Category Archives: Volunteering in Mexico

Some very exciting Thanksgiving News

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We have 2 pieces of VERY exciting news to share…

But let me back up a bit.  Today on this Canadian Thanksgiving, I am once again reflecting on all we have, remembering where we have been, dreaming about where we will go.  Last month marked the 5-year anniversary of our move here and it would be an understatement to say that my life looks absolutely nothing like I expected it to.   I have had a lot of 5-year bubbles in my life, but this one picked me up and took me to a place I had never known existed and had not bought a ticket for.    I have always promised to be real, and I know you are wondering if we’re still happy here or if that bubble has burst. 

It is hard to answer that without acknowledging that 2020 has been LOCO!  For everyone.  In the world.  And it has indeed been crazy for us too.

If you follow my social media accounts, you already know that we have been delivering food to those in need in our community for the past 7 months.   Our Golf Cart Rental customers scattered in March and within a week we were delivering bags of staples to those who were most affected by the tourism shutdown.  Beach vendors, restaurant workers, hotel employees, market vendors – no tourists meant no income and that meant no food.  Most had no reserves, no savings, no pantries, no stockpiles.  They were instantly in trouble and our empty golf carts were perfect to deliver supplies throughout our town.

In these 7 months we have changed.  Yes, our daily routine is different.  We have met new people. Learned about new colonias and barrios. Seen Mexico through different eyes.  But it is more than that.  It is us.  We have changed.

When we first moved here 5 years ago, it was our intention to build a beautiful house in a beautiful development with a beautiful view of a beautiful bay.  We always planned to help others – we were already connected to volunteering at a local orphanage.  But I think I saw our service at a bit of a distance from our actual life in the suburbs.   2020 drew us into the center of pain and poverty.  We became friends with women with bruised faces.  Homeless families living under tarps in fields.  Seniors with untreated broken bones.  Children with rotting, black teeth from their steady diet of coca-cola.   Animals with protruding ribs and open sores.  So much sadness and need and pain. 

My little friend was angry we didn’t stop!

But also, so much love and strength.  New relationships with strong moms carrying babies on their chests or backs – heading to the beach to try to sell a few trinkets.  Families banding together to care for one another.  Loud music and laughter and fiestas because birthdays are just really important here.  Everywhere we go now, people waving at us and offering us frozen fruit water and crafts and tortillas to thank us.  One mom told me last week that her 2-year-old daughter was very angry at us.  When I asked why she said her daughter had seen us drive by a few days prior and we hadn’t stopped to talk to her.  She had called after us but we didn’t hear and we didn’t stop.  She now looks forward to seeing us every week and I look forward to seeing her too.  That’s not just offering charity – that’s friendship.

A few months ago we made a decision that this work is part of who we are now and this week we signed some very important papers.  That’s our first piece of good news.  Grant and myself and our friend Francisco signed the final documents to register Refuge of Hope, Bucerias as a charity here in Mexico.   It wasn’t easy.  Legal things never are here in Mexico.  And then you throw in a pandemic and you can only imagine how slow it all was.  But it is now official, and we have some very cool plans for working in a community that I didn’t even know existed 5 years ago.   A community that I would have been frightened to drive through just a few months ago.

Which brings us to our second piece of Thanksgiving news.  A few months ago, we stumbled upon a big, abandoned building on the edge of the community we have been working in.  We immediately felt a pull to the building and after a bunch of miracles we found the owner, made her an offer and today she accepted.  We also were able to find the owner of an adjacent lot and make a deal with him.  So, on this Thanksgiving Day, it appears that we are about to be the owners of a true Refuge of Hope! 

We have lots of pictures and visions and thoughts that we will share with you in coming days.  We will need your support as we create a place for the children of the neighborhood to come for meals, after-school care, help with homework, skills training, psychological and spiritual guidance.   Maybe even a residential children’s shelter.  We are excited.  We are terrified.  Mostly we are grateful that in the midst of pain, we have seen and experienced great hope. 

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat Isaiah 25:4

So Happy Canadian Thanksgiving friends and family. We miss you terribly but we know we are exactly where we are meant to be in this crazy 2020 and so are you! And don’t worry about us – we managed to find ourselves a traditional turkey dinner in a beautiful garden under the stars. We couldn’t be more grateful!

Rice and Beans, Beans and Rice

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Wow – our last post was 6 weeks ago and our lives look very different – and yet surprisingly unchanged.  In our last post I told you we had delivered 25 bags of food to people in our community who are now unemployed.    Today we will deliver our 1,000th bag!  And considering each family is at least 5 people, that’s over 5,000 people who have been fed using the donations that our friends, family and coworkers have sent our way.

I have lots of stories and each day I have updated my Facebook page with pictures and musings of the day – I just haven’t sat down to update my blog.  I promise I will.

