Epilog: Why Tijuana?

Why do 26 people--most of them Catholics-- spend at least $800 to fly 1,300 miles, sleep in chilly bunk beds, and sweat under the Mexican sun,  to construct a tiny home in a marginal neighborhood that's not even an afterthought in a border town of 1.6 million people?

They just do.

As I was waking up this Monday morning and Memorial Day, some words came back to me from a poem I read back in my youth, when I was a Christian -- a Methodist, no less. I think I read it in Reader's Digest or some other schmaltzy periodical that was popular in the 1960s. It was written by Meade McGuire, a long-since forgotten 7th Day Adventist minister, who was apparently inspired by the Victorious Life Conferences held in the United States a century ago.

I'm printing it here in honor of the givers I've had the pleasure of observing in Peru, Cambodia, and now, Mexico:

Father, where shall I work today?
And my love flowed warm and free.
Then He pointed out a tiny spot
And said, “Tend that for me.”
I answered quickly, “Oh no; not that!
Why, no one would ever see,
No matter how well my work was done;
Not that little place for me.”
And the word He spoke, it was not stern;
He answered me tenderly:
“Ah, little one, search that heart of thine.
Art thou working for them or for me?
Nazareth was a little place,
And so was Galilee.”

Love,
Robert

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