A big Christmas gift-giving program for the poor kids in Tijuana right next door seems so right for the Holidays. We sincerely appreciate your generosity and work in planning all of this.

My real concern is that our American people coming across the border may have a good experience and not get burned. We have seen so many American groups end up with bad experiences. I speak from over thirty years of seeing this happen. Good and well-meaning people can have such awful experiences; I don't want to have this happen to any groups working with us.

Please note! The poverty in our neighborhoods produce a greedy little survivor type kid. Cute and needy indeed, but inside a tough survivor. That means me first! Caution! Collectively these kids can be a force to contend with. Things can get ugly and out of hand fast. Hard for Americans to believe but these kids as a group can turn on you, this happened to Efren and I many years ago at the Tijuana dump and we had to respond quickly and forcefully. We did and we have had no trouble since. Indeed a lesson learned in a dangerous situation.

Please understand that a big Merry Christmas open handed gift giveaway just won't work! Great concept for sure. But baby, we have a different audience here. I'm sure your group found that out last Friday evening. This means in the future we will have to compromise on how we hand out your gifts. Timing is so important: Unfortunately things have to move very quickly. Americans really find this hard to understand. Why do we have to move fast? The group of kids keeps growing because ever more kids and adults collect feeling they deserve some part of the gift giving action. They see it as a Gringo giveaway thing. If they don't get some part of the action they can resort to throwing rocks, real rocks. This has really happened! True, the people are wrong in doing this, but this can happen. I am indeed concerned about your safety. Things have to move in a quick and disciplined way or your time will end up in anarchy.

After receiving their gift each child must be marked and sent out not to return again for another try. And again, unfortunately we, Spectrum, can not dictate the size/age or sex of a given group. I only wish we could. Fifty or a hundred would be so much better than what we had Friday. But here I have to count on my Mexican pastors and or contacts. We, Spectrum, become the middle man in all of this. We risk being a target to either side if things turn out wrong, hence my concern. To be honest, at this point, I feel more responsible for you than to you. Just so we understand this relationship.

Indeed we may have a tiger by the tail so I'll agree we must all flex and cooperate. I think I see this possible scenario because of where I am, I'm concerned that you folks can see it too so you will understand our position.

TWO EXAMPLES OF UGLY

May I give you an example of what can happen to good well meaning people doing ministry when they don't understand the people they are dealing with.

Some years ago I watched as a little middle age woman drove up to an orphanage in Tijuana. There were about a hundred boys waiting around. She got out of her car and opened the trunk where she has a lot of cup-cakes she had made for the children. The boys had all gathered around the car. No adult present. She placed about a dozen cup-cakes on a little board and held them out for the kids to take. All I saw next was a mob of kids, cup-cakes and crumbs flying in the air. The little lady was knocked down. She got up angry. Slammed down the trunk. and drove away. Angry, hurt and later to bad mouth Mexico and Mexicans and the orphanage. Who was at fault here? Unreal expectations. It was not the way it should be but it was the way it was!

A nice American lady spoke to me in Pedrigal Saturday afternoon. "Pastor von I don't see this place as very dangerous. These little kids are so cute. My husband and I and our two sons are going to come down here and give some things to these poor people." Sometime I can't believe what I hear.

In a nice way I talked her out of doing this foolish thing at least until she is more experienced. She said she has done it before in Mexico. It seems a couple of times across the border and we become experts.

Barrio Trinchi and Panamerica have run countless groups of well meaning Americans away by being rude and greedy. These two areas have been two of the most exploited areas of Tijuana. Now it's Fausto, a barrio near the Tijuana dump exploited by Americanos. They are the people who literally lived around the Tijuana dump. The American groups leave with nothing good to say about the people of Trinchi, Pana or Fausto. We are the only ones who remain to this day. Why? First of all we have a relationship with them and second we make them obey. We line them up. Mark their hands and don't let them cheat. . .and they themselves have said that they appreciate us because we control them. We know them and they know and respect us. We get along fine.

WHY DO OUR PEOPLE ACT THE WAY THEY DO?

Recently I have had an occasion to review the sub-culture of our Tijuana poor and ask again why we need such control in our areas of ministry. After thinking this over the answer seemed so painfully obvious that I may have missed it and it's relevance to our ministry. I believe the sub-culture of the Tijuana poor relates to the Gringo in a critical way. There is a definite love hate relationship that is always brewing underneath the smiling border Mexicano. He desires everything we have and are yet he doesn't necessarily like us. Because the Mexican pockets of poverty are so close (yet so far) to the North Americanos and because they have been exposed to everything from U.S. television to a saturation of visiting North American "ministry" groups, they have learned in over thirty years not to respect or fear the visiting "Do good/evangelical" Americans. Why don't they respect us? The answer is simple. Well meaning Gringo groups have saturated these Tijuana areas of poverty with a shake-n-bake emotional Gospel. The gospel by decibel I call it. Because of the availability of these Mexican poor and our desire to "minister" we have saturated these selected communities with irresponsible give-away programs. Talk about over-kill. To further complicate things our well meaning American groups have proven to be weak and easily intimidated because we are uninitiated in the sub-culture of poverty. In a simple word, we have been trusting push-overs. Seen by these communities as a source to be exploited. We don't/won't understand that we are working with people who do not necessarily respect us.

What about these neat little kids? The children do not respect us or their parents. The Mexican poor does however respect true authority. Mexican people are relational, they love and tend to respect those whom they know. Americans unknowingly flaunt this concept too in their desire to be efficient. We in our nice cars and clothing simply drive in do our thing and drive off. Just a quick dump the stuff and leave. Unfortunately this is more the norm than the exception. American do-gooders are often seen as exploiters resulting in neither love or respect.

I was talking with a missionary friend of mine in Assam India one day. He liked to hunt tigers and elephants. He had a license from the government to hunt rogue elephants. He told me that rogue elephants are incredibly dangerous simply because they have been with humans and don't respect them. These elephants don't fear humans. Because they will except no control they become out of control. They become cripplers and killers of humans. An interesting insight. People, like elephants, if they don't respect others can become dangerous.

Indeed people can become "rogue." Certain areas of the Tijuana poor are rogue areas and because of this they are dangerous to the gringo.

Reminder: The children of the Tijuana poor in a group can become a force to be reckoned with. It's not hard to create the conditions that will explode kids into anarchy. For instance throwing candy into a group of kids will reduce them to animals just like throwing clothing into a group of adults will result in animal behavior. On more occasions than I would like to mention I have seen this done by American groups. Is it any mystery as to why these people resent us and see us as push-overs?

I hope this long letter will give you a reason as to why we run our programs the way we do. Von.

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