Time for the children to go back to school. But there is no school. Classes are online. But the children in our area do not have computers. Time to go back to work, but jobs are scarce. Time to go to church, we opened up one chapel out of four. Our schools for remedial education remain closed. The one area that remains open is the care of our kids of other abilities. However, activities have been curtailed. Candelaria who has been with us for 15 years pleads to go to equine therapy. We do not gather children from different homes together to celebrate birthdays. Our Canoa center has continued to provide therapy with masks for the all, social distancing, thermometer check, disinfectant, thirty-minute limit, no singing, etc.
In the meantime, we have opened a new house right next to a parish church on the east side of Rosarito with the hope that churchgoers can take interest and support the project. We only had to paint, fix the roof, rework electricity and plumbing, and build wheelchair access ramps, plus new kitchen cabinets. Roberto lives there, fifty years old, movement impaired evidenced by sliding 6-inch steps, retarded (he still plays with his box of hot wheels,) but a truly marvellous person. He exudes kindness, consideration for others, graciousness, benignity, a deeply felt laughter, a wonderful sense of humor. He and David get along splendidly. We envision this house to take in older folks. The one overwhelming worry of parents with challenged youngsters is what will happen to them when I die. We also want to respond to the growing incidence of Alzheimer's among people with down syndrome as they advance in years.
With the help of Serving Hands International, we purchased a mobile classroom which we are slowly turning into a residence for our challenged people. We redid all the electricity including changing to LED lighting, built a bathroom which will hopefully experience all interior connections tomorrow, repaired the entire room, and built a ramp-garden area which would correspond to a twelve by forty-foot deck and ramp. Instead, through a friend who works for the city, we acquired eleven dump truck loads of rubble and dirt which we moved by pick and shovel to form a shaded area for the children complete with dwarf trees and plants. A refugee family from El Salvador is scheduled to move in today to start caring for our kids. We will have three houses connected to each other in administration, provisions, and supervision separated ten minutes one from another. I do not believe in large institutions that do not provide personal care, but rather In family groups to support and watch out for one another. I strive to imitate SOS which started in Austria at the end of the WW2 with the great number of orphans in Europe and has spread all over the world. They have a home in Tijuana where one of our young people was the director. I have also visited their home in Tres Rios on the outskirts of San Jose, Costa Rica. The challenge is to adopt the system of family type units to the historical and cultural circumstances at play in our area.
If official transactions required x amount of time before the pandemic, they now require x7. A water connection at CANOA, a simple eight-foot hook up to a new meter, extended over seven months. It took ten months to open a bank account to conform with revised laundering. Rest assured that I have enough trouble washing David's and my clothes let alone money. I do confess to finding coins in the bottom of the tub. All of this does not include hours waiting in line to be told to come back another day. Isais 30 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: By waiting and by calm you will be saved, in the quiet and in trust your strength lies…. Yet the Lord is waiting to show you favor; for the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all who wait for him.”
We are still struggling to open the new daycare center. Our biggest task now is to build a peripheral wall to keep out thieves. During the past couple of months, they have broken in six times to steal whatever they can find including the toys and books for the center. We know who they are- young drug addicts hopelessly caught in the cycle to support their habits who used to come to catechism with us but fell to the allurement of rapid pleasure over the painstaking struggle to create a better world.
The description of the Lord of Justice reminds me of the fortieth anniversary of Oscar Romero, the Saint of the Americas. We had no remembrance this year; all the churches closed. He gave all of us who struggle within churches hope by transforming and incorporating all into a church of the people, the church of the poor. How I wish that his spirit still remained with us.
Every year in September or October I go to San Francisco but not this year for the pandemic. Next year will be better. God willing.