20200511_130355When we started this feeding program, we spent time researching what should go in our bags of staples.  We googled and we spoke to other groups doing the same work.   We asked some of our local friends who themselves were struggling.  Our goal was to feed a family for a week.  After a few changes and substitutions – balancing cost with need – we came up with these ingredients:

  • Macaroni – 220 g
  • Rice – 900 g
  • Oats – 1 kg
  • Black beans – 900 g
  • Milk – 2 L
  • Tuna – 295 g
  • Chicken bullion cubes or powder
  • Corn flour
  • Oil
  • Tomato Sauce
  • Potatoes
  • Oranges
  • Cucumbers
  • Carrots
  • Chicken – ½ or whole.
  • Digestive Cookies

For those who don’t have refrigerators we give eggs instead of chicken.

We also include one lime cream dessert cooked by a single mom who we are trying to help get on her feet.  She wants to start a restaurant and we thought it would be good exposure to send one of her favorite products out into the community.  Helping Ana Luisa start her new business will certainly be a future project for us and a future post!

After a few weeks of delivering these bags,  after spending so many hours shopping and bagging these items, we began to wonder how people were managing.  Were these the right items to get you through a week?   5 days?  So we did what any good researcher does – we staged an experiment.   Could Grant and I live off the contents of one of our bags for one week?

We had a few rules to make it a bit easier:

  1. I could use any spices or condiments I already had in the house
  2. We could eat any food we found – ie fruit on trees
  3. We could eat food given to us – within reason. I did turn down one loaf of homemade bread that I really, really wanted but I knew was cheating
  4. Beverages were not part of the experiment – losing my coffee would not be good for anyone!

So how did we do?  I’d give us an 8 out of 10.  It was easier than I expected in many ways.  I learned how to make tortillas from scratch, to take dry beans and make a delicious pot of savory beans, to use the basic tortilla to make tostados and taquitos and empanadas.   Most of it was delicious.

What didn’t go well? 

  • Making food from scratch takes more time and creates more dirty dishes. The beans need to be soaked the night before, the tortilla dough need to be made and allowed to rest for a while.  The rice wasn’t instant – neither were the oats.  That was all difficult while trying to increase our food delivery work and being gone a number of hours each day.  My slow cooker was definitely my friend.
  • I really needed more vegetables. A salad please.  More fruit.  I admit I did grab some frozen berries from the freezer to add to the oatmeal today.
  • Canned tuna is weird here. It’s not chunky – it’s runny.  I’m not buying that again.
  • I really miss eggs in the morning. And bacon.  And toast.  And bacon.
  • You really have to watch packaged food down here for bugs. The day I opened the bag of macaroni to add to the soup, hundreds of little black bugs invaded my counter.  Some got boiled – the rest just ran everywhere.  As I was digging behind things on the counter to catch the bugs, I found a dead mouse in the Borax ant trap.  That was just a bad day with lots of screaming.

What did we eat?  Here is our menu and a few pics – honestly, that part went better than expected.    A lot of Rice and Beans, Beans and Rice.  But with different spices it wasn’t so bad.  This was our menu:

Menu

Did we cheat?

Surprisingly little!  I did put some peanut butter on the boring cookies.  A tiny bit of pineapple in the Chicken Fried Rice.  Some frozen berries in the oatmeal and empanada.   We bought a mini croissant from a street vendor because he really needed a sale.  One family we delivered food to insisted we accept their gifts of tamales and hot chocolate and jello.  And one total cheat Meatball Stroganoff with friends who invited us to their home – because in the end relationships are more important than experiments and we needed laughter more than beans.

What did we learn?

This bag of food was enough for 2 of us for this week, but most certainly is a stretch for a family.  Mexican families eat a lot more tortillas than we do, so I know that is a filler and we have lots of flour left.  We have rice and beans left, and could have eaten much smaller bowls of oats each morning.   The chicken went a long way and families could make bigger pots of soup than we did using the chicken stock.  I would like to add a few more veggies – more carrots, maybe some peppers.

Our biggest lessons were the emotions we experienced and the recognition of how blessed our lives have always been.  As self-employed entrepreneurs, we have had financial ups and downs.  There have been seasons in my life where I took the calculator to the grocery store to make sure I stayed within a super tight budget and days where I had to put things back when the total ran over.    I have clipped coupons and scoured sales flyers.  And yet on our very worst day, we had fridges and cupboards overflowing with fruits and vegetables and staples.   Our pantries have never truly been empty.  We have never gone hungry.  My children have never had to chase down strangers in a golf cart to beg for food.   And nothing I have done has caused me to deserve the privileged life I have lived.

This experiment, this whole last 6 weeks, has messed with our minds.  Last week (and probably tomorrow) when I ordered pizza, Grant reminded me how many food bags we could provide for that amount.  The disparity is uncomfortable, and we want to learn how to be grateful for what we have and to turn that gratefulness into generosity, not into some kind of unproductive guilt.

