A group of Wood River Valley residents crossed the U.S./Mexico border last week on a mission sponsored by Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church to help the town of La Gloria, a small suburb of Tijuana.
For the past six years, the Sun Valley church has organized a mission trip to Mexico. The group consists of adults and high school students. The mission works with Esperanza International, a non-profit, non-sectarian organization that helps communities in the Tijuana area to build schools, health clinics and houses.
This year, 14 locals, six youths and eight adults, ventured to La Gloria. There they built classrooms, houses and more.
Citizens of La Gloria primarily work in construction or factories near the border, forcing many of them to commute to the main city of Tijuana. With people out of the neighborhood working to earn a living, the need for physical laborers for the town is quite big.
"We offer something they cannot usually get for themselves, which is a labor force," said Teresa Gregory, who works with Our Lady of the Snows and went on the trip. "The families save up the money, so it's not like we bring the money down, we just bring down the workforce."
One veteran to the trip was Sam Farnham, a senior at The Community School in Sun Valley, who has traveled to Tijuana for the past four years.
"Every year it just keeps getting better and better," Farnham said. "This year was really good because our group did really well, and I think a lot of people who hadn't gone before realized that we are so privileged in the valley and how much we can give."
Ketchum resident Kelly Martin, who went on the trip with her two sons Anthony and John, agreed. "Before I left, people kept asking me why we are crossing the border to help people when there is so much need here," Martin said. "I learned that it is so much more than that.
"Every night we would gather into a circle and talk about our day, and my 15-year-old said, 'I used to make ethnic jokes about Mexicans and I will never ever do that again, and now I understand why they come to America.' It was really very emotional and powerful."
The group witnessed some intense and dire conditions. They worked at a school of 188 children that had only two toilets, one of which was barely working, and instead of teachers young teenagers taught for free. There was also a serious paucity of affordable drinking water. For some, clean water is so expensive that it can cost as much as one-fifth of his or her monthly salary.
"It was amazing to see that what we take for granted they don't even have," Martin said. "The trip taught me that helping people knows no borders."
