Sojourn in Mexico

 

Written Oct 20, 2007

Monterrey, Mexico

I’ve been busy the past 2 weeks, and I know most of you are equally busy. So I’m giving you the short version update of my life here and will follow with the long version for anyone who has the time and inclination to read on. The short version is I’m fine. Thank you for your prayers. Monterrey is wonderful but I miss everyone. And the long version is:

The last weekend of September, Joel’s headstone arrived from the military in Lee. It was very emotionally traumatic for me that week to NOT be in Maine for placing of my son’s headstone on his final resting place. I definitely spent a lot of time praying and questioning God about His timing and wisdom: “God, why am I here in Monterrey, Mexico when MY needs are to be home working through these moments that would carry me through the grief and loss I feel?” The back of the headstone reads, “No greater love has this, than a man lay down his life for his friend.” I’m reminded of Joel’s ultimate sacrifice a lot these days when I’m feeling sorry for myself.

I had been invited to attend a class reunion in Guadalajara for the first group of exchange students I had hosted as the Lee Academy Spanish teacher in 1998. My new American School Foundation of Monterrey principal, Jeff Farrington, had been very supportive in giving me that Friday off from work to travel to see Marcel, Andrea, Jenny, Dalia, Patsy, Lucina, Jose Luis, and Nacho. I felt honored to be invited to attend their gathering and wanted to catch up on what they were making of their lives. Most of them had graduated college and were entering their professions. As a teacher, it was one of those reaffirming moments in which you feel like you’ve done a small part helping young people become who they could become. We shared pictures and laughed about what awful “brats” they had once been, remembering, eg., the night they all snuck out of their host family homes at 2am and climbed Mt. Jefferson. I told them that the laugh was really on them, since if they had wanted to climb Mt. Jefferson at 2 am, all they needed to do was ask. Lee was a perfectly safe town and, in May, the worst danger they had faced was the black flies that chewed them alive! They all mourned Joel’s loss, having shared his home in Lee or their homes in Guadalajara with him.

It was good for me to remember their antics because it helped me put in prospective the challenges I am facing with my current ASFM students. On Monday of that week, some students brought cockroaches and turned them loose in my history class for amusement. I had learned as a 3rd grade girl to NEVER EVER flinch when little boys assault you with creepy crawly things or you will suffer infinitely more times at their hand. So with students standing on desks and chairs, screaming and laughing, I stepped on the hideous creatures that in Mexico are the size of thumbs, and swiped up their writhing bodies without wincing and threw them in the waste basket. I would settle the class back down, start teaching again, and wham another roach would appear. Four times I faced the gauntlet of roaches and four times prevailed, although I couldn’t catch who was doing it. A student told me later that day that there was a plan to bring mice the next day, but that never happened. I attribute my lack of histeria with the roaches to the lack of mice the following day. I was so ready to quit those kids! “God, You’ve sent me here under the most unimagineably difficult of emotional passages that I have ever had to try to find the faith to follow You through! You sent me to a city alone. And You’ve sent me to face these monsters! What were YOU thinking? What are YOU doing?” Visiting with my first generation of Mexican adolescents that Friday evening and seeing how they were growing into fine young adults gave me my answer: “These kids need ME,” God spoke, “and you are my vessel. You can do this through Me,” He reassured my soul.

One of the highlights of that weekend was being invited to go to the health clinic with Nacho who is doing his year of mandatory social service after having completed his medical degree. I remember when Nacho, who returned the following year after his exchange program to attend Lee Academy revealed his dream to me. “I want to be a doctor and the president of Mexico some day.” Now we were driving an hour out of Guadalajara to the Centro de Salud in San Juan Evangelista in the county of Tlajomulco in the state of Jalisco in Nacho’s ancient jalopy which breaks down weekly nowadays. I couldn’t see the road that well because the week before he had smashed his passenger side windshield when a truck carrying steel pipes stopped suddenly in front of him and the rods smacked his window. I tried to reassure him that these driving adventures in this junk car would become treasured moments of nostalgia one day. Secretly, as mothers tend to do, I worried about him being out on the Mexican roads in this car that has parts held together with rope and a lot of faith in tomorrow. Selfishly, as women tend to do, I worried about myself being out there on the Mexican road in the 90 degree heat if the car broke down. I bit my lip, reached deep inside myself for courage, and road contentedly–obstructed view and all–out of the modern, industrialized Guadalajara into the 3rd world.

As bad as the car’s condition was, it was nothing compared to the public health clinic’s condition once we arrived. It is located in a pristine village named after Saint John the Evangelist. It’s an old village, still paved with cobblestone, nestled beside a large lake. The town is the kind of coveted tourist attraction getaway artists love to discover although, as to date, I don’t think it’s been discovered. Nacho is the only doctor in the town. His only nurse has been away on sick leave most of the time, making him responsible for not only seeing the village’s sick but taking care of the adminstrative and cleaning duties. There was no water in the building, so we carried buckets from the hose in the street to flush the toilet and wash our hands. I went to the store and bought us bottled drinking water. “Happens all the time,” he said matter of factly implying that he had gotten used to practicing medicine without the benefit of water!