20200425_111814I won’t lie – I am glad this week is over.  I am ready to get back to eating what I want – a pizza, a big salad, some peanut butter on a slice of toast, a steak off the BBQ.  Did I mention bacon?  The people we are serving don’t have that option.  For many we will deliver their 2nd or 3rd or even 4th bag and they will eat it all again.  More rice, more beans, a couple of oranges divided up.  And they will also be grateful that strangers from Canada and the US and Mexico donated money so that their children could go to bed tonight with food in their bellies.  Thank you – your generosity has blown us away!  I don’t know how long this will last.  Every night before bed I look at the money left in the bank and tell Grant  “We have enough money for 200 more bags”.  5 more days.  And then it multiplies.   And we keep delivering.

To Donate to Food for Families:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/food-for-families-banderas-bay-relief?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

CONFESSION UPDATE:

After I finished writing this post, I made our last pot of rice, warmed up the last bit of refried beans and reheated a few tortillas.   Then we looked at each other and agreed …. we need meat.  We grabbed a piece of beef from the fridge, heated up the BBQ and made some proper tacos.   So 7.5 out of 10 it is…..20200518_185639

Through Our Covid-19 Window

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Many of you have been reaching out to make sure we are okay down here and to ask how things look in our neighborhood.   While Mexico is a couple of weeks behind Canada and the US, we are facing the same situation, the same questions, the same directives and the same fears as you are dealing with north of the border.

As of today, there are 94 cases and 3 deaths in Jalisco, which is our next-door neighbor.  In our state of Nayarit, there are 8 cases reported and 1 death.  But we are being told that Apr 2-19 is when our trajectory will rise.  We have been given the same STAY AT HOME orders as you have.  Schools have been closed for 2 weeks, public gatherings have been shut down and hospitals are ramping up in preparation.  There are, however, some dynamics that are unique to our location, our culture and the economic situation that look different.  For instance:

  • Tourism: We live in a tourist area and the majority of local people work in that industry.  I read that 70,000 hotel workers in this bay were laid off this week.  Restaurants are closed, empty beaches have no customers for the wandering vendors and people who spend the winter and spring months entertaining snowbirds are juggling on empty street corners. The busiest week of the year, Semana Santa, has been canceled.  People here are panicking, and many small businesses have simply refused to close.  Social media posts begging people to stay home are bombarded with the same angry comments, “If I don’t work, my family doesn’t eat.”
  • Social Assistance: While the government has started talking about helping, there is simply no infrastructure or systems in place to do so.  If you are a family of 10 living in a tiny one room shack made of tarps, who even knows you exist?  Who is coming to give you help?
  • Economic reality: Many people here live day to day.  When I say paycheque to paycheque, I am not talking about enough for a month.  Many workers here are paid weekly, some even daily.  And that daily wage might only be minimum wage, which is just over $100 pesos – that’s $5 US dollars a day.  They work to get enough to live for a few days.  In my community, many don’t have stocked pantries, full freezers or emergency funds.  Many don’t even own a fridge.  To be told to stay home for a month, or even a week, is not possible.  To be out of work for months, is devastating.  The threat of contracting an unseen virus seems much less scary than the threat of watching your children starve.  People here are scared, and it is not of Covid-19.
  • Fiesta Culture: I am quite sure Mexican people have built in genes that compel them to sing and dance and hug and laugh and PARTY all the time.  They are not created for quarantine.  At all.  Last night I took Nacho for a walk, and just a few doors down from my house, a neighbor was holding a party for a 3-year-old.  At least 60 people crammed in an empty lot and spilling onto the street in front.  Music blaring.  Young families with their children.  Crowded around tables piled with food. As if they didn’t even know we are fighting to wipe out a deadly virus. A party for a 3-year-old who probably couldn’t care less.  This is going to be hard for my fun-loving Mexican friends.

So we are fine down here, relaxing in our garden and walking alone on the beach.  This morning we took our breakfast to the beach and watched a whale just off the shore.  It is very strange, however,  to see so few white faces around.  It has been another sharp reminder that this is indeed our home now.  As so many friends scrambled to find flights north, we settled into our own cocoon of safety.

But we are concerned for our neighbors and have begun to look for ways to help.  Our golf cart rental business is shut down, but we have used our carts to pick up leftover food items from tourists heading home.  Our carts spent a few hours Sunday evening driving our local church leaders around town delivering 100 meals to people in the community who are already facing shortages of food.

Bloom Church from Regina sent us a donation and we used it to put together 25 bags of staples to deliver to people we know are already starting to suffer.

 

I know you are struggling, and your city has needs too.  But if you want to share with what we are doing here, this is what $20 Canadian ($15 US) will purchase:

  • Macaroni – 220 g
  • Rice – 900 g
  • Pinto beans – 900 g
  • Black beans – 900 g
  • Milk – 2 L
  • Tuna – 295 g
  • Chicken stock – 490 g
  • Tomato Sauce – 1 L
  • Apples
  • Oranges
  • Cucumbers
  • Carrots
  • 1 whole chicken

This will feed a family for a few days, maybe a week.  If you send us that amount, we will purchase and deliver the bag of groceries to a family that is hungry.  You will be a part of what we are trying to be down here – a refuge of hope in a place of brokenness.

