.

Santa Cruz reminded me of a small, out-of-the-way Mexican town that you see in movies with dusty streets, tumbleweeds, old men sitting in front of houses and the occasional barking dog. I wondered what in the world do people do to make a living. There were no farms, no factories, and few businesses of any sort.

In fact, there are no proper restaurants in Santa Cruz. We asked several people and we were directed to different houses but could not find a restaurant at these houses. The last person we talked to invited us to take lunch with her. As we sat in her kitchen and she served up beef stew, beans and flour tortillas, she said that there were no restaurants in the town but people sell food from their homes. She was an older woman with three adult children living in her home. She has 10 children total with one son having died some years ago. She answered our question as to what people do for work in Santa Cruz. Our hostess said that most everyone either sells marijuana or arranges for it to be delivered to the U.S. across the desert. That would explain the really nice houses and really nice trucks all through a town in the middle of nowhere. Miguel shared with her how Jesus Christ has changed his life and saved him from his drug addiction. We gave her $10 for our meal and left after blessing her and her house.

As we left, I saw something I had no expected. Growing on a fence next to the road was……….honeysuckle! I couldn’t believe it. I have thought often during this spring that this is the first time ever I will not see or smell honeysuckle because I am in Mexico. I didn’t think it grew in the high desert. But there it was, beautifully draped across the wire mesh and smelling as fragrant and fresh as always. I am grateful for this gift from God. He knew that I have wanted to smell honeysuckle and there it was!

The road to Santa Cruz comes within 25 yards of the US/Mexico border. The border fence in and around Nogales is solid steel, at least 20 feet tall and is topped with razor wire. Here the border fence consists of 7 strands of barbed wire fixed to metal poles and is about 4 ½ feet high. On the US side, there are pieces of steel welded together to make another fence. I imagine that it keeps drug runners from crashing their big black Chevy Suburban 4X4s through the barbed wire. Miguel contemplated entering the U.S. illegally but then changed his mind.

The trip back was beautiful as a storm front swept in, framing the mountains of green and brown against the blue-gray sky and it rained for the first time in 3 months.

The Kid's Café

In our neighborhood, there are children who do not eat a nutritious meal regularly due to poverty or parental neglect. To address this need, the Kid’s Café was developed as a ministry partnership between Cuirim Outreach and Iglesia Vida Nueva (New Life Church). Three times a week, Miguel Correa cooks a hot meal for the neighborhood children. Typically, between 70 and 80 children are served at the Kid’s Café each day. The menu changes from week to week. Sometimes Miguel cooks traditional Mexican food (well, it is just food here in Mexico). At other times, he serves more American style meals like hamburgers or spaghetti. Here is Miguel:

Older brothers and sisters bring their younger siblings and sometimes their parents visit to eat and talk. I myself know that several of the children come from families who are barely surviving financially and who could never afford to buy quality meat or vegetables. Before each meal, the children are led in a prayer of thanks to God for his provision.

The Café is more than just a place to eat. Usually after each meal, a member of the church leads the children in a Bible study. This past week, Lourdes taught the children about the Fall of Jericho. She used a flannel graph presentation. It reminded me of being a kid in Sunday School.

Before the lesson, Octavio led the children in a prayer for the victims of a terrible school bus accident in Nogales in which six children died. After the lesson, Octavio led the children in marching around Miguel's truck seven times, blowing whistles and yelling as the Israelites did at Jericho. I wish I had my camera when they did this because it was extraordinary to watch.

The Kid’s Café draws the attention of our neighbors toward Jesus Christ by meeting both their physical and spiritual needs. It has allowed the church to witness further into the neighborhood and offers church members a place to serve, to bless and be blessed. It is a place where children receive instruction on living rightly before God and their neighbors.

Thanks for praying for this work and for these children and their families. Thanks to all of you who give to the Kid’s Café. As donations allow, we are hoping to be able to build a playground at the Kid’s Café, too.

Dios te bendiga!

They came, they saw, they mixed cement

The Cuirim House recently hosted a group of high school students from New Covenant School in Lynchburg, Virginia. The group was led by Chaplain Bart Martin, Coach Andy Ashcroft, and Marion Patterson, the principal of the lower school. This was the first time a group from the school has visited Nogales. The project for the week was to repair the soccer field that we built last year. The repairs were needed because thieves have systematically stolen over half of the fence since Christmas.

Repairing the soccer field was the perfect job for the group from New Covenant School. The coach mentioned to me that all but one of the students played soccer for the school. Thus, the plan was to secure the existing fence, replace the missing fence and have a soccer game with the neighborhood kids to celebrate the work.

The group arrived Friday afternoon and immediately set to work. All of the students pitched in and did great work. Carlos, our construction chief, hatched a plan to secure the existing fence in about 5 inches of concrete at its base and to secure it to the posts with LOTS of wire. To make cement here, we take equal parts of gravel and sand and mix that with a 100 lb. bag of cement and add water. All of the mixing is done by hand with shovels. The mixing of cement can be back-breaking and the students worked with gusto. By evening on the first day, the existing fence was almost completely secured with cement. The next day, the students replaced the missing fence.

