Project report: We have cancelled the migrant camp. The house for migrants that we support, Pro Amore Dei, used to have over three hundred residents not including those sleeping outside in the patio. Now they have 130 who can be easily accommodated. This number will decline with Biden’s hold on asylum petitions, an antihumanitarian response to political pressure.

Instead we are building two houses at Carita de Dios, our sister organization for children of other capabilities. To perfect our system of building with discarded styrofoam sheets, we built a bathroom for a house at Canoa and an office for catechism at the chapel. Both structures are super economical, sturdy, and thermally superior. I reason that if we can teach a significant number of people how to use the material properly, the idea will spread. My architect friend, Armando, claims that construction with concrete and steel contributes exceedingly to environmental degradation. Steel is made by melting iron ore, and cement by disintegrating rock with fire.

We have finally completed the perimeter wall around Campesino Urbano. The gates need repair and installation. My friend took one gate to his shop two months ago and has not yet said when he will finish. Eventually….

When we built the Sagrada Familia orphanage for kids of other capabilities 1999-2000, they had abandoned a program working with the mothers of the children. But the program had valor. We are trying to train the mothers by offering classes that will lead to financial independence. So far we are making nutritional bars and will start next week cutting hair. David will be the first victim as he never complains about anything. We have so much to learn from our kids about detachment. So many fathers of families with children of special needs abandon them to live by charity and whatever means possible. Every step forward enhances hope and the desire to continue ahead.

Last week we buried a 3 year old girl. Three months ago we buried her mother. They were walking calmly along the sidewalk when a pickup approached followed by a car that was firing bullets into the pickup killing the driver. The pickup, uncontrolled, swerved onto the sidewalk killing the mother and critically injuring the little girl. She spent three months in the hospital valiantly struggling but finally succumbed. Imagine the grief of the father losing his wife and going every day to the hospital for three months only to have to bury his daughter. How does a God of mercy and infinite goodness permit such suffering? Another mother took her eight year old son to the doctor. They diagnosed cancer. She told the doctor that if he could cure her son, go ahead and treat hm. The doctor prescribed quimotherapy. Six months later the doctor called to take her son away that they could not do anything more for him. She took him home. Two days later he died in her arms. Her friends called to console her saying that he was better off going to God. She answered that was of no consolation as she could do a better job with him at her side, and that she would go on living only to be reunited with him one day in heaven. St. Paul wrote that we see only through a dark lens. The shadow of Jung and the overwhelming darkness of Elliot join forces to leave us in dismay sharing a glimmer of faith.

Not the kind of glamour nor pomp that is painted on or rehearsed, but the genuine joy of the human soul fulfilled in the service of the other.  Lent exists to give a vision of beauty and glory to withstand the pain of suffering and death.  Anyone captivated by a vision of glory overcomes the obstacles of pain, deception, violence to overcome and reach a goal.  During these weeks, I have tried to find symbols of glory and hope that open us up to the beauty of the cross.  The catechism kids draw them on Saturday and display them at Mass on Sunday, e.g.  The sunrise:  every time we see and feel the sunrise we are reminded of new life and beginnings.  A group of young people gently kidding with one another as one girl says to her boyfriend, “ you more ugly than a dead cat smelling to the high heavens.+”  “No way.  I am beauty in motion more glorious that the sunrise!”  The tree of life:  all trees show off the wonder of creation giving it both breath and sustenance.  The butterfly:  The state of Michoacán hosts the national park of the Monarch butterfly whose gorgeous wings reflect all majesty and brilliance whose colors the soccer team of Morelia have adopted – football, baseball, sports, exercise also enhance the soul.  What does a bee do in a gym?   Zuuuumba!  Asked to give a sign of hope, Pope Francisco answered: “two, a smile and a sense of humor are the flowers of the heart that refresh us all.”  What a shame that these symbols are all declining and the Monarchs of Morelia have dropped to the second division. 

     After finishing the three houses with the help of the kids of the school of carpentry, we built a room addition for a family whose teenagers were sleeping in the kitchen.  The beneficent group Esperanza that promotes self construction homes gave me some old doors that we converted into a bunk bed- no more breakfast in bed. 

     The Campesino Urbano project limps along ever so slowly.  The first section of the perimeter wall runs more than 200 feet, two thirds of the hundred yard dash which now challenges some of us to complete in sub two hour marathon time.  Poco a poco. 

