Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
At a tiny, ramshackle church with desert sand for a floor, men without homes, recovering drug addicts and alcoholics alike, bowed their heads and prayed for Elvia Sianes, whose own sad life even they could not comprehend.
These broken men were not accustomed to wanting anything for anyone but themselves.
However, Sianes, who for the past four years has lived with her husband, three children and severely disabled brother in a broken-down school bus on the outskirts of Mexico’s second-largest border city, left them feeling humble and regretful for what little they have made of their lives.
“Before I came here, I didn’t believe in anything or anyone, not even myself,” said Jeffrey Bleigh, 40, of Denver, who took off his ball cap and offered it to Sianes’ brother. “This experience has brought me to tears. It’s made me realize how selfish I had been in my life.
“I wish we could help everyone here.”
Bleigh was among 40 men from the Denver Rescue Mission’s long-term-rehabilitation program who recently rode down from Colorado in vans to work on construction projects at Baptist churches and orphanages in Juárez.
The men are part of the Rescue Mission’s New Life Program – a long-term residential rehabilitation program designed to teach life skills and life lessons. Half are Christians; the rest are just trying to make something of themselves.
Their mission to Mexico was twofold: to help those less for- tunate while recognizing the opportunities they’ve squandered.
“Some of these guys were homeless, right off the street, many of them thinking they have nothing to be grateful for, that the world’s against them,” said Steve Walkup, vice president of programs. “When they come out here and see how there are people who really don’t have anything, it really puts things into perspective.”
Wearing a white cotton nightgown with a faded flower print – the only thing she owns that resembles a dress – Sianes was grateful for any prayer she could get.
“Their help is really needed here,” Sianes said.
On the horizon, an expansive development of colorless three-room shanties was being built with mortar and cinder blocks for factory workers surviving on $50 a week. They are virtual palaces compared to other homes in the area that are built with wooden crates and anything else that could be strung together.
“Seeing this makes me thankful I was born in the United States,” said Ronnie Vance, 35, of Redding, Calif., who spent half of his life in prison on theft-related charges before joining the Rescue Mission four months ago. “There’s God here still, even in places where you have to flush a toilet with a bucket of water.”
Nurturing a desire to change
The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” blared on the radio as the vans rolled past modest apartment buildings and homes near the center of Juárez to the slums on the outskirts of the city.
Crossing the border in a line of white vans, the Rescue Mission group drove past beggars and street vendors selling wares that included gum and paintings of Mexican soap-opera stars.
“The biggest difference you see here is between the haves and the have- nots,” said Alex Williams, 24, of Denver, a recovering drug addict. “But you see strength in these people. Somehow, they still find a way to smile.”
The Rescue Mission’s rehabilitation program lasts seven months to two years at locations in Denver and rural Larimer County. Each site has education centers, offering high school, college, vocational and life-skills courses.
Each man on this trip was chosen in part because he has shown a potential for change.
Organizers say the success rate of the Rescue Mission’s rehabilitation is between 25 percent and 30 percent, higher than many other programs, and they’ve seen success in the men who have come on the Mexico trip in the past.
“It’s a bonding experience for them. They learn about people who have it not as good as they do and how they deal,” said Mark Miller, director of the New Life Program. “They learn that the world is bigger than them.”
Most of the men on the trip are fighting some kind of addiction.
Some are college-educated and were raised in stable households. Some are high-school dropouts who grew up in poverty.
Some of the men brought experience in plumbing or electrical work. Some brought their talents in woodworking. Some just brought strong backs.
None came with the talent to entertain like Mike Kripakov, 36, of Littleton. Yet Kripakov felt hopeless despite having a master’s in music from the University of California-Santa Cruz and a surfer’s good looks.
“I needed good, hard work and an environment that shows me to value the simple things about life and other human beings,” said Kripakov, a paranoid schizophrenic who started abusing meth two years ago. “I know it’s still a long shot that I’ll remain clean, but seeing the joy in this place and in the people, I’ve fallen in love with Mexico and started liking myself a little more in the process.”
A tough place to call home
Mexico can be tough on a recovering alcoholic.
On a trip through a market, a couple of the men in the group did all they could to avoid waiters insisting that passers-by stop in for a Corona.
Like Tijuana, Juárez has been a major port of entry to the United States and was a booming entertainment center during the U.S.’s Prohibition era.
In recent decades, Juárez became notorious for major narcotics trafficking and for the unsolved murders of several hundred young women.
Much of its ever-expanding slums stretch to the outskirts of the city, far from basic services like gas and sewer.
“In the U.S., we’re not used to this kind of poverty,” said Leo Samaniego, a soft-spoken pastor from El Paso who helps coordinate the Rescue Mission’s projects. “But the people here, many of them know of no other lifestyle unless they’ve seen it on television.”
While large demonstrations over immigration reform were held across the border, men from the Rescue Mission played with young orphans at Casa de la Nueva Vida.
A 5-year-old boy climbed Michael Morgan like a jungle gym while the men worked. Morgan, 30, of Aurora had struggled with a cocaine addiction for years before coming to the Rescue Mission nine months ago.
He hasn’t seen his children in two years.
“This place is just surreal to me,” Morgan said. “I wish every American would come down here to do something like we’re doing.”
Building a village pillar
On the eastern outskirts of Juárez, the little church’s name – Centro de Estudio Biblico Jehova Yireh – was scrawled on a piece of cardboard that hung on a pole out front.
In a cloud of dust, the Rescue Mission men shoveled out wheelbarrows of sand to make way for a concrete floor and dug a trench to run a pipe from an outhouse to a hole in the ground.
Under the hot sun, Rafael Solís, the pastor of the church, and his wife helped shovel rocks. Then they held a ceremony to thank the men for their contributions and introduce them to their parish.
“To them, they’re helping to build a church, but it’s more than that,” said parishioner Sergio Gonzales, a 40-year-old worker at a factory that makes car-seat covers. “The people here don’t have a place to live or eat. The church is here for us in many ways.”
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-820-1537 or mgonzales@denverpost.com.