As the day’s work finished, the students cleaned up and played soccer with kids from the neighborhood. Coach Ashcroft was the star of the game, getting attention more for his outbursts in Italian than for his playing.

The next day the students made about 150 ham and cheese quesadillas to take to Grupo Beta, a government office established to help Mexican nationals who have been deported and are far from home. The deportees are taken by U.S. Customs agents to whatever border crossing is closest to where they were caught. Very, very often, the deportees are hundreds or thousands of miles from their families in southern Mexico and have no money to get back. Grupo Beta has a very limited budget and is unable to help feed the deportees much of anything. We took the quesadillas with us and spent time with some of the men sitting in front of the Grupo Beta.

The men were very appreciative and I was able to have a couple of great conversations in Spanish. By ministering to the down trodden, New Covenant School put Jesus’ command into practice and the students were able to see that the immigration issue in flesh and blood, rather than in news reports. We had lunch at Burrito Jaas, my favorite restaurant in Nogales and then attended the Sunday service at Iglesia Vida Nueva, the church with which Cuirim Outreach works closely.

On Monday morning, the group helped at the Kid’s Café. Some students served food to the children while others washed dishes. After the meal, we played a pick-up game of soccer with some of the children and teenagers in the street in front of the café.

We then finished the work at the soccer field, the remaining work being securing the new fence in cement. The afternoon of their last full day in Nogales was spent at the tourist market. We ended the day with a tour of different areas in Nogales that reflect both the extreme poverty and the influence on Nogales of foreign manufacturing companies.

While visiting, the group engaged in the Celtic pattern of work, study and prayer. The three times a day chapel helped to get us focused and then re-focused on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The students examined the immigration issue first hand and they worked with their hands and hearts in repairing the soccer field. We thank God for their work and for the gift of working among the poor in Nogales.

Further South of the Border V: Ramon’s Ark

This is the final installment of the story of our trip to Navojoa. In the last installment, our group was leaving Los Alamos for Navojoa.

The trip back to Navojoa was interrupted by a federal police check point. I was driving (of course) and we were motioned to pull over. They looked at all of our papers. We all stood outside the truck as they called in our information. After a few unnerving moments when I wasn’t sure what was going on, we were given back our papers and were allowed to continue toward Navojoa. I learned from Carlos that the federales are always looking for drug runners traveling between Navojoa and Los Alamos, where they go to transport their drugs by light aircraft.

We entered Navojoa as the sun was setting and we decided to pool the last of our money to buy food to have one last cook-out with Juan Pablo and his family and neighbors. The food was fantastic. As we ate, I realized that this was why I had not lost much weight since arriving in Mexico. I can't say enough about how great the food is here. For a future post, I am working on a tour of my favorite restaurants here. Here is Carlos prepping the food:

While we ate, I was talked into singing the opening lines from a popular Mexican song, Como Me Duele. We followed the meal with a cup of instant coffee (for which I have developed a taste) and a conversation about the new life that is available through Jesus. Miguel and Carlos gave their testimonies, living examples of the power of God to make all things new. Two people expressed interest in life with Jesus Christ but were not ready to commit themselves. We prayed together and said our good-byes. Pollo, Juan Pablo’s brother, adamantly stated to me “Mi casa es su casa” (My house is your house). It is good to know that I have a place to lay my head when I visit Navojoa next time.

It was 11:30 p.m. as we packed the truck and prepared to hit the road. I was very awake (thanks to the powerfully strong instant coffee) and I was the first to drive. As I watched the back of the Isuzu being packed, I was relieved that I saw no animals. I told to Carlos that we had dodged a bullet. He then told me that the medium-sized box in the back was full of chicks and baby turkeys. I discarded my nightmare fantasy of our becoming a traveling petting zoo. This seemed manageable.

During the drive north, we were stopped at two other checkpoints, both manned by the Mexican Army. Both times they searched the Isuzu, inside and out. Miguel said this was normal when travelling the highways of Mexico because the Army is looking for people transporting drugs. As the soldiers searched the vehicle in the cold morning air, I was thankful that in the U.S. our Constitution forbids the use of the Army to police citizens (not yet anyway). During almost the entire trip, I heard nothing from the animal box behind my head. However, as the sun rose, the box started chirping and gobbling and there was the sound of flapping feathers inside. I watched the lid of the box move up and down. I instantly had a vision of the car running off the road as we tried to corral the birds, feathers in our mouths and our eyes scratched out. I piled our bags on top of the box and the problem was solved. The remainder of the journey was uneventful. As we turned into the Colosio, the clock read 7:00 a.m. With a "sale pues", I crawled into bed, thankful for the experience, the safe journey and the gift of sleep. ¡Viva México!

