Friday: Last day in Mexico at the Girls' Refuge

I had a late night on Thursday trying to get a few things done so I decided to "sleep in" on Friday morning. Cameron and I got up around 7 AM and had a normal crazy morning. Our chapel time ran late (by about 20 minutes) which always makes our mornings busy to get everything ready to go. I was trying to pull everything together for printing pictures today in Mexico. We wanted to be on the bus and on our way by 10:30 but we were late (a bad sign that usually means we'll be back to Fabens late).

We headed for the border and our usually crossing point which we sailed through - five straight days of no issues getting into Mexico. Today was a little unusual though. There's a button on the wall that you push and if it comes up red, that means they will search your bus. We hadn't been asked to do that in our four previous crossings but today we were told to push the button. Mark asked Elvita to do it as when they've been asked in the past, she always got a green light. Today was no different. Once we were past the "Aduana" (the name of the guards at the border), we let out a loud cheer.

Today the drive to the Casa de Refugio Para Jovencitas (House of Refuge for Young Girls) took us a different route. We headed east staying close to the border and then went south (all of the other visits took us west). This was interesting because we saw a different part of Juarez and it looked like this is were much of the U.S. manufacturing is. However, what I also noticed is that many of the large buildings had no cars in them. We had heard that there had been 20,000 jobs lost in just a couple of months.

We arrived at the Casa de Refugio Para Jovencitas and unloaded the bus. We met the director Maricruz. She told us a bit about the home, that she had been sick in bed recently, and other details. I found a YouTube video about the home that though much of the text is in Spanish, I think you'll get the picture of this ministry. Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d18E3_GjSXs.

We got a tour of the facility and then the girls all came down to lunch. The girls all looked to be between 15-17 years old. The sisterhood (Cara, Melissa, Christina, Amanda, etc) all sat down at different tables and engaged with the girls. Despite the language barriers, they looked to be having a great time. Cameron, Philip, Phil, and I passed out lunch (today being sloppy joes) with help from others. After lunch, I went to a room on the other side of their dining room to set up the printers and get ready to get the photos of all the girls printed for one of the crafts they'd do.

Karen H took pictures and with Vern and Jerimiah's help running cards back and forth, we got our two printers busy printing pictures. The process worked great and in about an hour and a half, we got all the pictures taken and printed. The room where I was doing the printing had a window so I could peak in to see how things were going. The girls were getting into making their picture frames. I heard afterwards, Russell was also enjoying this as he drew a picture on a napkin. Somehow through the process, our team was asked to sign the back of the girls' picture frames.

Cameron also made a friend - one of the girl's 2 or 3 year old son named Luis lives in the home with her. He and Philip were playing with him and having a great time. When I saw them, Cameron was giving him a horsey-back ride and everyone was laughing and having fun.

After I finished printing, I went to the dining room where everyone was still gathered. Tami had just finished her message and had asked if any of the girls wanted to receive Jesus as their Savior. I didn't count at the time but looking at the pictures I've seen, it looks like between 11 and 13 girls came forward - GLORIA A DIOS! While we didn't try to keep a count, from what I remember, that means somewhere around 25 people accepted Christ during our time in Juarez. What a blessing indeed it was for so many people to come to Christ!

From there, we went upstairs to a large living room area where we introduced ourselves to the team and each family group shared a verse with the girls. All of them were very powerful verses and I'm certain Spirit-led. For Cameron and I, we shared 1 John 3 verses 1 and 3 (I skipped 2 to save time and because the points I wanted to make were in 1 and 3). I read them in Spanish and here's what they are in English: "See how great a love the Father has lavished on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure". I told the girls that everyone one of us have things we have done wrong but when we have Christ, we are made pure again. I hope that was an encouragement to them.

After we were done, several of the girls gave testimonies. Every one of them brought tears to our eyes. Most of them had a common theme: mother and father separate, mother remarries and the new husband begins to abuse the girl. In many cases, the girl tells her mother who doesn't believe her or asks her daughter why is she trying to destroy her happiness. I can't in a few sentences get across to you just how sad these stories were, especially when several of them talked about the abuse starting when they were only 5 years old. It's hard for me to hold back the tears now as I think about them.

But each one also talked about how finding God's love has brought them new hope. One of the girls talked about how she has forgiven her mother and how much love she has for her mother now. We later heard on the bus ride back that she made her picture frame as a gift to her mom and it expressed the deep love that she had for her. It was a very emotional time. However, we were running late and we had to end the testimony time. Our team prayed for the girls; Cameron and I had four of the girls with us and we prayed for them. After we finished, it was time to leave.

Just before leaving, many people on our team gave a donation to the girls home for a knitted scarf. One of the things the girls are taught is how to knit and they sell the scarfs for a donation as a way to raise money. It was a tearful goodbye (especially for our teenage girls on our team) and we left.

We crossed the border into downtown El Paso; I can now see why we entered the U.S. via the crossing in Santa Teresa (in New Mexico) as the line crossing into El Paso was a long wait. As usual, we had to get off the bus to enter the U.S. through the U.S. Customs office. The officer asked me if I bought anything and I told him we were part of a Christian mission that had visited a girls home and we didn't stop anywhere else. Karen B was behind me and I later learned that the officer gave her a hard time questioning why we'd go into Juarez with all the dangers there (which by the way we saw no dangers and heard that they had gone 5 nights in a row without a murder).

I'll talk about the rest of Friday night and our early Saturday departure in my next post.