Waiting and Hoping

“She came to me crying and she couldn’t even get the words out. I thought something terrible had happened. But then she told me that they were approved for a Home of Hope! I joined in with her crying as I hugged her.” Brenda De la Paz, recounting a special moment with her 14 year old granddaughter on February of 2020.

After 6 months of paperwork, the De la Paz family learned they were going to receive a Home of Hope. Everlin, the oldest daughter of the family, was ecstatic. The concrete slab was poured and the anticipation grew as the wood and supplies for the house were dropped off the second week of March. Tragically, the number of cases and general awareness of COVID-19 was rising in the US and Mexico. Stay at home orders were put into place and quarantine began. In March just before our Homes of Hope staff and volunteer team could build their home, we were forced to shut down.

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In March, as Covid-19 forced everything to come to a halt, the supplies for their future home were picked up and saved for use on a later date. The De la Paz family settled back into waiting for their home to be built. 

As they waited, they lived in a makeshift- one room structure with a roof compiled of metal sheets and leaky tarps. Israel, the father, was able to continue on in his job as a truck driver during the quarantine, but that meant leaving his wife and 3 children alone for long stretches of time. Israel shared,  “When I was working and my family was in the provisional housing, I struggled with anxiety. I would call my wife everyday and make sure everything was okay. When I checked the weather forecast for Tijuana and saw that it rained I would call her to make sure that the roof wasn’t leaking. Sometimes my father in law would be able to help, or I would have to fix things when I got home from two weeks of trucking. But once I got home we were all squished together. My kids didn’t have any space for their homework, nor my wife had space to cook. I felt that my family was better off with me away, and not taking up their space.”

On September 7th, after a six month pause, a team of our full time YWAM SDB staff dawned their new Homes of Hope facemasks and began the construction of the De la Paz family home. Following COVID-19 protocols and safety measures, our staff were so excited to be hammering, painting, framing, and building again! As we stood in a circle, passing the keys around, the beauty of the moment was tangible. When Israel and Perla were handed the keys to their brand new home, with tears of gratitude they said “God’s timing is perfect.” When asked what she was looking forward to the most about having a home, Perla had tears in her eyes as she shared, “The thing I am most excited about is our family being together, and everyone having their space. I don’t want my husband to feel that way anymore.”

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WANT TO HEAR MORE STORIES OF HOPE?

Join us for a complimentary online event,

An Evening of Hope, on November 19th at 5:00 pm, PST!

We could all use some extra hope right about now and here at YWAM San Diego/ Baja we are still very much in the business of hope, even in these crazy times! To that end, we are so excited to announce that we will be hosting a second Evening of Hope on November 19th at 5pm PST. During our time together, we will hear from special guests Ken Blanchard, Steven Curtis Chapman and Bob Goff, as well as hearing from some of our YWAM SDB staff members about how we are finding hope here in Baja Mexico and how you can partner with us to see hope abound! We had a fabulous time sharing with you at our last Evening of Hope and we are looking forward to another evening with fresh content and new special guests!

Esperanza: When Hope Shows Up Unexpectedly

A story from our co-founder and San Antonio Del Mar campus director, Janet Lambert.

It was a hot day in September, a record-breaking heat wave that made even our normally cool campus by the ocean seem unbearable. I was waiting for a staff member coming up from Ensenada. They were late and I was anxious to get home because the next day was a big deal! We were going to build our first Home of Hope since the start of the pandemic. I didn’t have a lot of patience in that moment, but sometimes when you least expect it, hope shows up.

As I sat there on Hope Plaza at the YWAM campus a taxi pulled up and a beautiful young lady got out. She began to explain to me why she had come. I speak a little Spanish, but she was speaking quickly with her excited voice and I was struggling to understand. Finally, she pulled a picture out of her backpack, it was an old well-worn photo of a home build. She told me how thankful she was over and over. This I could understand, and with tears welling up in both of our eyes, her story began to unfold.

