"Un Granito de Arena" y Un Corazon de Oro

"Un granito de arena," a little grain of sand. Something God puts in our hearts to call us to make this world better. This world we live in. We are called to work to bring about God's kingdom here.

That is what Lupita told us, two BorderLinks participants from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder and me. Lupita was our host mom for less than 24 hours, but she surely made an impression on us.

With a language barrier, the group's experience with the three Nogales families could have amounted to a warm place to sleep, lots of smiles, and three amazing home-cooked Mexican meals. Which would still be a great experience, especially with this probably non-comprehensive list of dishes we scarfed down...

gorditas - literally "little fat ones", which resulted in plenty of jokes that our host moms were going to make us little fatsos with their incredible spread, depending on who's making it these are kind of like a thick tortilla stuffed with perhaps meat and/or cheese
sopes - small, thick tortilla topped with ingredients like beans, cheese, and veggies
enchiladas - rolled-up tortillas typically filled with meat and/or cheese, smothered in sauce
taquitos - an abundance of flour and corn tortillas to stuff with ingredients like rice, beans, queso fresco (a soft but crumbly cheese), and the host moms' competing salsas
arroz con leche - rice pudding, with or without pasas (raisins)
horchata de coco - a sweetened rice milk drink with cinnamon, this version made with coconut water
sopa de albondigas - meatball soup
calabaza con crema - calabaza is a general term for gourds like pumpkin/squash etc., and in this dish one host mom sliced zucchinis the long way and topped them with cheese, sour cream, and chile verde (green chile) 
agua de pepino y limon - cucumber and lime water

Meet our three host moms: Blanca, Chayito, and Lupita! Photo by participant Will Kropp.

... but with one Spanish speaker placed in each household, everyone could learn more about each other, especially the humanitarian work our host families are doing to serve migrants in their community. Only one of the participants spoke conversational Spanish and felt comfortable when we asked if she would be her house's Spanish representative, and it also helped that we were able to place her and three other participants with a family who spoke some English. In the other two homes, my co-leader Cecilia (an amazing 71-years-young woman from Nogales, Sonora) and I played the resident interpreter role, as per our job.

The challenge is continuing to function in two languages, only one being your native tongue, for hours upon hours until your brain no longer recognizes one language as distinct from the other. When we sleep in dorms, the leaders can turn off our brains for a while to fully recharge. When we stay with host families, we have the opportunity to join our participants to continue learning from and being inspired by these wonderful new friends and caretakers after the first dinner with all participants and host families. That means when we break off into our own homestays, our interpreter brains are still on. I even half-woke myself up in the middle of the night trying to translate a conversation in my sleep, only conscious enough to realize it but not enough to stop myself. I guess work followed me into my dreams that night!

But so it goes, and so I am grateful. Spanish is not my native language, so I do my best. I still have plenty of vocabulary to learn, plenty of slang I've never heard before, and sometimes plenty of clarification questions to get the full meaning of someone's story or inquiry. But to understand Lupita's words that night and to be challenged with the task of translating her poetry and expressiveness and emotion, to translate well, was truly a blessing.

We all learned at dinnertime a little more about the three host moms, their experiences living in Nogales, and the volunteer work that they have done to serve migrants passing through the city, and after preparing for bed, my two participant housemates and I had the chance to sit down more with our mama Lupita.

Amy, Jenny, and I asked Lupita to tell us a little more about how she started working with migrants around twenty years ago, to which she replied (the following is a gisted translation from Spanish), "Whenever I would do my errands, I often passed by this road, and I would see migrants under a bridge, trying to figure out what to do. I wanted to help them, but I didn't know what to do either. So I prayed. And then God gave me un granito de arena, a little grain of sand, and I knew I was supposed to bring them food. That is what I can do, I can bring them food.

So I started making bean burritos and taking them to the migrants under the bridge, and I talked to my neighbors about it. Soon we had eight families, but we couldn't afford to bring food all the time. But we could every month, every fifteen days, every week..."