The government was running a free rabies clinic that day at the health center for local dogs and cats that he was responsible for. He wanted me to help give shots. Fortunately, one of the town couples came along and got things organized. I did help a couple of times. The man instructed, “Use the needle for 5 animals before throwing it here. Push the needle in the hind leg fast and take it out so you don’t get bit. Have the owner hold the dog’s head.” The cats they threw in grain sacks and gave shots from there. Nacho was relieved to have the help, as inside the clinic, he saw a steady line elderly people, pregnant women, babies, and children. “Can you imagine me doing all this by myself?” he asked. “Usually I do.” I thought to myself, now here’s a medical problem that I bet Dr. House, MD himself couldn’t solve. The townspeople have such beautiful spirts, and they certainly deserve clean water and a nurse. They had a dedicated, new doctor who cared about them and they appreciated it a lot. At lunch time, a couple of women brought us some tortillas and stew. The health agency also brought Nacho his paycheck for 2 weeks that day–he had earned $50, not even enough to buy his gas to get to work. Nacho, who most of you know as the young man who took his 2 week vacation time to fly to Boston to help me drive to Tampa and then to Mexico, has a tremendous heart. But I understood that even talent and compassion are sometimes not enough in the face of such overwhelming poverty for this 24-year old man from the affluent side of town. His dad is an orthopedic surgeon who helps him all he can, but he has suffered some heart problems recently, so his practice has been limited financially. Nacho is trying to support himself in the city by offering diet shots to the middle and upper class at his dad’s office. Please pray that he can build his clientelle there, so he can serve the needy of San Juan de Evangelista.

Last weekend, another former student of mine and a friend of his came to visit me in Monterrey. Gilbert Zuñiga is the young man who designs and sews the beautiful wedding and party dresses. Like my husband Paul, he comes from a huge family–17 brothers and sisters. Like my husband Paul’s family, they were dirt poor yet close knit. It’s not only Gil’s dresses that amaze me, but his ability to overcome the odds against him and slowly make his way towards his dream. It’s nothing short of miraculous in the Mexican culture that a boy from such poor circumstances could work his way up to owning his own small dress business in Guadalajara’s fashion district for the past 4 years! I have seen him suffer through some pretty lean times when the wealthy clientelle he serves are limited on their dress buying ability. “I’m used to living on not too much,” he explained to me once when he had about $1.00 to feed himself for the week. His dad died this year, making mourning the loss of a loved one another connection we share. He cares for his elderly mother and some of his sisters who live in Cuidad Guzman, about an hour and half from the city. Gil and his friend Enrique had never been to Monterrey, so we enjoyed learning about my new city together. I was surprised how well I could find my way about the city after only 2 months here. I know you have been praying for me. There is an International Forum her for 3 months that is on the scale of the World’s Fair. Everyday there are some new presentations of art, music, dance, literature, education showcasing not only the greatness of Latin America, but also the heights of human achievement throughout the world.

I juxtapose the grandeur of human achievement against the depths of human suffering here for you now. Gil shared with me that a woman from one of the stores near him had approached him on behalf of her sister. “Her husband fled to the US and abandoned her, the 6-year old daughter, and an unborn baby.” The new mother wanted to give him her 2-month old daughter because she couldn’t provide for her. I can’t imagine such poverty for this woman or irresponsibility for her husband. I would do anything to have kept my son alive and with me here on earth, to see him become a husband, a father. To help him find his dream. But in Mexico without bread today, there are no dreams for tomorrow. “Dee, should I adopt the baby?” he asked me. “God, what am I supposed to tell him?” I asked.

Please pray for the young people whom God has brought into my life. I have been a Christian long enough to know that by the time these people “find” me, that God is already working on their hearts and souls. Please pray for me to know what to do, what to say, to teach. I don’t want to be a Christian who looks at the needy and says, “May God bless you, my child. Be ye fed,” and not provide the literal or spiritual food that they are seeking. Nor can I be the Christian who just gives money to solve the day’s problems without leading them to the promises of tomorrow. I want these young people to see me pray to my Jesus on their behalf, and I want them to know that Jesus will answer their prayers–through me or through some other vessel. These young people are God’s vessels for tomorrow. Through them, Mexico will become a better world or a worse one. God, help me to love, to nurture, to feed, if necessary, the unlimited potential, spirit, and energy of the ones who can make a difference in the future.

Thank you so much for your prayers, e-mails, and phone calls. I still don’t have Internet at my house in the mountains, so it’s difficult for me to answer you all personally. Back home in Lee, my sisters Elaine and Kathy are still spear-heading the fund-raising activities for the Joel House Fund, a scholarship program for needy kids to attend summer camps or exchange programs. Paul had some hats made up and they sold like wild-fire. He’s working with the financial advisor and lawyer this fall (among a million other duties) to create the non-profit foundation and get the donations put into a higher interest bearing mutual fund. We are so blessed to have so much energy and talent working on behalf of eastern Maine’s children. In addition to education, Paul has been working on the national level with an agency to create a program which would invite families of fallen soldiers to spend some time of respite in eastern Maine. And finally, for those of you who know how much “camp” meant to Joel and means to our family, Paul has contracted for a good price with a dock supplier to put in a new dock at camp using money that Joel had been saving to buy a boat for the lake when he got out of the military. The plan is to dedicate the Joel House Memorial Dock next spring when Joel’s buddies come home safely from war and can attend. I plan to travel to Ft. Hood when their unit redeploys. I can’t imagine how hard it will be to meet these band of brothers who were there when my son paid the ultimate sacrifice. But I’ve learned lately, that I CAN make it through a lot of hard things. Joel, you’re my hero and my inspiration, little buddy. I miss you so much, and I promise to do my best to make you proud of me. My school bought me tickets to go home for Thanksgiving and Joel’s birthday. That was a such a blessing because there are limits to my coping ability, at times. Since Joel died on my birthday, I could not bear missing his birthday gone from me. Jehova-Jireh

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