     The migrant camp now has plans and partial clean up.  International Relief teams has promised to send volunteers.  We also have a scholarship program for university students in combination with Techmaster, a local business.  The practical experience has benefited the young people and us.  Once we get started, we hope to finish in a couple of months.  But all human endeavor is beset with calamity and misfortune.  

       Speaking of which, the Giants are mired in spring training. If all goes well, they will not finish in last place in their division.  My sister took a couple of weeks to watch them in Arizona.  Left handed, she could probably pitch better than most on the current roster.  I plan to go to SF this year in October.  Take no worry of a visit interrupting a playoff or world series game. 

     My long time friend and activist Mary Bernier rightly campaigns for a just solution to the war in Gaza which will lead to a two state solution proposed decades ago by the Bush administration.  Biden sends aide by airlift which has already killed five people and supplies bombs to Israel to kill many more. What duplicity.  Cut off aide until they stop the slaughter. Likewise Pope Francis proposes a truce in Ukraine.  Zelinsky opposes bitterly.  But Ukraine’s wheat fields which supply grain for many countries are being destroyed as well as whole cities devastated.  Western support is dwindling. Easter beloved by the Orthodox Churches elicits peace and new beginnings. Declare victory.  End the fighting before Russian nukes destroy everything.  “Discretion is the better part of valor.” Make peace while you still can. “Break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the naked and not turn from your own kin. Then your light will shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over.” Is 58:6-8 

In this light, we started early. Blanca, the director of our Canoa center, asked me to find a place for an expectant, single mother of twins, who was being evicted from her apartment. "Tell me when she has to leave and expected delivery date." They occurred about the same time. We had been working restoring an abandoned, crumbling house. I told her that the mother could live there. But in there matters, dates do not always coincide. She delivered a couple of days early. We worked diligently to finish the house on a Friday about five weeks ago anticipating a Saturday arrival. On Friday mnight, they killed a man on the street at the entrance to the house. The police closed the area to all traffic until the body was removed. Finally, in the afternoon, the mother arrived with two tiny bundles, Joel and Leonel. Most often, the results of voluntary labor are hidden in the hands of the Lord. But I felt satisfaction that our Christmas came before the hour in double quantity.

One morning on the way to Mass, the daughter of the deceased, beloved coordinator of our chapel told me about a family living in a 6ft x 6ft tent, a single father and his three boys, two in middle school and one in primary school. They had not even a table nor chair; the kids did their homework writing on the ground. I wanted to experiment with a new method of construction that involves making a frame working out of metal studs laid on the ground and filled with a mixture of half bag of cement, one bucket of sand, and five buckets of ground recycled esp (Styrofoam.) We had made a sample batch and it seemed ok. The Padilla family helped me with a wood chipper; we crushed bag after bag of foam, pouring it into the frame work in the same style as "lift up" Constuction. I was quite happy with the results until it came time to raise the walls. Five of us could not budge them. I don't know how, but the next morning nine people showed up and with considerable effort, we managed to secure them in place. Luis Evora, Enrique Contreras, and team showed up a couple of days later and installed the electricity. They brought bikes for newly installed family, tables, chairs, and even a tv. The walls need to be stuccoed

and plumbing installed, but they are safe from the elements. One day we brought food for everyone, but they did not even have a spoon to eat. With the help of the kids at our carpentry school, we made and delivered a large kitchen cabinet and sink: our second posadas.

The third posadas remains a work in progress. A single mom with an elderly mother who barely walks and two daughters attends Sunday Mass. She asked help for a house. I went with her to see the site and said to myself that site the was impossible sloping steeply in two directions. A friend has a back hoe. He leveled off part of the land. Arturo Padilla came with his son Pablo to level three cement pillars upon which I rested a box beam made out of steel studs encased in plywood to serve as a base for a steel framework that Eloy Ojeda taught me thirty years ago how to assemble. For years, we have cooperated with a non profit that promotes self help houses. The director told me about a group from the Church of Jesus Christ in Utah that comes during Thanksgiving, Builders Without Borders, to construct houses. I called the lady in charge, Kelly McMillan. She said that she would try to include our house. Years ago I remember digging trenches at the La Gloria Childrens Home with a professor from BYU who taught the Book of Mormon. We passed a wonderful afternoon shoveling and talking theology, my version of ecumenism in the trenches. I told Kelly that I would pay for the materials if her group would provide the labor. They put up the walls and most of the rafters and partial sheeting. Angel and I worked four days to finish the siding, the rafters, sheeting, put up doors, and roofed in the morning when it rained in the afternoon. We need to hang drywall, slap down laminate flooring. Before Christmas, Luis Evora will install electricity and lighting while humbly acknowledging: "no longer shall the sun go down, or your moon withdraw, for the Lord shall be your light forever, and the days of your mourning be at an end. Your people shall be just." Is.60:20 Praying for same justice respect for human rights in the Holy Land and Ukraine, I wish peace for all.