We built a home for Esperanza’s family seven years prior, when she was just 14 years old. Her family meant a lot to our staff. Just months before we built her home Esperanza had attempted suicide. After watching her younger siblings starve day in and day out she decided it would be better for the family if she wasn’t around. It would be one less hungry mouth to feed. Her attempted suicide brought government attention, and they approached us asking for help in building them a home. We quickly mobilized to help them, visiting them many times both before and after the construction. The team that built for them fully adopted them, loved them, provided for school supplies and even uniforms the kids would need. We had worked with the mother to start a small-scale tamale business from her new Home of Hope house. We were going to walk with this family through this difficult season, and the story was full of hope. Until one day our staff visited and the family was gone. We later found out from a neighbor that one of the parents had incurred a debt and sold the home and gone back into drugs. They moved away and we never saw them again. Our staff were devastated, the build team was devastated. We felt that we had done everything we could, sometimes hope seems to disappear. We felt that we had done everything we could, and that our efforts were wasted, but now all these years later, hope showed up unexpectedly.

As Esperanza sat with me on Hope Plaza she told me how difficult it was when her parents sold the Home of Hope house. She always kept the team photo from the build close to her and she would look at it when she needed encouragement, remembering that there were people who loved her, and believed in her. After selling the house her family had moved to Mazatlán, Mexico, but she never forgot the love that had been shown to her.

Esperanza took a bus for 24 hours up from Mazatlán to find us and thank us, and she came to let us know that in December she will graduate with a nursing degree! She arrived in downtown Tijuana and when she got off the bus she looked for a taxi driver she could trust and who could help her find us again. She had a vague seven-year-old recollection of where we were. She related that on the bus she had prayed that God would help her find us. This young woman who grew up in abject poverty living in an unstable home, abandoned by her father, suffered the untimely death of her dear sister, is now a single mom of a two-year-old son with special needs and yet she is going to graduate from University! She told us that because of the love and investment that Homes of Hope made in her family she saw it as her duty to make something of herself.

Do you know what Esperanza means in English?

HOPE.

Sometimes, when we least expect it hope shows up. Esperanza’s story, and her journey to thank us was the perfect timing. It was a reminder for our staff of the value of what we do, and after so many disappointing months of everything being shut down, and so many cancelations, we were about to embark on sharing hope through Homes of Hope again!

This is a difficult season for so many people around the globe, but we are reminded that any investment you make in loving people, in believing in people, in helping them move forward won’t return empty, and even if we don’t see it right now, HOPE is still at work.

Surviving off of Lettuce and Mayonnaise

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on our world and Baja California is no exception. The government of Mexico has set a 'shelter in place' order for the months of April and May. This has had a dramatic impact on the lower-class, working families, earning minimum wage, which is generally only $2 an hour. Unable to work, families are getting desperate for food.

While we cannot build homes currently, as a ministry we are still staying active to meet the needs of the community, as best as we can. In Ensenada the local  government gave us a list of families that were in need of food. While wearing masks and practicing social distancing, we go to the families homes and meet them at their door, handing over a box of food and supplies and praying for them. 

During one of our outings we planned to meet up with a man at the end of his street. Upon arriving, we noticed that he was elderly and using a cane, limping along as he came to greet us. He couldn't carry the box of food so we helped him back to his house.

As we entered the home to drop the food off and put the items in their fridge, all that it contained was a head of lettuce and a half used jar of mayonnaise. When his wife saw the box of food, tears filled her eyes. We prayed with them and shared that God is our provider, saying "God is good," and he beamed, responding,  "No, God is super good!"

During these uncertain times it's so beautiful to see the difference a box of food can make for a family. No one should have to survive off of a head of lettuce and some mayonnaise. We want as many families in Baja California as possible to know that not only does God love them, He is their provider! 

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Would you like to partner with us to bless families in need during this time?