So stay safe friends and family – we’re only a video chat away always!  We will all get through this and just maybe, the world will emerge as a kinder place, where we truly cared for ‘the least of these’.

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The Saddest Goodbye

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This is the saddest blog story to date, but I have promised to be real about our life here and sometimes that means sharing the tough stuff too.

One of the things that drew us to move to this area on the Bay of Banderas was our work at the Children’s Shelter Manos de Amor.  From the very first visit, we fell in love with the children and with the work that was being done in the shelter.  Children who needed a safe place because their own moms and dads and grandmas just couldn’t care for them.  For many reasons.  For hard reasons.  Every little one had a story and we became a part of each one.

We taught them English.  We drove them from their little homes in surrounding villages back to the safety of the nest.  We held them as they cried and wiped up a LOT of snot with our shirt sleeves.  We had them live in our home on weekends – one little one for 6 weeks while she awaited surgery for an illness too terrible to talk about.  We organized fundraisers and we painted another layer of bright yellow paint over muddy fingerprints.  We sat in a hospital room with one living in silence as he received the cochlear implant that would finally give him sound.  We gave our hearts fully to them and felt God’s hand in every minute of it.

Unfortunately, over the past couple of years we have also experienced some disappointing things that have now caused us to step back and away from the home and the organization.  Some values that don’t align.  Some behaviors that we can’t justify.  Some attitudes that are contrary to who we want to be and who we want to work with.  Some missing accountabilities and foggy transparency.  I am not going to give details here – you can contact me if you want – but as a member of the Steering Committee who worked for almost 2 years to repair some of the breaches, we now realize that it is time to move on.  As a committee we were almost fully united in our plea – please hear us or we must leave.

I won’t lie – our hearts are broken.  But we also feel peace in knowing that when you do what you believe is right, good things can happen.  Even when it hurts.  Love always wins and standing up for love, demanding integrity, fighting for kids is always right.

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We are definitely not done caring for the ‘least of these’ in our community.   We see intriguing doors in front of us and we are so excited to move ahead with passion, expectation, grace, forgiveness, and hope.  There will soon be more snot on our sleeves, and we are pumped!  Stay tuned…

 

Love Always Wins

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Now that tourist season is over, our little town is quieter and visitors to the Children’s Shelter where we work are fewer.  That has given me some time to think about the many families and volunteers who visit us over the winter and to ask the question that others have asked me “Is it good for strangers to visit children who come from hard places?”.  Honestly, there are many answers to this question and as a disclaimer, let me say that this post is going to contain my opinion based on my experience.  That’s it.  My personal gut feeling.  Which I think is okay because….. it’s my blog!   It’s my story.  If you have a different opinion – well that’s okay too.

Grant and I brought our daughters to visit Manos de Amor for the first time in December of 2011.  We knew we couldn’t keep vacationing in beachfront resort Mexico without also engaging in dust covered back street Mexico.  So, we googled, we went shopping and we showed up at the door that would change our lives forever.

015.jpgI will never forget that day.  We had absolutely no shared language, but we played games and colored pictures and ate soup and wiped snotty noses and honestly, we didn’t consider if our presence in their home could be hurting these little ones, we just wanted to love them.  Perhaps our motivation was more to assuage our gringo guilt, but our love was genuine, and our laughter was shared.

Top: Me and Brayan  Bottom:  Rubi, Carlos, Grant & Fernanda

Since that time, I have read books and online articles and watched videos that tell me that short-term missions projects or visits can be harmful to those we think we are helping and as a member of the Steering Committee of Manos de Amor we discuss how to best invite guests into the home in a way that is safe.  I have read strong arguments and stats on both side of the issue.   But as I reflect on my personal experience and observation, it always comes down to one simple phrase:  Love always wins.  Showing love is always good and caring for the poor is always right.  That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be healthy boundaries, and if you come to visit us, we are going to give you a brochure with some guidelines we want you to follow.  Affection and attachment and giving of gifts can be confusing to children who come from backgrounds of abuse or neglect.  It would take more than this blog post to share all my views on HOW to do this well, but I want to assure you that you CAN make a difference with your once-a-year visit to our home.  I know because it happened to us!

That first day 8 years ago I met Brayan and Carlos and Fernando and Daniella and Rubi and Jackie.  This week, as in most weeks, I waved at Jackie on Facebook while looking at pictures of her little girl.  This morning I sat in church with Fernanda and Rubi and we shared gum and hugs and Rubi reminded me to bring her prize to English class tomorrow since she finished 5 lessons this week.  She was proud of herself.  Last week I ate Tacos Pastor with Brayan and Carlos and a small thing happened that day that prompted me to write this blog.

