Sylvester
Sylvester has quite the story to tell. I got to meet him while I was in Mexico for Christmas break. And man does he have a tale to tell!
You know how there is all this fuss about illegal Mexicans sneaking across the border? Well this guy has done it and it ended up being his worst nightmare. Sylvester has a wife and two young kids and they had been going to my parents' church before he left for the border. His family is very poor and the live in an extremely tiny one-room house. My bedroom is slightly bigger than their whole house! Sylvester works five feet away from his home as the gate-opener for a middle-class neighborhood that is closed in for security (that's something that is very nice to have in Mexico City). In that little closed-in area lives a faithful family that goes to my parents' church and their witnessing brought Sylvester and his family to church.
Anyway, in order to go to the border, this guy had to leave his family behind with his wife's parents. Talking to this guy, he seems to be a very friendly and thoughtful guy and you would wonder how this guys could leave his family like that. It's a little more understandable when you take into account that he left his parents to find work in Mexico City when he was eleven years old.
His father was an abusive parent and couldn't care less about his son leaving. So Sylvester rode the bus by himself and arrived at Mexico City with only hopes to find work. He went door to door asking people if they could use him and spent a few nights under a bridge. At last a lady asked him, "What do you know how to do?" Sylvester answered, "Nothing." Then she said that if he was willing to work for her for a few years, she would teach him how to do everything.
So Sylvester had done this sort of thing before: leaving everything that is familiar to him in order to improve his environment. This time the idea came to him when he was invited by his cousin to go with her and a group of other Mexicans. Sylvester's cousin had already crossed the boarder two other times and got back to Mexico safely.
Without explaining clearly to my parents what he was doing, Sylvester took his family to his wife's parent's house a couple hours from Mexico, and headed for the border. Then one night, Sylvester and a number of other determined Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande by swimming. This is where the nightmare began. One of the Mexican ladies had brought her four-year-old daughter along with her and they tried to swim across the Rio Grande together. However, at that point in the river there was a very strong current and it was work for everyone to get across. Before they reached the other side, to Sylvester's horror, he witnessed the young girl get torn from her mothers grip and get carried down the river. They never saw her again.
Yeah, when I heard that my jaw dropped open too! Poor girl! Sylvester said that at that moment he was ready to go back home. He started asking himself, "What in the world am I doing here?" But he was already across the river and into Texas, so he continued on with his group. In Texas they came across many fences that divided properties and Sylvester still has three scars that those fences gave him. Morning came and the temperature began to rise. Sylvester said that they started to encounter dead and decaying bodies of Mexicans that had died in the desert. Eventually they ran out of water and people in his group began to drop from dehydration. Death all of a sudden became a very real thing as it began to take the people in Sylvester's group. Sylvester became very dehydrated also and dropped to the ground a couple times, giving up. But the others encouraged him to get up and keep going and thank God he did.
Somewhere along the way, they finally reached the van that was supposed to pick him up. Sylvester's personal plans were to go all the way to Florida where he would work and send money back to his family. But for some unknown reason, the van dropped Sylvester off in the middle of nowhere. Once again, Sylvester thought that he was dead meat. Thankfully, the border patrol found him and believe it or not, Sylvester was relieved to see them and even happier when he learned he was going to be sent back to Mexico. That night, in the darkness of his prison cell, Sylvester recommitted his life to God.
Sylvester returned to Mexico with a new perspective on life and a new view of the blessing of his family. Can you imagine the reunion of that family? After assuming several times that there was no more hope, Sylvester was given a second chance to be a father and husband. A second chance to love his family the way he should. A second chance to love God the way he should. Amazing, isn't it?
You can see it in his eyes. He is about as content as any man could be. He got his old job back as the gate keeper and his wife has gotten a job as a house cleaner. They are doing better financially than they ever have. Now with God in the picture, it seems like they have a happy ending in store for them.
posted by Nata at 5:39 p.m.
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