Child's Play?

Over several years during the 1990’s, I participated in a half dozen short-term missions, including four to the  Mexican city of Reynosa.

Located along the Rio Bravo (which is called the Rio Grande in the U.S.) opposite McAllen, Texas, Reynosa by then had become a magnet for people migrating from the country’s interior seeking better lives.To accommodate the influx of thousands, the government made available large tracts of bare, semi-arid abandoned land for the migrants. The tracts became shanty towns.

It was in one of those – home to some 25,000 people living without any utilities including running water – that our mission work centered.

We did what we could – working with local church partners that our sponsoring organization had arranged. The work was typical -- building, teaching, working with children and on two occasions providing medical and dental clinics, all the while working in high heat and humidity along an inhospitable  landscape of constant dust, scraggly desert plants and the occasional rattlesnake. It was bleak, but the people were not. They were uplifting to be with, their faith instructive and palpable even in the face of daunting circumstances. The children particularly were bright and lively, and they were learning English in their schools. So to practice with Norteamericanos, was a real treat.

For us, the work was challenging but enlightening. If you had not thought of poverty in an absolute way, here it was. The real deal.  Pretty unnerving – nearly unbelievable – to those new to our trips.

So as welcome respite, on a couple of evenings we would visit a Christian orphanage in Reynosa. It centered on a traditionally styled three-story baronial home surrounded by ancient cooling trees and plenty of room for  outside recreation for the dozens of children who were there.

They enjoyed having us play soccer or simply encourage them on their swings and see-saws. Meanwhile some tended to gravitate to individuals among us, and that’s how I met a little girl named Erika. Somehow she had learned that I might be able to help her with her English, and I readily agreed. She was about 10 and a very bright and happy child. Erika quickly invented a way to learn the names of each person in our group. She had one of those tablets with a film covering a treated flat background. Using a stylus, she could write or draw on the film and the image would appear. When you pulled the film up, the images disappeared and she could start over. So Erika and I walked around, and I introduced her to each of the 15 members of our group, while she wrote their names on her tablet. When we were finished, she read them to me and pointed out each person. Pretty good for a 10-year-old, I thought.

          On the following night, Erika was excited to show me something, she said. Without the list, she led me around and greeted each of the 15 members of our group…by name. It was a remarkable demonstration.

Later, once the children had gone upstairs to get ready to sleep, three of us gathered for coffee in the cool of the evening under the trees’ canopy.

Our hostess was Elena, a local contact for our trips. She and I had become acquainted through working together on prior missions. We communicated in a working combination of English and Spanish which we called Spanglish…It worked.

 “I want to tell you a story,” Elena said to me that last night.

She recalled a time several years earlier when the city police brought an infant to the orphanage. The baby had been traumatized somehow, and did not speak or smile or make eye contact, Elena said. She just ate sparsely and slept. So Elena and a friend of hers agreed to pray twice a day with the baby. Days became weeks. And still the child did not respond. Doctors even said she might not ever. But Elena and her friend did not give up. They knew better …  and kept praying and holding and loving the little one, believing that God would heal her.

The day finally came when the baby girl made eye contact and smiled at the women. The child  began to get well, to come back to herself.

As I listened, I wondered where all this was going. And just then Elena said she had noticed what my bright little friend Erika was doing and how happy she was. 

Still I did not see the clues. But what Elena said next opened my eyes:

“La niñita … esta aqui …. Tu estudiante. Tu amiga nueva … She is Erika.”

I returned to work the next morning with a spring in my step – the heat and humidity irrelevant – realizing that I had just helped a 10-year-old miracle with her English.