Brothers, Brayan and Carlos, 8 years later

The past few months whenever visitors have come and wanted pictures of the children, Carlos would hang back and when I prompted him to get in the picture he would say “No Karen.  No picture”.  He is a preteen and I respect that he is setting his own boundaries.  He doesn’t want to be in pictures with strangers.  I think that is fair and I told him that.  Even when I tried to take his picture he would say “No Karen.  No picture.”   Screenshot_20190602-161803_resized (002)But on Thursday, Carlos took my phone from me and asked for a selfie with me.  He applied some filters, opened my Facebook app and posted the picture with the caption, “Carlos.  Karen.  Friend” with a bunch of emojis of smiles and heart and thumbs up.  He looked happy in the picture. And it hit me really hard.  I have known Carlos for the better part of his life.  Longer than his dad was alive with him.  Far longer than his own mom knew him before she left.    What started as an afternoon visit from strangers turned into a selfie and a caption filled with love.  A friendship.

So, if you are wondering if it is a good thing to visit us next time you are in town …. YES.  It is.  Not to fix us but to serve us.  Not to give us stuff but to show us love.  To learn as much as you teach, receive as much as you give. To empower rather than enable, to respect rather than judge.  Your heart will be broken – that I guarantee.  But in the breaking, your love will grow deeper.  And if you’re lucky, you might just find yourself living on a dusty street in my neighborhood eating tacos and taking selfies with little Mexican kids.

It’s not that complicated.  Love always wins.

Giving, Kindness & Acceptance

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45139569_10215621288638874_8553295776481017856_n.jpg

Recently I was invited to join a group called South of the Border Bloggers (SOTB), a group of writers who have all had experiences like mine living in Mexico and other countries south of the US border.  I have never considered myself a blogger or a writer, but I like the idea of connecting with others who have their own crazy stories to tell and of sharing ideas and thoughts and maybe even support.   Each month the group picks one topic to write about and this month, in honor of American (and Canadian?) Thanksgiving they chose the title Giving, Kindness and Acceptance.

Although I don’t have American or Canadian cable TV, I do have Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.  I hear what is happening in the world.   I know that giving and kindness and acceptance are having a difficult time right now.  Definitions are shifting.  Opinions about who deserves acceptance and who needs to give it are being debated by politicians and churches.  Kindness is being lost in polls and demonstrations and hashtags.   They say that the solution to gun violence is not more kindness but more guns and the streams of broken people seeking shelter and safety are not brothers we should give to but invaders coming to take from us.  They…. We…. are building walls to separate us rather than bridges to connect us.   No, I’m not picking on any one political party – it’s just all of us.  We all do it.

IMG_20160704_174431_edit_editI know I do it.  One of the things I have struggled with here is looking into the bitter eyes of the children I work with, and not being filled with anger and judgement towards their parents and caregivers.  Oh, how I want to judge.  Drug addiction, prostitution, poverty, alcoholism, violence, abandonment.  So many mistakes that have landed on the shoulders and hearts of these children.  It’s not hard to justify my stinkin’ judgey attitude.

 

This month as I considered this topic and as I considered Thanksgiving, I was reminded that “but for the grace of God go I”.  I know how much I have to be thankful for.  In fact, every day in 2018 I have been writing in my Lovely List – 20181113_162547_resized.jpgI have over 950 items now.  The hummingbird in the garden today, the laughter with my husband, the help of a friend, the crazy antics of a puppy, a text from a daughter, a really good taco …. So many things to be thankful for.  Family and faith and home and my daily bread.  But I also recognize that I did nothing to deserve any of it.   Where I was born, who I was born to, the education I was given, the security I have always had and always taken for granted…. I did not earn any of it and do not deserve it.  Not more than the sweet boy who lives in a one room house in the slums made of tarps, or the 5-year-old who was given an STD by a relative or the young daughter raped by her father who she trusted.

So what does acceptance look like in this place?  I don’t think it means that we accept injustice.  We must keep fighting that.  But I am trying to accept that these parents are doing the very best they can.  I accept that they were also broken as children and don’t know how to give love or guidance because they’ve never seen it.  I’m trying to believe that it is in the acceptance of the broken, that we can finally get to the giving of the kindness.

So Happy Thanksgiving to my friends North of the Border!  Enjoy the turkey and the trimmings and the love of your family.  Don’t feel a bit guilty – you have been given a great gift.  But please, take a moment to give away some kindness, to offer love and acceptance to someone who might not seem to deserve it.    Put the debates on hold and the Facebook rants on silent and the judgements in the trash can – and just go #love someone!

“Freely you have received; freely give”  Matthew 10:8

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45139569_10215621288638874_8553295776481017856_nCheck out some other thoughts on this subject by the SOTB

 

 

Are We Happy?

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Recently one of my friends emailed me to question whether we are really happy here.  Whether we are at peace.   Which made me realize that a LOT of my blog posts are about the crazy and difficult things that happen to us here.  Let’s face it – drama makes for better blog reading.

