Family Time: An Adventure in Mexico

By Jacob Geimer

In the fall of 2007, the author thought he would head south for the winter with his RV and find a nice place to take a vacation from the cold. He had done volunteer work in the past and thought he might visit a couple of orphanages he had heard about from friends of his and see if he could be of assistance.
It wasnt long before he was deeply involved with a group of fifty children 24-7 playing dad to many, and sharing in some events that were incredibly funny, and too many times heartbreaking.
Reading this story will give you a feel for the politics, the reality of corrupt churches and the politics played with unfortunate children in that country we all know so little about south of the border. After returning for three winters to the southern Sonoran Desert to be with the huge family he had become a part of, bizarre events and political moves by the churches involved and the government bring the completely true story to a climax.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466952843

Jacob Geimer

The author was born and raised in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison and worked in a hospital for severely mentally retarded children for two and a half years, and then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he worked for a landscaping company for one year where he became acquainted with the Mexican-Indian culture. After a year there, he moved to the mountains of Colorado where he lived off and on for thirty-five years. In 1980, he went to Costa Rica where he was in a Peace Corps training school for four months where he became proficient in the Spanish language. Choosing to not enter the Peace Corps, he returned to Colorado and, in 1985, traveled to the Philippines and was married to a Filipina. He moved to the Philippines permanently in 1992 and lived there for ten years. For four years, he taught non-denominational Bible classes in the jails in the capital city of the island where he lived. In the fall of 2007, he traveled to Mexico with his truck and travel trailer where he lived in an orphanage for five months for three consecutive winters, which is the basis of the book Family Time. An Adventure in Mexico. He now lives on the family farm outside of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and is developing a subdivision.

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© Copyright 2012 Jacob Geimer.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-5283-6 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-5285-0 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-5284-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914875

Trafford rev. 08/28/2012

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1    Finding A Place In The Sun

Chapter 2    Doctrinal Statement Blues

Chapter 3    The Family

Chapter 4    Organizing The Unorganizable

Chapter 5    On The Road Again

Chapter 6    The Beginning Of Sorrows

Chapter 7    A System Of Priorities?

Chapter 8    Back To Colorado

Chapter 9    Three Is A Charm

Chapter 10   The Other Orphanages

Chapter 11   The Space Shuttle

Chapter 12   The Train

Chapter 13   Dog Daze

Chapter 14   Don’t Go Away Mad

Chapter 15   Bad News

Chapter 16   Conspiracy Theories

About The Author

INTRODUCTION

I have been trying to put off writing this book for a year now. After the second winter I lived in Mexico friends of mine suggested that I try writing a book about the experience I was having there. When I returned after my third winter, there were times I would avoid talking about my life there because for one thing I didn’t want to hear anyone say you should write a book about that. Another reason is that it is painful for me to think about the events that occurred there, whether within my control or not. The orphanage there was my family in Mexico, and I don’t think I will be with them for a long time.

I have read many stories written by Christian missionaries that picture their experiences and works as being so wonderful and rewarding, and everything that happened ended up being some kind of blessing. This was not the case with my life in Mexico.

I want this story to be as truthful and frank as possible. This is not a happy story that has a beautiful ending. Because of my influence funds were donated to organizations I was a part of. Unfortunately those funds were not used wisely. I am not proud, nor am I pleased with the results of what I attempted to accomplish. I can hope that what I did do there will have a positive effect on the children I went there to help.

Originally I wanted to use individuals and organizations real names that were involved in the story to make it as truthful as possible. But because of legal concerns of my publisher I have used ficticious names for people and organizations. Hopefully it will not detract from the forcefulness of the book. For better or for worse, I wanted to give credit where credit is due and expose some of these organizations for what they really are.

I know this story may not seem complimentary to the owners of the orphanage where I lived, one of which is still in jail. I know that they would want me to tell this story in a way that reflected what I saw and felt as truthfully as possible. However, don’t get me wrong. The man and woman who owned the orphanage where I stayed were very sincere in what they were trying to accomplish. There are very few people in this world who would be willing to attempt what they were doing, and even less people who could have done better. If it possibly could be, try to put yourself in their place, and think how you would have handled the situations and events that transpired. In this story about my living in an orphanage in Mexico for three winters, I have tried to create a sense of the reader being there. If you don’t have any of your own children, it will be a bit more difficult for you to be in this state of mind. Sorry for the inconvenience! Hopefully there won’t be too many cases where a person would use the phrase, it was a you had to be there thing.

