Growing Up with God In the Valley

The parking lot was crammed with Friday evening shoppers, and the vendors on the sidewalks were shouting above the bumper-to-bumper traffic traveling through the city. A small girl selling homemade tortillas approached James. He shook his head, “No.” An older woman, bent from the burdens of hard work through the years, came near. “Buy my tamales,” she begged. Her pleading eyes and the delicious aroma seized him. He counted his coins again. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She needs the money, I need the food, he thought. But my children— he motioned, “No,” with his index finger. With trembling steps, she moved slowly away. James wiped a tear from his cheek. A man with brightly-colored piñatas swinging from a stick over his shoulder shouted, “Compre para sus hijos!” “Compre para sus hijos!” (Buy for your children). “I wish I could buy something for my children from each peddler,” James muttered as he hurried into the supermarket. Moments later he came out munching on a bolillo (crusty bun). While rushing back to his truck, he heard an American say, “Hi there!” James whirled around and saw an elderly man sitting in his car. The man stood up and extended his hand for a handshake. “I am Papa Freeze. I think I know you. Do you work at the dental clinic in Tijuana?” he asked. “I’m a student there,” James answered, as he looked again at his watch. “That is where I met you. And you are a missionary who speaks fluent Spanish?” After James nodded in agreement, Papa Freeze continued. “You may not remember meeting me, but I have a home for orphans in the valley of La Misión, 20 miles north of here. That community has the finest people in the world. They are caring, honest, good workers, and cooperative. It’s a wonderful place to live, except there is no medical or dental service in the valley. The valley needs someone like you. Right now there is a family living under the bridge who needs help. Could you find help for them?” James looked at his watch and fingered his chin as he often did when pondering. “I’m on my way home to Rosarito and I go right over that long bridge. I can follow you,” James said, “if you are going that way right now. I need to be home by dark.” Papa Freeze nodded, “Oh great! Then I will meet you on the north end of the bridge in about forty-five minutes.” Leaving busy Ensenada, the highway stretches across a high plateau, which extends for miles. At the end of the large plateau, it descends steeply and treacherously into the narrow valley of La Misión. James had passed through this valley on his many trips to El Alamo and the Santa Catarina Indian Reservation. He remembered one time when they were passing through that Charlotte had said, “I’d love to live in a beautiful place like this.” As he descended, James could see the houses along the foot of the steep mountains on the north side of the valley, and he could see a few on the south side. Grassy fields filled the lowlands between the two high mountain ridges. Was this where God needed them? A sharp curve brought him back to reality. He slammed on his brakes and skidded sideways around the hairpin curve. “Whoa! I didn’t realize I was going so fast,” he gasped. Carefully, he descended other curves almost as sharp as that first one. Then the road straightened. He saw the long bridge stretching across the valley at its narrowest point. He passed two small stores and the red and white adobe school building. A cluster of houses bordered each side of the highway. At the north end of the bridge, he noticed clothes hanging on the nearby bushes. “That must be where the family is living,” James murmured. From the bridge, he could see the sun sinking into the Pacific Ocean. It would soon be dark! “I hope Papa Freeze is close behind me,” he said as he pulled off the highway. Two small dresses, three pair of pants, and several shirts hung drying on the bushes. Something was boiling in a soot-blackened pot sitting on three large rocks over a small fire. James saw several boys and two small girls playing in the sand. He leaned his head over the steering wheel and groaned, “Oh Lord, have mercy on these children.” When he raised his head, a tall, thin white man was standing beside the car. His face was gaunt, his eyes dark and sunken. The children stopped playing and stared. At that moment, the noise of a roaring truck descending the mountain with his air brakes on filled the valley, so they could not hear each other. Before James was through getting acquainted with the man, Papa Freeze drove up beside his truck. Papa Freeze told the family they could come to the orphanage and get clothes, and maybe sometimes there would be extra food for them. “We need both food and warm clothes,” the man told Papa Freeze. “We came here from Sonora. It is much cooler here than it is there. I haven’t found much work yet, but I was promised a job on Monday. We will come to get whatever you have. Gracias.” After visiting a little longer, James handed the man the milk and sweetbread he had bought for his own children. Then he and Papa Freeze talked a few minutes beside their vehicles. “God may have prompted our meeting today,” James told Papa Freeze. “In a few weeks we are moving to California and will stay there until I finish dental school. After that, we plan to live in Mexico again. Perhaps God wants us to come here to live.”