But as the 3-year anniversary of our move passed in September, I thought this would be a good time to consider the question.  Are we happy?  And if we are, why?  What are the things we love about living here.  Just thinking about the question made me smile.  YES!  We are happy.  I am happy.  It is a bit hard to put into words what makes something ‘right’ or ‘good’ but I can think of many tangible things that I love about our life here:

  • The weather. I can’t lie.  The weather had a lot to do with why we moved and that has not changed.  Yes, it is super hot right now, but I still love the perpetual summer and although autumn is no longer about pumpkins and gourds and red and yellow leaves, there are changes in the flowers that bloom and the foliage that grows.  The bouganvilias are back and the pretty purple vines are now everywhere.  Soon the nights will cool and our air conditioner remote control will be put away in the nightstand for a few months.

  • 20181020_144707_resized

    Fish Taco heaven!

    The food.  Who doesn’t love a good taco?  I am surrounded by Mexican food – taquerias and loncherias – not to mention donut trucks that show up at my door and a French Fry cart that recently appeared right across the street from my house.  I almost never tire of Mexican food, but when I do there is also a great Sushi place around the corner, the best burgers ever across the highway and a delicious pasta/pizza place a couple blocks away.  All of it for less than $10 a meal and most of it less than $5.   Unfortunately, that means I’ve gained some weight, so that brings me to the next thing….

 

  • The beach.  Any time I want to I can walk or run on miles and miles of soft sand beach or jump in the ocean which right now is as warm as a bathtub.  Gorgeous sunrises, beautiful sunsets, majestic lighting storms – it is easy to get my 10,000 steps in if I want to.  Those are the key words and I admit I have been slacking lately – time to get back on it before my Fitbit buddy Cheryl comes down to kick my butt as she has threatened.

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  • The people.  There is something infectious about the passion of the Mexican people.  Whatever they do is accompanied by loud music, loud laughter, loud children, loud dogs.  Even the barrios most touched by poverty have streets blocked off and pinatas hanging from trees when birthdays roll around.  Today we drove around town on our golf cart and we headed into the poorest communities in our town.  Groups of men sat on corners sipping from giant bottles of beer, but they all waved at us and yelled greetings as we went by.  I have no idea why I like that, but I do.  I love these people and I love being part of the rhythm of life here.
  • The meaningful work we do. The most important part of our life here is the work we do at Manos de Amor, the local Children’s Shelter.  We have seen the worst of the worst there – a 10-year-old repeatedly raped by her father, a 5-year-old with an STD, a young preteen whose mom recently went to jail for killing her husband, leaving the girl without mother or father or home.  Pregnancy, and drugs and prostitution and poverty.  I hate it all.  But we love these children and we believe that our presence in their lives matters – teaching them English, inviting them to stay in our home when they have nowhere to go, driving them to visit family on weekends, playing silly games and singing and dancing. Loving on them.  It all means something that has become more valuable to us than careers, salaries and possessions.

I guess the bottom line is that we have changed and what matters to us has changed.  We have less security but more peace.  Less comfort but more joy.  Less success but more compassion.  I could make a long list of the things that are harder here, but you can read the rest of my blog to get all those stories.  Tonight, we rest in the assurance that we are where we are meant to be, and we are indeed happy!

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So dear family and friends, please stop worrying and go book your winter vacation flight – we’ll be waiting for you curbside in the golf cart with a taco in hand.

 

 

Sisters in School

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It has been a very long time coming, but finally all 3 of our weekend daughters are in school and we couldn’t be happier.   Here in Mexico children must have birth certificates before they can enroll in school, and the two youngest in this family had never been registered, never been counted, never really existed as people with the right to be educated and employed.  After more than a year of knocking on the closed doors of doctors, lawyers and other bureaucrats, Britany and Pricila finally possess the papers they need to open locked classroom doors.

During the week these girls live at Manos de Amor, Casa Hogar and on weekends they hang out with us – at the pool or at the beach, eating chorizo quesadillas and tacos.  Little Pricila has a medical issue that keeps her from living at Casa Hogar right now, so she is temporarily living with us all week.  It’s been a long time since I took a little one to her first day of school, but I was pretty excited to do so this week.  So was she!  I definitely need some practice on how to create pretty braids and keep white uniform shirts clean,  and what the heck do I do with Spanish homework?  But I’ll learn.  More importantly, finally Pricila has her own opportunity to learn… to read and to write and to dream of a future where she can grow up to be whatever she wants to be.

 

 

Birthdays, Birthdays and Birthdays

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Last week was a week FULL of birthday fiestas – from Cristofer celebrating his very first birthday to Grant enjoying his 60th.    And Mareli who is now 11 but having her very first party with friends and gifts.

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A selfie of me smuggling a pinata on a golf cart – lots of laughing neighbors!