Earlier this week, a house up the hill from the Kid's Cafe caught fire. Thanks to the high winds, the proximity to the neighbors and the highly combustible building materials, the fire rapidly spread to neighboring houses. In the space of about 10 minutes, four families were left homeless and what little they owned was but smoke and ash. I was astonished at how fast the fire spread. A water truck stopped and discharged its entire load to try to control the fire until the fire trucks arrived. Neighbors ran into the houses to make certain no one was inside. Others ran in to carry out the propane tanks used for cooking so they wouldn't explode when the fire reached them. As the fire continued to spread, the neighbors realized that their house was going to burn next. They ran in to carry out what they could before the flames reached their door. I felt despair as I watched these events unfold, knowing that there was nothing to do but pray that the fire wouldn't spread to more homes.

While the homes were burning, the women cried and were comforted by their more fortunate neighbors. All the while, the neighborhood children squealed with excitement as the flames grew and the fire trucks arrived. It seemed to take a while but the fire was brought under control. As the bomberos (firemen) were packing up their equipment, I surveyed the smoldering remains of the four homes and reflected on the transient nature of life and especially the things with which we surround ourselves. Within hours, the victim's neighbors, who have so little themselves, were walking around the neighborhood collecting money to give to the fire victims to start over again. I later learned that two homeowners were at work and didn't even know that they had lost their homes until they crested the hill and saw the ruins.

Later in the day, driving by the site of the fire, I was amazed to see the same families that had been crying earlier getting to work clearing the charred wood. This is what I have observed in Mexico; this way of resigning oneself to your circumstance and then moving forward with life. This might be the most powerful impression that I have of Mexico. Regardless of almost any misfortune, Mexicans seem to be able to move on without being stuck in feeling sorry for themselves. I think about words like indomitable and intrepid and I think about Mexicans. Aside from their hospitality, the Mexican's ability to move forward through tragedy is probably what endears me most to these people.

There are no ordinary people

I was sitting behind the Cuirim House this morning, watching the day start on the hillside opposite. I watched people as they walked down steep paths from their homes towards the main road. I watched men, young and old, mix cement and lay block as they added a new room to their small house. I watched the water trucks, announcing by loudspeaker their presence with a catchy tune and an indecipherable commercial message. I listened to the music wafting up the hill.

As I absorbed all of this, I was reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis. In an essay called “The Weight of Glory” from a collection of essays by the same name, Lewis reminds us of the truth that all human beings we encounter are objects of the Divine Love. They and we are all created beings in the image of our Creator.

Lewis entreats us in the last paragraph of the essay to practice truly loving our neighbors as ourselves. Lewis says “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which… you would be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal and their life is to ours is as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals with whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the most holy object presented to your senses.”

God help us to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength AND to love our neighbor with the kind of love that God has for them. I am cut to the quick as I write this. In my rare moments of clarity, when God has gifted me with lucid thinking, I see my family, friends, co-workers and strangers through His eyes. In those moments, I understand the weight of their coming glory or their coming damnation. I realize that I am talking to someone with whom I will forever be intimately connected through the common bond of Christ or someone who will forever be cast from the presence of the God.

Let’s ask God to help us to love those who are hard to love. This is hard and it takes time to direct our minds to see past people’s behavior but we can start with the desire to love them as Jesus loves them and us. Let us always remember that we are not worthy of the love of God. He loves us in spite of ourselves.

Further South of the Border IV: Los Alamos, City of Gringos

What I realize now, thinking back on the adventure, is that in the back of my mind during the entire trip was the dread of traveling with farm animals inside of a vehicle for 8 hours or more. Any one who knows me knows that I have a nose that will sniff out the slightest odor. It is a gift and a curse. I anticipated being nauseous for the duration of our trip home and I was preparing myself for it. I kept secretly hoping that the search for animals would prove fruitless.

After finishing our meal at the outdoor market, we drove to Los Alamos. The highway leading to the city was surrounded by beautiful hills. Carlos mentioned that Los Alamos is very popular with Americans who come down to hunt and fish for vacation. I was aware that there are areas in coastal cities like Mazatlan, Sinaloa with enclaves of American ex-patriots but I wasn’t aware that Los Alamos was one of them. As we drove into the city, I began to understand why. We first drove to the plaza. It was beautiful and, on one side, was the Catholic church. Within the plaza was an absolutely beautiful gazebo surrounded by plants and flowers and palm trees.

The ceiling of the gazebo was a work of art:

We walked into the church silently as there were several people praying. It was very much like previous Mexican churches I had been in and I appreciated that it was open to the public during the day instead of only during Mass.

We walked around a bit and absorbed the atmosphere. As we talked I learned that Americans living in Los Alamos outnumber Mexicans. I found this surprising and yet not surprising. If I were to retire to Mexico, Los Alamos would certainly be one of my choices. This also explained the number of police officers patrolling the city on foot, all polite and extremely helpful. I guess the city knows that to keep the area attractive to Americans, they need to supply what Americans want: police protection and lots of restaurants and shops.

On one of the hills surrounding the city is a scenic overlook. We drove up there to take in the sights. It was really beautiful and I wish the picture here could convey the openness, the smell of the blossoming trees and the feel of the wind blowing. At the summit of the hill was a gazebo and several seating areas hewn from stone. Artistry and craftsmanship seemed to emanate from the city below us, so full of color and life.

We posed for a group picture before heading back down and toward Navojoa.