She likened it to the Bible story of Jesus and his disciples feeding the 5000 - how in the world were they going to do that with just five loaves of bread and two fish? They brought what they had, and all were able to be nourished.

"Even though the problem you are trying to solve seems enormous, bring what you have, and God will provide the rest. I could make food, but I would see them with their white lips from dehydration, and their blistered feet and other injuries. I do not have medical training, so I couldn't provide medical aid. Someone else had to do that."

And they did. Lupita's initial efforts became eight families, and then the Jesuits came and helped to broaden and coordinate the efforts to what is now the Kino Border Initiave and comedor - a tented cafeteria that serves meals twice a day to people recently deported from the U.S. and those who may have just reached the border from further south in Mexico or Central America. Lupita is now one of a few volunteers that are actually compensated for their service and go in to the kitchen on-site to cook - this labor of love is now her job from 8:30am-12:30pm Mondays-Saturdays. Sundays other groups come in to serve.

Here is me, Lupita, Jenny, and Amy - our homestay in Nogales. Lupita has such a big heart, a heart of gold, un corazon de oro. But she also clearly discerns what she is called to do and is capable of doing.   

Throughout this year, I have met so many people who have found their grain of sand. Including Lupita, here are just a few of them.

This is Shura Wallin. She was deeply concerned by the effects U.S. policies were having on the Borderlands, and how the expanding border walls were funneling people into the Arizona desert. The Tucson Samaritans started first to drive vehicles into the desert to do water drops, search for people, and attempt to actively prevent death in this dangerous terrain, and Shura took this model about a half hour south to Green Valley. She never thought she'd have more than a few residents of the mostly conservative retirement communities join her, and she was astounded to build a network of over 200 volunteers. Shura not only does the work of going out on known paths of migration to provide food, water, and medical care to those in need, but she makes the time whenever we call on her to educate others and pass on stories from these humanitarian efforts. She has found her granito de arena, combating deaths in the desert and educating others on what she feels called to do.

Here is what UUCB had felt called to do. The group had brought donations of new socks, toothbrushes, and toothpaste as well as some used clothing. We delivered many of the items to people at Grupos Beta and the rest to the Juan Bosco shelter. Photo by participant Will Kropp.

Here is Hilda of the Juan Bosco migrant shelter in Nogales. She and her husband opened the shelter over 30 years ago and they keep it running with funds primarily from family and friends. Some days they serve up to 350 men, women, and children, meaning those days they put extra mattresses on the floor when they run out of bunk beds, and serve meals in the cafeteria in shifts twice a day. 

And finally, Rick Ufford-Chase, who after a few weeks discovered seminary was not right for him and showed up on in the Borderlands at age 23 in 1987 (the same age I showed up here in 2013!). He learned about the U.S.' role in conflicts in Central America and how Central Americans were fleeing from the violence in their homelands, only to be deported from the US-Mexico border rather than recognized as refugees. He quickly got involved with humanitarian efforts, among them helping to start on-the-ground organizations like No More Deaths and Humane Borders, as well as the education and awareness-building component - BorderLinks!

We finished our UUCB delegation with the No More Deaths 10 Year Anniversary special service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, with Rick Ufford-Chase as its guest speaker. "We still dream of a day when the reality is not this suffering, and when this work is not necessary," he said. Those words echoed part of Hilda's message, that when she and her husband started the migrant shelter over 30 years ago, they hoped migration issues would have been solved by now... They never imagined having to do this work for so long, but they keep on keeping on because people need them.

I was so moved by his sermon, and perhaps you will be too. You can listen to Rick's sermon here: "No More Deaths: Love, Courage, and Resistance in a Time of Empire" 

One final quote I'd like to highlight is this: "Every day you wake up, you have to choose to save the world or to savor it." Can we do both? Can we choose to do both instead of choosing between those two options? The jury is still out, so I'm going to try to do both. Hopefully this resonates with a few of you out there, so good luck to you as well!

Especially for all you YAVs out there trying to save the world in your placement communities, remember, bring what you can bring and nothing more. Who knows, you may inspire others with your light and love, and God will do the rest.