Isaia describes the sacred nature of rivers, trees, and mountains, objects of encounter with the divine. All trees foster life but even more the tree of the cross planted on the barren hill of Golgotha to proclaim the liberation of all peoples. Nikos Katzantzakis described the tree of Easter glory upon descending Mount Athos and calling upon a tree to speak to him of God and the tree blossomed.

The lady coach of the intergraded soccer team at the chapel at the bottom of a ravine in our area asked me to bless the site of a young man’s suicide. The icy wind made the utterly barren house even colder. Tacked together with discarded material, it provided minimum shelter. The outside kitchen used a mounded mud cavity for a stove. When his wife and children abandoned him, the poor lad could no longer withstand the misery. But the garden was full of trees with hundreds of saplings in small cans that he would give away to neighbors and anyone else.

Shortly after a friend called to anoint El Paisa, a tall, strangely, gentle soul who attended our Sunday Mass attired in a worn poncho. I barely made it to his hut hanging onto a collapsing barbed wire fence. I found him lying on the floor beneath urine soaked coverings that emitted a barely tolerable stench awaiting the “pelona” (grim ripper.) In the darkness, I found it hard to find his head while pronouncing the prayers of consolation of the last rites. An ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital, but he refused. The next morning , he mercifully went to his reward. The poor have no burial but rather are thrown into the “pozo comun” the dump for human remains. We celebrated his life and resurrection at Mass the following Sunday. Years ago I attended El Negro who lived by our chapel at the site of the old municipal dump who similarly lied on the ground floor of his shack. The neighbors had graciously sent him food that they placed beside him, but the dogs were eating his food. I offered to take him to a rest home but he refused. He had lost an arm working at the dump which was fitted with a crude hook which he dug into the ground where he wanted to pass his final time with his dogs. Isaia promises, “Yes, in joy you shall depart, in peace you shall be brought back; mountains and hills shall break out in song before you, and all the trees of the countryside shall clap their hands. In place of the thornbush, the cypress will grow, instead of nettles, the myrtle. This shall be to the Lord’s renown, an everlasting imperishable sign.” 55:12-13 Easter offers the same tree of life to the poor.

Milestones and News: Charles Astrue died. Three years ago at our last gathering in San Francisco when only 98 and still walking without support, upon leaving with a twinkle in his eyes Charles told everyone upon leaving that he was going to take his wife Miriam out for an ice cream cone. Bright, friendly cheerful, with a love of Latino culture, he was a genuine gentleman full of kindness and compassion.

Cristobol Marquez celebrates his 100th birthday on April 1st, a truly honest remarkable person of great virtue, promoter of justice and community service in La Purissima, Gto.

An Easter fiesta for all of our children on the Sunday following Easter,(those who have families want to be with them on Easter day) the first time for a community event since the pandemic reshaped our lives. We will sing including sign with the words, dance including those in wheel chairs, eat, and rejoice in the splendor of April’s glory.

The finishing of a 9.30 meter retaining wall, 2.10 meters high, and a scaled width from .90m to .30m , to .20m formed in solid concrete ( a dump truck and a half of sand and gravel) mixed almost all by hand for a new residence for those of other capabilities. We have spread out by hand almost thirty dump truck loads of dirt to level off the property. With your help I purchased 2 mobile classrooms which we will convert according to the international code for the handicapped.

Another apartment at the house for men for a 22 year old with hydrocephalus and autism, severely retarded who is accompanied by his mother. They had to put the father with Alzheimer’s in a home. We are currently working on a shared bathroom with almost all of the plumbing installed.

We have a fifteen year old boy who has come to the therapy center for years that the adoptive mother wants to turn over to the state agency for social welfare which has no place for challenged youngsters. We are searching for a solution. But we run up against the limits of our own competence.

The non profit corporation Apoyando la Juventud is ready to begin functioning after years of planning. De Colores will provide the seed money to get them going providing scholarships for university study and community work projects

Also for some time, we have been trying to promote exo skeleton support systems to enable paralytics to walk. We might or might not be on track to develop a workable system that will be affordable for our people both in Mexi co and Peru. Technological developments should be graded on their ability to change the lives of the many, not only for the privileged.