First was Grant’s birthday.  I bought a Minion piñata and a cake and smuggled it into the orphanage on Friday before classes.  The children spent the morning making cards and letters.  Lucio spent all morning using a YouTube tutorial to make a box that exploded confetti when Grant opened it.   We had a YWAM team visiting that day, so they joined in with the singing and dancing and piñata smashing.  The children absolutely loved the surprise and at this age, our celebrations are more for these little ones than for ourselves. That night we took our weekend girls and headed to a pretty restaurant on the canal for a birthday dinner of flaming fajitas.   It was a good day and I know Grant felt the love many times over!

The very next day was Mareli’s birthday.   Although her mom had recently moved to Bucerias, we hadn’t heard from her and we knew we needed to make sure Mareli felt loved and special on this day when her family hadn’t showed up.  Our good friends Francisco and Anita offered us their home and pool for the afternoon.  We bought another piñata – a unicorn this time – another cake, chicken and ceviche tostados and we invited some Manos de Amor friends to come and celebrate Mareli’s day.  She knew we were going swimming together, but the rest was a surprise.  I loved the look on her face when the doorbell rang and 5 of her friends walked in as well as her precious Tia Laura, a caregiver from the orphanage.  Again, face planting in the cake, piñata breaking, and lots of food and drink.  She was thrilled with the MP3 player we bought her to listen to her Soy Luna music.  A super fun day for kids and us adults too.

 

And then one more.  This week was the first birthday for 1-year old Cristofer.   Last year Cristofer was born to his young mom – the second child to the then 16-year-old.   If you remember from my blog story last year, 2 or 3 weeks after Cristofer was born, he still didn’t have a name.  His mom just couldn’t decide, so she asked for my help and I was honored to name this little guy Cristofer Alejandro.  I visit Cristofer every Friday and Sunday  – along with his brother Kevin, and cousin Lupita and lots of aunties and uncles and his grandma.  His 6 year old uncle comes with me to Manos de Amor each week.  It is a full house and although there is not a lot of material stuff in the one room home, there is definitely love and family.

 

Happy Birthday Cristofer and Mareli and Grant!  I never could have guessed that when Grant turned 60, this would be the life we would be living.  It’s a weird combo of missionary social work retirement and we are loving every minute of it!  So Feliz Cumpleanos mi esposo – te quiero!

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Gael’s Gets His Surgery

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Most of you now know the results of our long-awaited trip to Guadalajara for the Cochlear Implant surgery for Gael. It was the day we had been working towards since late last fall when we first took Gael to a doctor to find out just what was possible for him. Since then there have been many trips to many doctors in Puerto Vallarta and Tepic and Guadalajara. Tests and more tests -MRIs, CT scans, Brain stem tests, blood tests, audiology tests. Hours and hours of research to find the best surgeons, the best implant device, the best sign language and speech therapy resources. And of course, the fundraising. 5 months of events and online crowd sourcing campaigns and Facebook posts and email blitzes and PayPal transactions and bank wires. After many setbacks, many date changes and location changes and device changes, we were finally on the road to Guadalajara to have the surgery. Gael, his mom, his teenage cousin, Francisco, myself, Grant and a big red cooler – all piled into the Blue Explorer SUV owned by Manos de Amor. We had a three-bedroom Airbnb booked for 2 nights, the cooler full of important stuff like coffee and peanut butter, and Grant’s leather bag packed with cash. Yes, we were paying the hospital and the surgeon in pesos – a giant pile of pesos.

The surgery was booked for early Tuesday morning and the doctor had asked to see Gael on Monday afternoon at 5:15 in preparation. We headed out around 10:00 in the morning – certainly better than the 3 am start on our previous trip to Guadalajara. We stopped ½ way for some tortas and gorditas and were just coming up to the outskirts of the city when a warning beep and light came on. An oil light saying oil pressure had dropped. Of course. This day had been all together too smooth to be a Swanson story! Almost immediately we saw a small shop that sold oil and other lubricants – how perfect was that! We pulled in and the owner said he only sold products – he didn’t fix vehicles, but he would call us a mechanic. It didn’t take long for a young mechanic to arrive in his beat up blue half ton truck. He looked, listened and agreed that it didn’t sound good. We better not drive any further. Aargh. This was not in our plan for

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this week at all. On the up side, we had made it to Guadalajara. Almost anywhere else along the way would have left us stranded in the middle of nowhere. On the down side, Guadalajara is giant, and we were nowhere near the surgeon’s office and now we had 5 adults, 1 deaf boy, a bunch of suitcases and one big red cooler standing by the side of the highway.

The mechanic suggested we call Uber and for the next 3 days that is just what we did. In Guadalajara, Uber only uses small cars for up to 4 people so that was our first challenge. And you can’t call a second Uber with your app until the current trip is finished. So we placed our request and within 5 or 10 minutes Ana Patricia was there. Francisco and Gael and mom and cousin jumped in the car, leaving Grant and I and the luggage and of course the big red cooler on the side of the highway while Grant downloaded the Uber app on his phone. I watched as the tiny car on my phone app rushed Gael to meet Dr.