I have approached quite a few people who have experience in writing. Some were professionals in journalism that could have helped me write this story which I think this whole experience disserves. One of the professionals that I talked to about co-authoring the book told me they wouldn’t touch this book for fear of being killed because of the critical overtones about the people running the show in Mexico, and the whole social system they have there, and the actions of the churches, be it the largest So Called Christian church in the world, or any other church organization. If they were afraid of writing the story, I wonder what they thought of me going to the border, driving across it, and then taking my truck and trailer three hundred and twenty-five miles south through military road blocks, and federal police inspection points?

One of the main players in this story is the Church of Goofballs in Mexico, which in Mexico is called La Iglesia de Tontos en Mexico. Most of the comments I make about this organization are quite negative. From their doctrinal statement to the actions of their leaders it is a sad commentary about how people who are seeking the truth and attempting to help the unfortunate can be misled. I wish this part of the story weren’t true. I don’t use individual’s full names because I don’t feel it is important. There isn’t going to be an investigation conducted. Nobody is going to lose their job or their position. Nobody in a position of authority is going to reexamine the doctrinal statement of the church and make some much needed changes because they can’t support the statements they make in it with scriptural references. There will be no justice done. Not in this world.

I am still in touch, although distantly, with a few of the young people that were in the orphanage where I lived. While I was in Costa Rica the next year after my third winter in Mexico, I received a request through Facebook that one of the young ladies I knew there wanted to be friends. It was a big surprise, because when I was in Mexico, none of the young people in the orphanage were allowed to have cell phones or e-mail addresses, and were not allowed to access the Internet. They were able to change all that which shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, knowing just how ingenious they are!

I would like to dedicate this book to all the children and young people that are in orphanages in the world, and especially those in Mexico. Just because you are in an orphanage, that doesn’t mean you don’t have any parents. Many of the children I encountered had parents, but the Mexican government had taken them from their parents for their own welfare and safety. You can believe they had good reasons for doing so. You will have to trust me on that one. Why the government chose a different route in the end, God only knows. I’m glad I am not the judge.

As far as the actions of the Mexican government that I mention in this story, I don’t use any full names either. I don’t have any documentation as to who was doing what, but that doesn’t matter as far as any changes they should make in the way they deal with their orphanages. I can tell you for sure that the changes they made in their policies of how to handle the children in their care were made by people with no though for the feelings of others. I don’t know the details about how and why these changes were made, except that it involved someone wanting to do something else with the government funds. There will be no investigation, and nobody will be held accountable for their actions here either. Again, not in this world, anyway.

Continually I am reminded that this story needs to be told. It is really a spiritual thing otherwise I doubt it would ever have happened. A person (especially a man) would have to be fooling himself to think he could have been a part of these happenings under his own power. Of course, I have to thank all the people in Mexico that played a part in a positive way. I can only hope that someday we can all be together again, and feel the warmth and love that we shared.

I wouldn’t encourage anybody to try to do what I did in Mexico. It is definitely not a safe place for a foreigner to do anything, much less get involved with a relatively powerful church, that is dealing with government programs and government supervised institutions. I spent three winters there before I realized just how at risk I was in many situations. I know it seems farfetched for me to say that I was being watched over by guardian angels, but a better explanation I don’t have. There really is no safe place in this world is the way I see it.

If you have a desire to get involved in this kind of undertaking, please don’t let me discourage you. My advice would be would be that you be in close touch with a higher power though. Back when I played football with the firemen in Summit County, Colorado, we had a saying, which was, No Guts, No Glory.

Chapter 1

FINDING A PLACE IN THE SUN

During the summer of 2007 while I was working in Colorado, I was thinking about what I might do the following winter. Since I hadn’t spent a winter in the United States since 1992, and in the mountains in Colorado it isn’t unusual to get a snow storm in September, and then be winter until the next May, I toyed with the idea of heading south. I had bought a truck and travel trailer the previous spring. This 28ft self-contained recreational vehicle became my home. I had been working for a landscaping company based in Silverthorne, Colorado for quite a few years. Their base of operations was on a ranch just north of Silverthorne on the Blue River. I was able to park my trailer on the ranch during the summer, and since the job was seasonal, I was quite mobile.

