Veronica and I met and married at Rose Park Orphanage in Tijuana. We both worked there for a number of years as single people, then another six married, while our three biological kids—Keem, Jason, Rebecca were born.
Someone told us of a rich old Russian lady who lived somewhere near Ensenada who was looking for a couple to move to town to work with the youth. The you in her small town were in gangs and were tearing the town apart. The lady wanted to give free land to whatever couple would take the challenge.
“That’s nice,” I sarcastically told the person who was relaying the offer to Veronica and I. “I hope she finds someone, but it won’t be us.”
We loved the orphanage ministry, it was hard, but so what? I was also involved in a weekly jail ministry, and a weekly ministry to the state prison as well. Nice places, as you can well imagine.
Over the next number of months, God began to change our thinking. Perhaps my sarcastic response had come too quickly. We drove down to Porvenir, to spy out the land. We sensed that it was a great place to do ministry. We thought that perhaps we were just lulled by its quiet rustic-ness… tucked in a lovely valley, no paved streets, more horse and cow traffic on Main Street, than vehicles. We thought we were perhaps letting our emotions get the best of us so we took a step back and spent time doing a survey of other areas—we investigated the status of the Gospel in each community, where the teens were at, whether it was a growing or a dying town, etc. In the end we sensed that Porvenir was the place, and it was not the horses pulling us there, but the Spirit of God.
So we contacted the person to whom the Rich Old Russian lady had first presented her offer. He graciously offered to take us to meet the ROR. When we got there, she was definitely old, she was definitely Russian, it was the “rich” part that was—um, how should I say it—a bit of a hyperbole.
And not only that, ROR was just a bit “forgetful”. She was thrilled to meet the couple that God was sending to deal with the teens in her Porvenir, but the part about the free land was… well, let’s say that, too, was a bit of an exaggeration. She offered to sell us a parcel of land for $10,000.
I highly doubt we had $10 to our name back then, but we were so sure that God was calling us to this place, that as we drove out we were laughing. We were laughing perhaps with the attitude of, “Well, the joke’s on us!” but our eyes had been on God the whole time, not on ROR or free land, so we just cast off that bump in the road and told God, “Tes, we’ll move to Porvenir.”
That was 1981. As we look back 40 years later, we marvel at all that God has done. And we marvel at all these years of people sharing their finances with us. We are most blessed.