In 1935, the French minister Laval approached Stalin with the intention of stopping the persecution of Catholics. Stalin famously answered, “how many divisions of tanks has the pope?” Stalin has departed and Putin reigns. We join Pope Francis in prayer, our only armament, with all people of good will to stop the war, humankind’s ancient slave maker.v

Today we celebrated our chapel ‘s feast day. 20 youth performed the ancient Aztecan dance (danza no baile.) It connects them with their cultural heritage, enables them to find the sacred in the movement of their bodies, and experience collective beauty. In past years we have had 50 dancers, but covid 19 has limited everything. We continue with Mass outside. Who needs cathedrals to pray?

Thanks be to God, we have finished the retreat center for youth groups, etc. It encompasses 2 conference rooms, 2 bathrooms, 4 private spaces, a kitchen, small reception area, and a tool room after five months of work

The sisters also had a suspended ramp 40 feet long by 9 feet wide that was shedding chunks of concrete. We demolished it and are now building a new one. Who knows how long this will take?

The granddaughter of a deceased friend is a psychologist . She asked for help to build a small house 20’ by 14’ with a bath. We will help her in exchange for her helping our challenged kids equaling her hours of service to ours of construction. There is always the risk of taking the bacon and running, but the reward will hopefully enhance the lives of some of our kids. It is always difficult to get professionals to volunteer.

My carpenter friend Tono has wanted to sell his land for some time. I offered him a plan to use the land at a reduced price. Serving Hands International has provided me with two portable classrooms. I am always grateful to them. They asked prayers for their founder Terry Caster of A1 Storage who is going to have a shoulder replacement. We only have to level the land and build a retaining wall and a perimeter wall.

We move our Christmas party for the kids to after Epiphany to celebrate the diversity of gifts who are our children to us and the inclusion of all Wise Women and Men. We will share a simple gift and community meal. All are welcome 11:00 at CANOA. We will acclaim with Isaiah that the Lord will blossom forth justice in the desert and praise before all peoples especially in the hearts of our children of other abilities.

MILESTONES: Deceased: Jose Hidalgo Hinojoso my great friend who accompanied on all of the projects from the hospital in Tijuana to the orphanage in Peru, of respiratory failure. Honest, faithful, trustworthy Graduated: Blanca Panduro from Tijuana UNUS University with a degree in Physical Therapy- the same course as for medical doctor learning all bones, nerves, muscles and distinct types of therapy. Next year she will become the directress of CANOA. Your support paid for her degree. 50th Wedding Anniversary My sister Carol and husband Tom: Anything that we can do to promote the dignity and sanctity of the family merits admiration. Actions speak louder than words. Threatened: the president and secretary of our Tijuana non profit organization. The secretary and her husband picked up their four kids and fled. The president has more limited options as she has cancer and needs treatment. Gunfire almost every night has replaced the quiet of a semirural village where when I first came 39 years ago no one locked their doors. Born: Emanuel, God with us in a stable among poor shepherds to bring us great joy.

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.

Aldea of the Holy Family, project of the Institute for Integral Rehabilitation of the Incapacitated, Sabandia, province of Arequipa, Peru, January 2019.

Seven boys, all severely challenged, gathered around the kitchen table and given the task of peeling fava beans invite me to join them. The boy with one arm works twice as fast as me. Jilmar participates at the rate of a bean every twenty minutes every bean a testimony to the victory over the gyrations of severe cerebral palsy. No one checks to see how much nor how little each one produces. They have developed recognizable interest in one another, cleaning a noise, taking a companion to the bathroom, making room to-fit in another wheel chair. The common language is an almost constant laughter, both simple and profound that emanates from the heart. Never once a negative comment, nor derisive gesture break the camaraderie.

One comments, " I really like fava bean soup. '' Everyone laughs.