I was a member of a Spanish speaking church that meets in the Silverthorne public library. Since the library was closed on Sunday, we were able to use a large meeting room that had full kitchen facilities, at almost no cost to the church. This was a very mission’s oriented church, so they understood that they didn’t need to spend a lot of money on their own building, which would sit empty most of the time.

Most of the money that was given to the church was spent on helping needy families in the United States and Mexico, or other worthy causes. Nobody was ever told that they had to give money to the church. Also, nobody was pressured to donate any percentage of their income to the organization. It was all given freely, out of the goodness of the hearts of the individuals. I was aware that they had been supporting an orphanage in Mexico for the past four or five years, and from past experiences in my life, I thought it would be a good idea to go to Mexico and visit this orphanage. I wanted to see what was being done with the financial support these people were receiving, and possibly assist the organization running the home.

In my life I have had many different jobs. I worked in a hospital for severely mentally retarded children for two and a half years. I also had worked as a carpenter on four or five occasions, and I had worked as a mechanic for three or four different businesses. Along with that type of experience, I had lived in the Philippines for ten years, and I had completed four months in a Peace Corps training school in Costa Rica. From that standpoint, I wasn’t going into this completely blind, although that may seem arguable later on in the story.

As the summer passed I informed the other members of the church of my intentions, and they were very encouraging and excited about what I wanted to do. As my departure approached, the church members collected items I could take along. This included clothes, shoes, household items and small appliances, bedding items, and some money. About a month before I left, I was told there was another orphanage near to the one they were supporting. It was mentioned that after I arrived there, I could contact them, with the possibility of working with them also. Some of the members of the church were familiar with the location of the orphanage in Mexico which was Ciudad Obregon, Sonora.

Ciudad Obregon is in the southern Sonoran desert, three hundred and twenty-five miles south of Nogales, Arizona. It is a city of five hundred thousand people, based mostly on agriculture, because they have two hundred thousand acres that is irrigated by reservoirs in the mountains east of the desert they are in. These whole geographical areas including the mountains east of the State of Sonora that are in the State of Chihuahua are relatively dry. The question that came to me later on was, Where is all the water coming from to fill these huge reservoirs? I asked this question many times while I lived there, and never got a reasonable answer. All I could think was that the water was coming from underground aquifers, not being fed by precipitation. Ciudad Hermosillo is the capital of the State of Sonora, which is on the International highway. You pass through Hermosillo (if you are unfortunate enough to miss the bypass) on the way to Guymas, and then on to Ciudad Obregon. Mexico is a much bigger country than most people from the United States are aware of. There are thirty-one states, and the Distrito Federal which is where most of Mexico City is. Mexico has more than one hundred and ten million people, a wide variety of climates and cultures, and there are still more than twenty languages in use. The State of Sonora is famous for the Yaqui Indian tribe. There are places in the State of Sonora where Yaqui is the common language spoken, not Spanish.

Most people in the United States know nothing about this part of Mexico, because it is not a tourist destination. I realized that when people would ask me where I had lived in Mexico, and when I told them, they would say they never heard of the place. In all the time I lived there I saw very little evidence of tourists except for the occasional RV parked in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and most of those were from Canada. I didn’t mind not being around the tourists because I can speak Spanish, and tourists seem to attract the professional criminals.

My first trip down to Ciudad Obregon was quite an adventure. A week before I left a woman from the church named Snoria asked me if her and her son could accompany me on the trip, since she was from Ciudad Obregon, and wanted to return to Mexico. I thought this would be a good idea since she was a member of the church in Silverthorne, and was from a place I had never been before. Also, my Spanish wasn’t all that good at the time. My thinking was that she knew the route, and would be able to help me with details crossing the border and making the correct turns. I didn’t think to ask her if she ever actually drove to Mexico before, and as time passed this illusion I had about being helpful faded.

By the time I left Silverthorne I had a trailer full of clothes and many other items I thought were mostly for the children in the orphanage. We drove down highway 285 through Poncha Springs, then on to Alamosa, Colorado, and on down to Santa Fe. We got on I-25 there, and headed for Albuquerque, then straight south to Las Cruces, where we got on I-10. In later years I learned short cuts to this trip, avoiding a lot of traffic and making the trip one hundred miles shorter especially avoiding places like Santa Fe and Tucson. When we neared Las Cruces, New Mexico, Hermana Snoria suggested that we should just cross the border at El Paso, Texas, which is nearby, go through Ciudad Juarez, the city across from El Paso, and drive down to Ciudad