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Several weeks ago, 4 men from Sovereign Grace Church: Matt Ross, Mark Walley, Dale Furnish and Brian McClain went down to an orphanage near Juarez, Mexico to work on repair and maintenance projects.
Below is a review and testimony that Dale Furnish gave a couple Sundays ago from the trip (there is a slideshow of pictures below at the end!):
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Orphanage Trip
Guadalupe, Chihuahua, México
By Dale Furnish
Guadalupe sits to the east of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, just south of Fabens, Texas. Both Guadalupe and Fabens are dinky little towns, but there is a border crossing between them, with only 8-10 cars both times we crossed. This Christian Orphanage occupies an ample acreage in Guadalupe, maybe 20 acres guesstimate. About ninety orphans live there, and about a dozen staff. The couple that heads up the orphanage has support from two other ministry families (one gringo, one Mexican) and several other helpers. There is also a K-6 elementary school on the grounds to which locals come as well as the orphans; they charge $8.25 a week tuition. They have just gotten permission to add an intermediate school.
Guadalupe is a war zone. We saw a bombed–out house where a family of father, mother and two daughters died. We saw a local bakery, bombed and burned and now shuttered. The administrator pointed out the sites of several gun battles, and where Covenant Life’s mission team had seen a car full of dead bodies last summer. The local violence involves crime organized around drug trafficking, and much of it comes from satellite gangs who serve the drug cartels and do their dirty work but do not have a real piece of the pie so they turn to selling protection to local merchants and also to kidnapping for ransom. They push beyond people’s tolerance, and then kill them when they protest.
We did not go off the orphanage’s fenced grounds, but no violence took place while we were there. The administrator hopes that the traditional cartel asserts its control. It apparently has “rules” – no killing families, no killing men in front of wives or children, business as business. The traditional cartel apparently called out the bad elements, or those getting in its way on its turf, and gave them two weeks to get out of town. Most did; the cartel killed those who did not. Meanwhile, the Mexican military has taken over from the police, who were way outgunned and losing the war. The Mexican Army has recently gotten serious firepower, so that they have more and better arms than the drug dealers, which had not been the case.
Perhaps the situation will stabilize, but the orphanage is an island of peace and grace in the midst of the violence, behind its re-bar fence and sturdy gates. The orphans range in age from maybe 3-year-olds to a couple or three in college. The thing that most impressed us was the uniformly sunny disposition of the kids. Being around 90 little kids is like being in the surf, washing here and there constantly. They are kids and they pull stuff, but they know the discipline and the rules and they get spanked with big plastic spoons for major infractions. And blessed by the staff that does the discipline, all explained in terms of the circle of blessing and the fact that we all need discipline and we are all sinners.
Many of the orphans are brothers and sisters. Some come from single mothers who engage in prostitution and leave the children, or had left the children with grandparents who died. The Mexican government also sends orphans, many from Ciudad Juárez. Others are just orphans of violence, or children abandoned by families who had too many and could not support more. The orphans have experienced a lot of abuse, physical and sexual, on top of their tough circumstances. Despite the sad backgrounds that put these children there, they seem uniformly cheerful and engaged, active and healthy, just good kids. They eat basic meals, and once everyone has eaten they can go back for seconds and thirds as long as the food lasts. They do. First night supper was macaroni, cheese, venison (a Texas deer rancher supplies the orphanage), jalapeño chilis, beans and tostitos casserole with corn on the side. To drink was water. When I asked what was for dessert, the kids said, “No desserts here. We never get dessert.”
They also never celebrate birthdays, but while we were there, they had an historic first: they celebrated all the January and February birthdays on Saturday, with chili, tortilla chips and cornbread. The chili was good, but heavy on beans. Then everybody sang “Mañanitas” (Latin “Happy Birthday”) and got a piece of cake and ice cream, and some seconds until it was all gone. The looks on the kids’ faces were worth the trip down and back.
We ate a lot of beans while we were there. Breakfast was pancakes on Saturday (plenty of butter, but only a couple drops of syrup) and the thinnest oatmeal I ever had and a donut (with the hole) on Sunday. Our big night out was dinner with the administrators and their three sons on Saturday: tacos with beans and rice and guacamole and beef strips . . . and ice cream for dessert.
