Dr. Jim's WebLog

Ah, Mexico!
My daughter and I traveled to Mexico (Juarez, border town) with a small church from Fort Collins last week. The twenty-odd of us were there to build a house for a poor family under the auspices of Missions Ministries.

I had gone a couple of years ago with my own church. You arrive on site and there is a 12 x 36 foot concrete slab poured onto the desert floor. A crew of locals has already delivered presawn lumber and other parts. You get to work, swinging a hammer, nailing 2x4's together into a wall, then nailing siding on the wall. By noon, the walls are up and the roof is being lifted on. By two, the walls are insulated and it's time to go back to the hotel for a hot shower.

Next day, we put up drywall, wired the place, and painted the outside. Early afternoon, we had a ceremony where we gave the family the keys to their new house. It was so moving.

It's easy for us Americans to feel superior as we give this house to a poor family, but under the surface it's more complex. The Mexican kids had longer attention spans than those up here, for example--I saw them site in rapt attention as one of the women read stories to them in Spanish. They played nicely, had big smiles on their faces, and the two kids who were going to live in the house met the bus and introduced themselves to us. One was named Jaime (pronounced Hi-may) which is also my spanish name, and he got the biggest grin when I told him so!

So I came back more humble. I met some wonderful people who have next to nothing, but have huge hearts and many more friends than I have. They have a strong religious faith that I envy. My daughter loved the people she met and thought the kids were just so cute that she wanted to bring them home with us.

I think we will be going back.