Imagine that, in your small town, a draught forced you to leave behind everything you have known all your life. You tell your wife that you want to live somewhere else so that they will never go hungry or thirsty again. In the village, people live on what they harvest from the fields, but the fields no longer bear fruit.
You gather the few belongings you have and decide to go by bus to Tijuana. There, because of your advanced age, you don’t find work anywhere. You ask in factories, self-service stores and mechanic shops, but no one gives you work.
Your only option is to work as a grocery bagger in a supermarket, living off whatever tips the store’s customers wanted to give you.
You earn 150 pesos a day (7 dollars) after a grueling 10- hour workday, and even with that income, you look for a house where you can put down roots in your last days of life.
You find it, and miraculously manage to meet the monthly payments so that one day the house you are living in will be yours.
One night, you hear a loud bang in the street. You feel the atmosphere suddenly gets warm, but there is no logical explanation. You decide to go to sleep, to have strength for the next day, but suddenly, you look up and see your roof is on fire. You rush to your elderly wife so that she doesn’t fall, saving her in the process. The firemen arrive and put out the fire, caused by the explosion of the light transformer. With all the grief that the situation brings, you ask for asylum with your neighbors, who lovingly agree to give you shelter.
The desperation is unbearable: how could you pay for the repairs to the roof with such a low salary?
This is the story of José Martinez and his wife Maria Hernandez, two elderly people who moved to Tijuana with the hope of no longer going hungry or thirsty, however, tragedy once again took over their lives.
They have been very devoted to Mary Immaculate, and since living in Tijuana they have been attending our Parish.
It was there that Maria gave thanks for life and asked God for help to overcome their difficult situation. It was there that they met Jorge, a member of the Oblate Associates of Mary Immaculate —a group of lay people who are dedicated to serving the poorest and neediest— and he told them about what we do at the Oblate Pastoral Center. With this information, José decided to go and ask for help.
He arrived just in time for the start of our “Building Hope” Roofing Program, which is specifically dedicated to helping people like him and his wife: people who would not be able to repair their roofs on their own.
The young adults in charge of the program visited them, and in less than a day they repaired the roof, leaving it as good as new. The difficulties they had gone through were just a memory, and now they could sleep in a place with dignity.
Thanks to the Roofing Program “Building Hope”, and the support received from Serving Hands International, 45 families were able to live in a decent home. Let’s keep praying that in the future, more families may benefit!
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