The kids are active. They have chores that they all do, like raking the grounds, or picking up trash or clearing tables. We saw an all-day marble game, and constant soccer, basketball, kickball and other games. They all go to school and they all go to church, say grace before meals and get daily scripture lessons. Several of the older children have become believers, but not all.
One kid we all noticed was Alán, a fetal alcohol syndrome boy of about 7 years old, but about 3 years old functionally. Alán has been badly abused, with scars on his face. We did not see his back, but the administrators told us it is pocked with scars from cigarette burns. Alán is one the worst-behaved kids I have ever seen. Tell him, “No,” and he will definitely do it. He was constantly underfoot, and sticks in everywhere he is not wanted all the time, like putting his hands around the tile saw while it is cutting tile, and trying to turn it on when it is off. He has not been at the orphanage very long, and we figured that he is just fascinated with the fact that when he does exactly what people tell him not to do, they just keep telling him “No” or gently remove him because they are worried he might get hurt or maybe spank him with a plastic spoon if he is really bad, but they don’t smack him around or burn him with a cigarette. What a concept!
We got the orphanage’s checklist done. Mark Walley was definitely the most valuable Sovereign Grace visitor. Once they found out that he was a good electrician, and actually knew what he was doing, they kept coming up with extra tasks, far beyond the original list. He wired the chicken coop with fluorescent lights and heat lamps, rewired a switch to the kitchen pantry that had the freezer and the pantry light on it so that you could turn off the light and the freezer would keep running, rewired a bunch of other switches, installed a solar-activated switch on an outside pavilion light, set up a wi-fi system for the whole ranch complex, and did lots of other stuff. He can go back any time. Of course, the rest of us did notice that Mark gravitated to the lighter stuff and sitting behind a desk while we were doing the heavy lifting and getting dirty and sweaty.
Matt Ross, our organizer, our brains, our driver, and our contact with the orphanage before and after, also proved to be pretty handy at lots of tasks. A true leader. Matt, like Mark, also actually knew what he was doing. He also worked really hard, with unfailing cheerfulness and concern for everybody else. We put a tarpaper roof on the chicken coop (tarpaper rolls, tar caulk and roofing nails for maybe 25’ x 15’ roof), replacing a tin roof that blew off in a wind (apparently they get some very high winds; we will see if the tarpaper survives the next one). They have lots of chickens (and a couple roosters), and gather eggs for the dining hall and for sale.
Then we tiled a 30’ by 13’ bedroom in the house of one of the pastors. The tile went over a cement floor that had some cracks, a high center and gentle swells throughout, and walls that went in and out and were wider at one end than the other. We got ‘er done, all tile down, cut to fit even around the door frame, and grouted. Fortunately, there will be no inspection.
Brian McClain and I were the donkey labor. We helped out where we could, and were constantly employed. All jobs like this can use donkeys, but Matt and Mark sometimes probably would have liked to have younger donkeys, with stronger backs and quicker learning curves. Brian came closer to the ideal than I did. All of us, though, donkeys and skilled workers, got to know each other better, especially during the hours on the road. We listened to sermons, lots of Christian rock and other music, and to the Super Bowl across New Mexico and up past Tucson. Tended to stop at Subway and In-and-Out. The Lord takes all kinds, just as we are, warts and all, and saves us by His grace. Mostly, we had the opportunity to trade wart stories and God’s grace in our salvation, although Matt seemed to have gotten it a lot earlier than the rest of us. At the end of the day, everyone contributed to a very productive trip in which the orphanage was greatly blessed.
This was a great trip. The orphanage would like to have somebody come back from Sovereign Grace, maybe in another three months. They will not run out of things for us to do. Our time there blessed us greatly, and gave us a glimpse of the ministry at the orphanage, and God’s hand on the children there. Every bit of support that our church can give will have a direct effect on children’s lives, and lift up the ministry team that serves there. I will remember the children’s healthy, happy faces and bright eyes; then where those kids all came from, and the evil things they have already experienced, that no child ever should; and finally the can-do, unassuming, matter-of-fact attitude of all the ministry staff in the face of the violence around them, as the hand of God in that community, lifting those kids up in health and washing them clean of the sadness on their spirits. The Christian Orphanage is truly God’s work. What a blessing to serve there, even for a couple of days. AMEN!!
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