Adventures abound

I spent the past 3 days in Tamaula, another small rural community in Guanajuato where FCB works and has some projects. They work with some groups that provide goats to families and others that provided some equipment so that a few families can make and sell goat cheese in larger quantities in the community. I loved the family I stayed with. The couple was Ignacio (Nacho), Clara, and their daughter Lucy (Luz). They were so great to spend time with and talk to. Clara and I talked about everything from healthy diets for children to discussing the similarities in her Catholic and my Protestant backgrounds. Shaw and I listened to many stories from Nacho, including how he crossed the border 3 different times (which required several attempts each time) to how he got in an really bad car accident in the states that required so much medical treatment, including a new set of teeth, that he had to go back to Mexico where it was cheaper. In that community, if there is a man over the age of 20 or so, you can ask what part of the states he's been to and there's a 95% chance that he's been. They're all back though, bc life in the states is rough. No jobs, as they kept saying. Not all went illegally though. I think about 9 guys had visas to work with a landscaping company in Washington. One man had a story that just broke my heart. He was working in the states and met his wife (also Mexican) through the company they were both working for. They had a daughter together and were living pretty happy lives. She had gone through the process and gotten papers, and he was working on it, until he got pulled for a minor driving infraction, didn't have a license, and the cop asked him to show his papers, which he obviously couldn't, so he got sent to a holding center or essentially a jail, with all the other people who were gonna be deported. This happened in Alabama, where I'm pretty sure it was illegal at the time for the cop to take the liberty to ask for documentation-that's only legal in a few counties, like Durham County near where I live, for example. Anyways, now he is working with the goats in Tamaula with his father, waiting for Obama to change the immigration laws to allow people who have family legally in the states who were deported due to a minor, minor infraction to be able to return to their families. His wife has another child on the way. Thankfully, they're coming to visit Tamaula next month so that he can see them and his daughter will stay with him for awhile while his wife returns to have the child in the states. C'mon Obama. There are families that are divided due to racist police officers and others all down the system. This is injustice.

So many other thoughts but I've gotta go get ready to go to another community now. I'll write more on the water situation there in my next post.

Shalom.