Conversions at the Border

Jan 24
What a remarkable day. Today we met with Mark Adams at Frontera de Christo, a Presbyterian minister who lives the word better than anyone I have ever seen. His commentary and commitment were beyond that of Jim Stevens of C2C. Truly a man on a mission. He talked about how he saw examples of faith in the people in Mexico that he had never seen before. He choked up telling us about when he had been first invited to a cement block walled (with no roof) new construction of a house for some bible reflection. The house if he could call it that was two rooms and one bedroom the size of a small apartment. There were six people living there. That night they read the gospel of John and he was thinking “how could these simple uneducated people understand such a complex and theoretical passage?” But when asked how they had heard God speaking in the passage one man said, “and the word became flesh and dwelt among us… that means that God understands what it is like to be out of place, because he left heaven and divinity to be with us. He knows what we feel.” On a subsequent visit there were 12 people living there and by Christmas there were 20. Mark asked if some could come and live with him but the home owner said that he had plenty of room. He said that when he had left Chiapas he thought about building a casita but he had decided instead to build a big home where many people could stay. Mark could not finish the sentence with the thought that what he had considered a tiny house was to this man a spacious home with room for everyone.

It has us all thinking about the scarcity that we Americans operate from. If only we saw life with the abundance that these people lived with we might approach it all differently. He spoke so openly and articulately about this like it was a conversion experience. Yesterday we listened to Mike Wilson of Tucson who diligently puts out water bottles at various stations along trails in the Tohono O’odham nation lands. Mike was a former Special Forces green beret in El Salvador and one day he was working and it was hot. So he decided to have a banana split. He was outraged by the price of $3.60 he had to pay but, heck, he had the money and paid. Later that day he was to have dinner with some people he had befriended so he went home with the wife and her two kids. After dinner her husband came home from his job of driving a bus along the rural routes. He was exhausted and he put a mason jar of change on the table and began to count out his days wages – over 12 hours of driving. As he stacked up the coins and tallied his entire wage for the day, Mike was crushed with guilt and embarrassment – the man had not even made as much as Mike had paid for his ice cream treat.

These little events are the conversion experiences these folks describe. Mike thinks of himself as Saul turned Paul – a former trained killer now saving lives on a daily basis. Where yesterday I was so weighed down by the gravity of it all I could hardly speak, tonight I have hope.

We are staying tonight at a refuge called CAME in the Mexican border town of Agua Priete. We had dinner with some of the migrants – some who are on their way to the US and two who had just been deported after 13 years in Phoenix. One of the men going north was Daniel, who had waked on foot from western Argentina through Peru, Ecuador, Panama and then was canoed through the jungle waters of Panama into Costa Rico and eventually walked into Mexico. He had done this in just 45 days. This man was determined. The stories are all like that. Two young men from a little further south who were trying to go across were just the most polite and wonderful young men you could want to meet. Neither spoke a word of English and none of us had much Spanish. But we communicated with the occasional help of our interpreter.

We spoke with two of the volunteers – one of which was just 18 years old. Steven had been volunteering every day after school for the last four years. I asked him why he did this and he said that everyone in his church does it - it is needed so he does it. Just that simple. I told him that I hoped my son would grow up to have those values as well.

Everyone is asleep now but I have stayed up – filled with good thoughts inspired by people who are living their mission and who see god in every person they meet.