Day 360 - Mexican Interlude

The littlest child with her new shoes
Photo by Stuart Gardner

Earlier this month, I spent a Saturday in Mexico. I went with a group from my church to a children's home where the youth of the church have been volunteering each summer for the past several years. The trip two weeks after Christmas has become another annual event for the church, an opportunity for adult members of the church to make the trip to share a meal with the children, to bring presents for them, and to learn the story of the home.

My motivation was to learn about the relationship between the home and my church. In Africa, I was one of many Americans who had opportunities to drop in on groups such as Akany Avoko or Centre Fihavanana in Madagascar, but not much of an opportunity to develop an ongoing relationship. I hoped to see more at Rancho Milagro. I was not disappointed.

Casa Hogar Rancho Milagro is the only children's home in Baja California that is not sponsored by a church organization. Situated on 120 acres just outside of Tecate, Mexico, the ranch is home to 22 children between the ages of 18 months and 18 years or even older. Cesar and Cheryl, the couple who have made the ranch their home for the 27 years it has existed, work through the Baja California Child Protective Services to accept children who need a place to live, but if a child isn't ready to move on to live independently when Child Protective Services support ends, Cesar and Cheryl allow the child to remain.

One of the church members holding
the "ten" year old with Alma in the
background.
Photo by Stuart Gardner

Half of the acreage is not being used at this point, but Cesar hopes to expand the olive grove that covers most of the remaining land. The olive trees provide income for the home. When picked green, the olives are processed on the ranch and are sold to a number of Mexican food companies. Barrels holding one ton of olives each nearly surround the building where the olives are soaked in lye before being thoroughly washed and eventually packed in brine. Olives that are left to ripen on the trees are picked later in the year when they are then shipped to Ensenada to be pressed to extract the oil which the home sells independently to earn income. The older boys at the home who are interested in learning more about agriculture take part in operating the ranch, the only vocational training opportunity the home has been able to develop thus far. But Cesar has plans to expand the vocational training to include woodworking in the future.

The children were doing their chores when we arrived which gave Cesar and Cheryl time to tell us their story. As the children began arriving at the main building, one girl, Alma, came up to me and put her arms around my waist and gave me a big hug. Cesar told them to tell us their names and ages. I was of course curious about the three-year-old boy whose name we had drawn to purchase gifts for. All the boys looked too big. Finally a boy about the right size for the 4T clothes we bought appeared. He told us his name and then announced that he was ten. Cesar chimed in with "in your dreams, little one."

Cheryl and Cesar, Photo by Stuart Gardner

Cesar and Cheryl are following a calling they felt when they met in Mexico City where Cesar is from and Cheryl traveled for a semester while she was a student at Augsburg College. They have lived in Mexico City and in Minneapolis, but in neither place did they find a way to start on the road they knew was theirs. But while in Minneapolis, they met the man who owned the land in Mexico who also had a dream. Their dream fit his and within a couple of years, they and their son headed for Tecate, equidistance from the two cities that had been their homes. Twenty-seven years later, they are still there.

Cesar and Cheryl have so many amazing stories of the joys and the challenges that have crossed their lives. More than once as they showed us the ranch and grounds, Cheryl referred to which chapter that story will go into when she finally writes her book. Before we left, I offered to help Cheryl in whatever way she would welcome - encouragement, editing, whatever. I look forward to hearing back from her.

Two girls from St. Andrews Lutheran Church and two girls from Casa Hogar, Rancho Milagro
Photo by Stuart Gardner