This story appeared in Louisiana Road Trips magazine, April 2006
It’s eight o’clock on a Monday morning in late February. The seventeen gringos arrive at 224 Calle Miguel Hidalgo, in the Colonia “Voluntad y Trabajo”, a neighborhood in the sprawling city of Reynosa, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, just across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas. Eleven members of the group have spent the night north of the border, driving to the address in a borrowed van. The remaining six have hiked in, from their quarters in a church dormitory about a mile away.
Had I not given you the address, you’d have no way of knowing where you are. The number “224” is scrawled across the front of the wooden shack in pencil, but there are no street signs on the unpaved roads. This colonia, or neighborhood, is two or three colonias distant from the dormitory, but there is no indication when you cross the boundary from one into the next. By the way, voluntad y trabajo means “volunteer and work”.
As the volunteer workers mill about the “yard”, such as it is, they are joined by a similar number of Mexican neighbors. The wooden house sits at the very front of the tiny lot. At the rear of the house, the attractive and friendly Amalia Silverio Gonzalez greets the newcomers. “Thank you for coming to build my new house,” she says in Spanish, opening the back door to expose the interior of her home.
Just inside the door sits a small table and a couple of chairs. In a small alcove behind are a double bed and a smaller one. The beds take up the entirety of the space, pushed together with no space between or on either side. This is where Amalia, her husband Luis, and nine-year-old daughter Viridiana sleep. In the remaining tiny space to the left of the table stands Luis, cooking some sort of spicy tortillas on a gas stove. At first glance, the floor appears to be dirt, but is actually rough concrete. Very rough. This home, believe it or not, is substantially nicer than many of the dwellings these travelers have seen since their annual pilgrimages began in 1990.
Through pidgin Spanish and broken English, the guests are invited inside, where four manage to seat themselves around the tiny table, as Luis serves them breakfast. The remainder of the group prepares to begin construction of a four-meter-by-eight-meter (roughly 338 square feet) cinderblock house in the rear of the Silverio home.
Many of the volunteers are veterans, with Leroy, the rugged 81-year-old senior member of the group, making his sixteenth trip into the colonias. Others have come south a dozen times, or eight, or five, or just once. Prior to their arrival, the foundation has already been poured, and the schedule calls for the workers to begin mixing sand and cement, by hand, in a pile on the dirt street. This will provide mortar to hold the cinderblocks together to form the walls. A large pile of sand, a pile of gravel, and a big stack of cinderblocks should stand ready for the day’s work. However, as one of the veterans reminds the group, “We’re now working on Mexican time.” Mexican time moves in a completely contrary manner to the typical north American schedule. True to this schedule, the sand and cinderblocks have not yet been delivered, so everyone mills about. The younger folk get up a game of soccer in the street, while the older ones visit and lie around until the trucks arrive.
In 1990, these trips began as a project of Presbyterian laymen from northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas. Over the years, the group has evolved, and the 2006 workers include women, high schoolers, and members of several religious denominations. There are at least three father-child groups, as many of the older workers have brought children, and even grandchildren along, as the years have passed. This year’s workers hail from Louisiana, Arkansas, Colorado, and Iowa. Half are from Virginia, all brought together by a combination of kinship and happenstance. Good and strong friendships have been formed over piles of cement and cinderblocks, not only within the group, but just as strongly with the Mexican volunteers they’ve seen and worked alongside year-after-year. Old friends—Ezequiel, Dora, Marta, Lupe—are met and hugged.
The earlier trips were made under the auspices of a Presbyterian border ministry called Puentes de Christo (“Bridges of Christ”), whose construction foreman was a man named Deantin Guerra. In 1994, Deantin began his own ministry, Ministerio de Fe (“Faith Ministry”), which is attacking the horrible problems of poverty in border Mexico through a four-pronged approach of housebuilding, medical services, education, and church formation. Since its inception, MdF volunteers have built over a thousand houses, three churches, a medical clinic, and have provided assistance for many impoverished children to attend school and receive free or low-cost medical care.
This particular volunteer group has raised the necessary funds to purchase the materials for the house ($5,000). The Ruston Chrysler dealership has generously loaned a 14-passenger van to transport the workers south (The Virginia group arrived by air.). Each individual is responsible for his or her own food, and lodging, with some preferring to stay in very affordable quarters on the Texas side of the border, while some of the more adventurous crew live deep within the colonia in dormitories constructed within the walls of the Primero Iglesia Presbyteriana “Ministerio de Fe” (First “Faith Ministry” Presbyterian Church), which was constructed about six or seven years ago.