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Macias. They left us at 4:06 – arrived at the hospital at 5:18. 3 minutes late for the appointment we had been planning since last fall. Ana Patricia waited for them outside the hospital – in the end the trip was over 2 ½ hours and it cost $392 pesos – that’s about 20 bucks. For 2 ½ hours. In the meantime, Grant and I had called another Uber and loaded it up and headed to the apartment that would be home for a couple of days.

We had expected to take Gael to the hospital by 7 on Tuesday morning, but instead Dr. Macias decided to admit him Monday night, so he would be prepped and ready for the early morning surgery. His mom was nervous and scared but also excited. She and Gael were given a beautiful private suite with a separate sitting area for her to spend the night. We promised to be there in the morning when Gael came out of surgery.

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The surgery took about 3 hours and the doctors told us it had gone perfectly. While there is never a guarantee, they were confident it had been a success. We won’t know for sure until activation day which will be in 6 weeks. That is the day the device will be turned on and Gael will hear.

We were relieved and thrilled. Gael was carried back from the operating room and his mom and I shed a couple of tears as he moaned in pain. His head was wrapped in a giant white bandage. The nurses laid him in his bed and as I leaned over to kiss his cheek he reached up with his one arm and hugged me tightly around the neck. He was groggy and in pain but still the affectionate Gael we love.

I expected him to be dopey and in a lot of pain all day, but it couldn’t have even been an hour before he sat straight up in his bed, grabbed Grant’s phone and started playing Candy Crush. It was as if nothing had happened. Soon he was out of bed, entertaining us and playing with the 2 trucks the hospital had given him. He was concerned as they took his IV line out, didn’t like the teensy drop of blood that was on his hand, but he was amazing and strong and brave and was proud of his bandage when I showed him his picture.

About 9:00 that evening he was released from the hospital and we made plans to go home the next day. Except of course we had no vehicle. After many conversations with the mechanic it was determined a timing chain had broken but he promised it would be repaired by Thursday at noon. Guaranteed. We really didn’t want to keep the whole gang in Guadalajara. Our suite was not available for another day and we couldn’t all fit in one Uber so we had to take 2 cars every time we wanted to go anywhere. So on Wednesday morning Francisco, Gael, mom and cousin headed to the bus station to take a bus back to Bucerias. Grant and I found another suite in the same apartment building that was available, and we moved our suitcase and our big red cooler down the hall. We would stay for one more day – have a mini vacation – and bring the car home on Thursday.

Wednesday was a fun day. We went to the giant Guadalajara zoo and had a romantic dinner in a nearby restaurant. I was ready to be home, but this had turned into a nice bonus day together.

On Thursday morning we called our Uber, loaded our crap into the trunk and headed to the mechanic shop to get our vehicle. He said he was on track – it would be ready by noon. The first problem was that we didn’t really know where the shop was. The address he had given us was super vague. The Uber guy couldn’t figure it out. We knew the general vicinity of where we had pulled over when the whole problem started, but the mechanic had towed the truck to his shop and we weren’t sure where that was. Finally, thinking we were close, we told the Uber driver to let us out and then we piled our suitcase and briefcases and the big red cooler on the side of the road and started asking people if they knew where this shop was. Turns out we had quite a way to go and we weren’t even on the right side of the highway. Luckily there was an overpass to walk over the highway nearby, so we started the long walk to find the shop. Along the way we kept asking people where this shop was, and we got all manners of directions – all of them different. 5 more blocks. 3 more blocks. You’ll have to turn left and go one block. No, it’s on this highway. No back the way you came. We just kept walking. We piled the red cooler on top of the suitcase which promptly hit a hole in the road and dumped the contents of the #*(#**@ red cooler all over the road. Just as we were getting frustrated and a bit grumpy, we came upon the shop. In fact, we almost walked right past it until I spotted the car right out front. Still being worked on. Not quite done.

Fine. I was happy to sit for a while and wait. After a 1/2 hour or so, the mechanic guy got in and started the car. He stepped on the gas. And then we all heard it. A weird knocking noise. It didn’t sound good. Long story short….. the car wasn’t ready. It needed more work. Maybe Monday or Tuesday. Not today.

And that is how we found ourselves boarding a fancy 2-story bus heading back to Bucerias. I laughed when Grant frowned and said, “We’re not really bus people”. No, we’re golf cart people and this bus had huge reclining seats, flip out foot rests, individual TVs, and a free sandwich. A big upgrade for us!

As always, the week had more challenges than expected. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. But we arrived at the correct destination unharmed. Gael had the surgery we’ve been dreaming of for a long time. If all goes as expected, his life will never be the same. The course of his future has completely changed, and we are so grateful for your generous help and God’s provision and protection. And of course – even in the midst of celebrating, there’s another bumpy surprise! The day after Gael got home, a red rash broke out – he now has chicken pox! Oh Gael….