Another claims, " I like fava bean soup more than anyone" Everyone laughs even harder. When we finish, every one helps to clean up.
David takes out of his pockets a chewing size packet-filled with wafer thin cookies that he has broken down to the size of communion wafers. The children have nothing of their own. A small package of cookies is a treasure to be guarded in secret and consumed in delight. A mother often told me how she used to hide a candy for herself only to be discovered eating it alone and evidenced by one offer daughters. Significantly retarded and affected with constant drooling, David enjoys a special place of affection. He takes out each cookie end places it in the hand or in the mouth of every companion according to their ability to use their hands.
  Commentary (free verse) Deficient, demented, dispossessed, disenfranchised, discredited as a public burden, gathered around a table, apostles of other capabilities, vested in shop worn, threadbare garments, the boys peel fava beans, planted with palsied hands and harvested as fruit  of the earth, completing a sustainable cycle driven by devotion bereft of any productive demand.
Replete with glee worthy of being re imagined and retold, sowed upon the heart, they create a world of fellowship.
What benevolence, enduring and endearing, ineluctable of how to live together in canonizing acceptance, anticipation offends, memorizing engagements Constant laughter accompanies them, laughter worthy of being consecrated and distributed as communion in holy trust ozone another, bread broken, not horded, shared for the life of the world                                                 
 

The magnificent readings around Chapter 11 described wisdom and intelligence as seeing the presence of God in the mountains, especially the holy mountain where all peoples and nations gather together as one, in the places where the rivers and the sea meet, in the blind, the lame, the hard of hearing, those of other capacities, in those who wrap justice around themselves, who judge not by appearance, nor hearsay, nor bribes, but have a voice to defend the needy and scatter the corrupt.

How harsh and dreadful to know how to discover God in the actual context of daily life. In November, six homicides right around our chapel and six thousand migrants along the border in the cold and rain. The psalmist asked we look to the mountains for help. Where does our help come from but from our God? The Advent season announces a time to wait for liberation, for the revelation of goodness found in the child born and wrapped in swaddling clothes in a stable Isaiah describes that waiting in steadfast, faithful hope: do what is right, and as much as you can and leave room for all others to act in the same manner.

Our children are well enjoying December, the happiest of all months. They went to dance yesterday to celebrate the day of the handicapped and try to get an apparatus so that Cynthia can walk. We are opening a community center for a range of classes open to all. We started with sewing and clothing design and will include other courses.

We are waiting for the plans from the architect for the new house for men and boys with challenges.
He is the same that is designing the new cathedral. I bit my tongue and did not implore him to dedicate his effort to our worthwhile project and not to that of the Bishop. But the Bishop has more pesos.

We have been offered land for a new center for vocational training. That will happen after the rains, sometime after Easter. I hope to move the carpentry shop there, plus electricity, and plumbing, but only with an ingredient of education in the Morality of sharing. No need to teach only how to gain a good living exclusively for oneself.

One more program to go together with remedial home work school- designed for youth to continue school and do community service- now in the paperwork stage. So much more to do in little time, only confiding that it be in God's time.

I started writing over a month ago. But we could not get a confirmation on a 20th at St James, 23rd and Guerrero date and place for the annual gathering until this afternoon. Oct 20th at Sts (two blocks west of Mission St. ) The other churches wanted to charge or were not available.

Yesterday was the feast day of cosmos and Damien, early Christian martyrs from Alepo, Syria( where massive destruction has accompanied the present civil war) They were physicians who never charged reasoning that healing is a gift from God. Interestingly, they were the first to be targeted in the persecution. Pope Francis compares the church to a field hospital, again no charge; but we have evolved into a church that charges for everything. Jesus counsels, ''What you have received freely, give freely.'' But we got you paying from Baptism to the grave, and we might be the cheapest option.

In Canoa therapy continues. We have a two-year-old with cerebral palsy making considerable
progress but a long distance from walking now smiling along the way. We have finished the project of installing new solar panels but await the hook up to a bi-directional meter. Hopefully, the electric bill will be reduced.

We installed a solar water system for the home for girls in Rosarito. It also awaits final hook up. After a year of effort, I finally got access to an operating room for oral surgery for the twins, Lupe & Carmen.
Next up is Anahi for a cleft pallet. Her appointment for consideration Is in January. We have eight girls which is the limit for care and still remaining a family home and not an institution.

We are taking the steps to start a home for boys. Property is in the process of donation. We built a fence and sighted levels. We drew plans but need the approval of a registered architect. All of this takes time and patience. The actual construction could take less time than the preliminary steps.

  The new house for the older members of the orphanage in Peru is about halfway finished. After almost 20 years, I plan to visit in January If anyone wants to accompany us.

The therapy center in Chihuahua continues to treat people free of charge. They are closing in on 2,000 patients. They have the advantage of a physical therapist who prescribes the proper course of treatment. We have started in the same direction in Tijuana helping a young woman with her studies so that she can provide the same service. One of our scholarship students just graduated as a psychologist, and another is less than a year away In law school. We are also planning to help with another program of scholarships based on community service. A lot more to do in limited time...........