Once the materials finally arrive, and the trucks are unloaded, work progresses quickly, and the walls are nearly complete by the end of the first day. This unlikely-looking group works more quickly than most, thanks to their years of experience, building house after house. Within the group are retirees in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. One lady is a geologist with the United States Geological Survey in Colorado, there’s a university dean of engineering, a church youth director, and a member of the U.S. State Department, a retired university math professor, and a retired children’s home administrator. High school and college students. All giving up a little time and a little money to help strangers by building a simple, basic, sturdy house and giving it away.
Those who sleep in Texas return across the border each evening, eating at restaurants, while the self-styled mojados del norte (“wetbacks from the north”) have arranged with women within the neighborhood to shop and prepare evening meals. The noon meals are eaten back in the church complex—a combination of sandwiches brought across the border each day, along with hot food prepared by the Mexican volunteers who are participating in the project, waiting for the chance when they, too, may receive a free home to replace their hovels.
Following each noon meal, the workers file into the handsome church for a quick service. It’s really more like a “Bible school” service than a formal worship. Lots of songs, mostly in Spanish, with the words projected onto a screen. As the workers take their seats, they consciously arrange themselves so that the north Americans do not sit in a group, but intersperse themselves among their Mexican neighbors.
One of the songs, as best I can make out, involves the concept of “give me your hand” and working together. At a certain point in the song, everyone leaves his seat and walks around the room, shaking hands with, and hugging, everyone he meets. Mexicans are huggy people. I like that.
By noon on Friday, the house has been essentially completed. Walls are up, floor is poured, structural concrete has been poured at corners and doorposts and along the tops of the walls. The roof is not yet up. Another group will pour the concrete roof in a week or two. This group travels to a new site to pour the roof for a house that was built by another team a couple of weeks ago. So, when the final midday church gathering convenes, there is a dedication service for Amalia and Luis’s house, which has been designated House #5 for 2006. Each of the workers has inscribed his name in concrete on the front wall of the home.
Through a mixture of Spanglish and pantomime, it is learned that Luis has a job as a security guard on an armored car. So far as the Yankee workers can remember, this is the best job held by any of the neighborhood residents they’ve yet met. Luis, therefore, is not present, but Amalia and Viridiana are seated on the front row, as the service begins.
Deantin translates as Amalia expresses her gratitude to her new friends. As she finishes, nineteen people, strangers just a week earlier, step forward for hugs and words.
Step-by-step, one house at a time, one family at a time, Faith Ministry and other similar organizations are making real progress in improving life in these forgotten neighborhoods. The newer members of the work group are shocked by the living conditions they encounter, but the veterans of the group are impressed by the improvements they can see. When the trips first began, work was done in neighborhoods without electricity or running water. The typical house was a shack composed of scrounged materials. Some of those shanties certainly remain, but more and more people are living in modest newer homes of cinderblock, with basic electricity. Water inside the houses is still rare, as is indoor plumbing, but great strides are being in housing for these proud people.
The service grows to a close with these friends, Iowan, Coloradan, Virginian, Mexican, Louisianian, Arkansan, joining hands and singing. Next week, another four work groups will arrive. Only fifty-one more weeks before this group, or its descendent, will be back in this place or very nearby. To travel, to work, to eat, to play, to sing. And to help. And never to forget: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Unidos, unidos, in Su Nombre, unidos.
Pues in este mundo,
Paz y amor tendremos.
Unidos, siempre unidos.
Tomados de la mano.
Iremos por el mundo
Cantándole a Dios.
La Gloria de Jesús
Al fin resplandecera
Y el mundo entonces sabra
Que Tu eras Dios.
My Spanish is kinda crummy; however, this may be a fair translation:
United, united, in His Name we are united.
So, in this world, we will have peace and love.
United, always united.
Hand in hand, we will go into the world, singing to God.
The glory of Jesus, shining to the end.
And the world will know that you are God.
To learn more about the work of Faith Ministry, or to schedule a work trip, contact them at: www.faithministry.org, or write: Faith Ministry, Post Office Box 756, McAllen, Texas 78505-0756, (956) 631-3567. Believe me, absolutely no experience is necessary.
County 10, Wyoming 