Stumbling To Holiness

The most amazing thing about Matamoros is the people. They are so kind and loving. It seemed that the poorer the area was, the more one could see Jesus in the people. They invited us into their homes and smiled and waved at us. They loved talking to us as we stuttered through our limited Spanish skills. The people there visit with their neighbors all the time and treat everyone like family. Even though they live in extremely poor conditions, they have extremely good hygiene. All the children are polite and very, very happy.

The convent we stayed at is beautiful. The sad thing is that there are only two sisters there–I would guess that one of them is in her mid 60’s, and the other is in her early 70’s. Their tireless energy in serving the impoverished never ceases to amaze me. They got the whole convent built through their own willpower. They have a volunteer doctor there 6 days a week and a dentist there once a week. They made a soccer field so that the barefoot kids don’t have to play in the streets or vacant lots and fields full of garbage. They got a small school built and a teacher to teach. They have catechesis several times a week and Mass almost every day.

One of the last days we were there, the sisters threw a fiesta for us. About 80 people from around town came with food, and they taught us how to do some of their dances. I also got to put my two years of Spanish to work here, which was a LOT of fun!! Trying to communicate was a real brain work-out. Often, it was an awful lot like playing a game of “Taboo”, and generated just about as many good-natured laughs. It’s interesting: when you have limited verbal communication, there’s a certain bond you form with people that’s not there otherwise.

The poverty in Matamoros was extremely poignant. I walked into a Kroger the other day, and it was a little overwhelming: all the lights and colors, a gazillion types of food at my fingertips, air conditioning, and a clean bathroom with flushing toilets. Honestly, what we have here in the states seems like a floating city paved with diamonds compared to how many are relegated to living.

The way people have to live down there is appalling; many of them live in glorified cement boxes with no electricity and no running water (from what I gather, often times a few families will share an outdoor hose). I saw a few houses that didn’t even have a front door or window coverings. Government housing has electricity and running water, but the houses are incredibly small and every house shares walls with the houses on either side. The government housing strip I saw was about a mile long and 1/8 of a mile wide. It was was completely packed with dinky white houses. They had little 3×3 foot patches of grass for front yards and no back yards at all. The whole thing reminded me of that huge, white clone army from Star Wars–except this was real.

In Matamoros, you have to pay the garbage man to come pick up your trash; many families can’t afford this service and so simply dump their trash in open fields. The first night I was there, the smell was really hard to get used to. Some parts of town are worse than others. We went to one part where the people had enormous smelly pigs in their back yards and dogs with the worst cases of mange I have ever seen in their front yards. In that part of town, the dirt streets were literally paved with trash. It was everywhere: bottles, boxes, tires, broken toys and appliances–you name it, and it was in the street. Sometimes you had to walk around a pile of trash in the middle of the street.

Matamoros is a diocese; however, the diocesan priests don’t have a rectory to live in. They have to stay with host families, and they move every month. None of the diocesan parishes have their own priests; there are about 20 churches in the diocese, and they only have 4 or 5 priests to say mass for ALL of them. Some churches don’t even have roofs or doors or glass in the windows. Other churches are just an empty field with a cross stuck in the ground. Most churches there cost about (US) $20,000-$30,000 to build. Irony has a way of slapping you in the face–here, there are a couple of parishes trying to build sanctuaries, and the structures they are aiming for cost at least $8 to $10 million.

I had a couple of friends e-mailing asking me “How was Mexico?”. The problems was, once I got going I found it hard to stop! So I decided to post it here. I got so carried away that I’m putting it into installments so I don’t bore you all to death.

Also, our mission trip has its own blog with pictures from every day and blog entries from kids on the trip. The website is www.sfamissiontrip.com. I wrote a blog entry–you can find it by clicking on the “our blog” link, and then selecting “Day One” from the white pullout menu on the right. I’m the one titled “meeting and greeting”, or something like that.

So, how was Mexico?

Mexico was amazing!! I have never worked so hard, been so dirty, slept as easily, or appreciated as shower as much as I did during my week in Mexico.

My mission group was primarily there to help out the sisters who run the convent we were staying at. They wanted us to dig out an area for the foundation of a basketball court, fill some holes in the soccer field, pull weeds, pick up trash, and work on the rectory that is being renovated for the diocesan priests. It was hard work, but it was good work. Digging and mixing cement were probably the most backbreaking, Pulling weeds was the most aggravating, and smashing an old toilet at the rectory was probably the most fun. The funny thing was, the harder I worked, the happier I was. I will never forget how strangely comfortable the tile floor felt after a day of manually mixing cement and an evening of (really rough!) soccer. Nor will I forget how AMAZING that first cold shower and the 10 minutes afterward felt (at about minute 11, the water had all evaporated out of my hair, and I started sweating again. Blech).

So there, that was the shallow nostalgia. Stay tuned for the meat of the matter!