The corn is growing tall and Jaime says that there has been much more rain this season. The corn will be ready for harvest in a few weeks as will the abundance of beans in the fields. All of the pastures are bright green and thick with life; it will be a great harvest this year.

The peels of thunder and lightning that rumble and echo through the valley are melodious parts of nature’s symphony. Everyone looks up and smiles when the lightning bursts through the gray mass overhead. The people living here in the Sierra are entirely dependent on the rain. There are no sophisticated irrigation systems to aid them through dry seasons. Jaime and Lupe catch the water from their old tin roof in fifty-five gallon drums and buckets and use it for bathing, drinking and cooking throughout the year.

This past month we (Amigos) were able to help buy a mare for Jaime and his farm. The plan is to use the mare and her future foals to help maintain the fields next season, easing the blistering burden of hand-farming. Juan helped Jaime begin the process of breaking a wild and untrained mare that had been roaming freely in the valley. Jaime named her Lucero, which means ‘bright morning star’. After a few days of training, Jaime was riding Lucero bareback.

It is a great honor to share life with our Tarahumaran brothers and sisters, to be welcomed into their community, to dream alongside them on their beautiful land. Together we are developing more sustainable and efficient farming methods, establishing effective ways to conserve water for their dry season, and creating micro businesses and education options for their children.

These are the moments that kindle hope, reminding me that Mexico has much more substance and life than the venomous persona the media portrays.

Hope of Loving

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure? I think it is the hope of loving, or being loved. I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey to find its source, and how the moon wept without her lover’s warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither like fields if someone close does not rain their kindness upon us.

-Daniel Ladinsky

Yesterday, the sun shining warm and the breeze twirling the trash as it danced through the air, we hopped in the van and headed to the parque with Jorge for a run and some futbol lessons. On our way we stopped by Maderas Y Sus Productos, a construction store, on a quest to price windows and doors with plans to resume construction on a 5 year old building-in-progress, to steal away this overpriced bird sanctuary, dust it off in hopes to complete what has become a large, looming badge of lost desire and passion. Walking out the door we noticed a gringo loading up sheets and sheets of plywood in his F150. We glanced at the plates, Illinios. “Wow, there really are gringos still coming to Juarez?” Matt walked up and said “Excuse me” in english, to which the gringo replied “Hola?” Well, after about 10 minutes we had made a friend, Jerry Quick from Springfield, Illinios. He is working with a ministry in Anapra on the NorthWest side of Juarez called Amigos en Cristo. He has been coming to Juarez for eight years now, and recently started this non-profit organization. He makes these trips South one week out of every month, working with a Mexican couple that are the on-the-ground part of the ministry. As Matt and Jerry were standing there exchanging numbers, both wearing bright red shirts, Matt’s saying Skull and Bones, and Jerry’s embossed with A en C along with a small community encircled by a large Christian fish, I giggled inside. This just seemed too coincidental to be “coincidental”. As we hopped back in the van with a dinner invitation, directions and phone numbers to this ministry and to Jerry’s cell, sitting in the back seat as Matt and Jorge talked away in spanish, I caught a large smile curling up my face and my heart lighten. In the midst of all of the violence, the paralyzing fear that has caused 5 groups to cancel already this year and another threatening, ministries planted in Juarez pulling up steaks and leaving, wondering if all of the hopes to resume construction on the sad dilapidating building would be for naught, when I thought we had to be the only gringos that had not packed up our camp and left, the only ones that had pounded our steak in the ground with our hearts screaming out for justice and hope for this country… just then, we met Jerry, smiling and full of life, handing out hope and determination; just then, feeling abandoned and alone in our quest to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Juarez, we had an encounter that I’m almost certain was angelic.