Christmas carols are on the loose and I think the baking aisle of Walmart is running out of sugar cookie icing. The holidays are upon us and I am personally so excited. I didn’t grow up with a traditional Christmas of going to sleep, anxiously awaiting Santa’s gift under the tree, and I didn’t know what elf on the shelf was until I was 13. However, I do have one family tradition I wouldn’t trade for all the reindeer on Santa’s sleigh.
Reynosa, Mexico is a city I had never heard of before 2017. Now I love it more than my hometown; with its horrifying traffic, cold showers, and the most delicious ice cream and coca-cola from the local 7Eleven. My first border crossing into Reynosa was on Christmas day of 2017 and forever my life was changed. My first time walking into the landfill of the Diez De Mayo, I was introduced to the life of a “trasher”. Trashers pick through the piles of junk to find recyclables to sell. Many people live in the Colonia with whatever they can find from the landfill. The lucky ones have jobs in town for the minimum wage of seven American dollars a day.
The house we built was for a woman named Rosalia and her family. In anticipating our arrival to help with construction she demolished her old “house” which consisted of palettes a tarp and any other trash she could find from the landfill. Later that week as the construction continued the winter weather (50 degrees in Mexico) had us all shivering. Adding to it a constant drizzle and thick humidity, we could not get the paint on her house to dry. Despite the circumstances, Rosalia had a plan. She lit her dilapidated home in flames and created a small campfire that not only kept us warm but dried the paint on the boards of her new home. That day has always stuck with me. Rosalia had given us all she had, simply because she saw we were cold.
Over the rest of the week, we did more than talk to Rosalia. I got to meet a beautiful family of three children and their parents. I quickly became attached to them and played baseball in the alley every chance I got. Because it was hard for them to pronoun my name I quickly earned the name Yoseli or “Pelo de Princessa” which means hair of a princess. As I gained the friendship of these children I learned more and more about them. Jesus wanted to be a baseball player. At eight years old he was catching pop-flys over the heads of my 6’3” college friends. I later found out that he played on a baseball team in the Colonia called the “New York Mets”. Daniela loved makeup and was a happy-go-lucky girl that enjoyed braiding my hair and listening to me sing songs. Miguel a boy of only five at the time enjoyed chocolate and piggyback rides while he shouted “¡Correr, correr el Caballo!” or “Run, run horse!” Little did they know or realize any of the poverty around them. It was just normal life to them. They were some of the most grateful, joyful, and wonderful children I had ever met. They had nothing and yet everything, and for the first time in my life, I felt ashamed that I had a beautiful home, nutritious food, and new clothes; things I had always taken for granted.
At the end of the week, our house was finished, and although it was no bigger than a garden shed it brought tears to Rosalias’ eyes. She told us that she had prayed for two years for us to come and build her a house. I was not prepared to leave but with tearful goodbyes, I was handed gifts. The three kids with nothing handed me beautiful bracelets they had received from missionaries the day before. These children now search the Colonia every Christmas looking for me and my family. When we find each other we realize what Christmas is all about. Christmas is not about what we can get or what we have. The holidays are about what we can give and how we can make people smile.
I have each of those kids on social media and they FaceTime me all the time. I am very excited to build our next house this Christmas and see my kiddos for the first time in nine months. I cannot wait to soak in my favorite place on earth, the dump of Reynosa, Mexico.
What parts of the holidays are your favorite? Is it family time, presents, a break from school? I challenge you in all of these festivities, to make someone smile this holiday!
Jocelyn Dvorak
State Treasurer