The Rio

With our principal ministry being our home, it isn't often that we get out to serve in the orphanages or impoverished communities that Back2Back is connected with.  But last Saturday we made it a point to do just that.  We went out to a poor community called the Rio with several other staff, where we helped serve a meal at a soup kitchen, put on a small children's program while the director of the soup kitchen gave a small program for the adults.
The people in this community live in makeshift homes constructed out of whatever materials they can find - cardboard, scraps of metal, plastic tarps, mattress springs...   The houses are very close to a riverbed which overflows whenever Monterrey receives heavy rains.  When Hurricane Alex hit earlier this year, most of the houses were washed away and had to be rebuilt.

Some houses in the Rio

Ana walking through the neighborhood

Aside from the just plain obvious need, Back2Back decided to work in this community because a lot of the children who end up in the orphanages come from situations like this.  If we can minister to the families who live here while they are still together, perhaps we can help them remain together and avoid another child being put into an orphanage.  Studies show that even if materially a family has nothing, but the children are with their parents, they will be emotionally healthier than if they were in an orphanage, even if they have better physical conditions in the orphanage.  Back2Back therefore is trying to help these families meet their physical, emotional and spiritual needs.  

Women of the Rio enjoying a meal in the soup kitchen

Spending a day in the Rio humbles you and makes you realize how much you have.  It also encourages me that the education and life lessons that we share with the boys in our house will make it possible for them to begin to break this cycle of poverty in their families and be able live a life very different from this in the future.