27 Nov Why Are You Moving to Mexico? (Part 1/3)
So many miracles
I have seen so many miracles lately and I keep worrying that I am going to forget this incredible process if I don’t write and share it how God has been working in our life. I want to be able to look back on it later and also share some principles about the process that could benefit others.
Moving to Mexico
We have decided to move to Mexico. Many of our friends and others are asking “Why?”
We have visited an orphanage in Mexico 6 times, 5 of them in the last year. On one of the visits we stayed for a month. These kind of experiences deeply change you.
Each time I went home, I felt the contrast of the needs there (not as much the physical needs, but mostly the emotional needs) and the relative ease and comfort we lived in here.
I had to do something to bridge that gap, but I wasn’t sure how. We didn’t have much excess money to give. Even though we lived in a nice home, in a beautiful neighborhood, we really just lived paycheck to paycheck. If there was an unexpected expense, we’d use a credit card and spend years paying it back off until we needed it again.
Also, we built this house with my parents so it was their equity and our combined income that allowed us to purchase this beautiful home. We are richly blessed not just because of Bill’s work ethic and diligence, but also because of the love of those around us.
Donating large amounts wasn’t really an option and money wasn’t really what they were most in need of anyway. These kids needed relationships with people who cared deeply about them as a parent would, who wanted to see them grow into their potential and would believe in it and remind them of it often.
I prayed hard to know what to do. On the drive home from the very first trip, I told God, “I am willing to do anything. If you want me to move to Tijuana to live nearby and visit often, I will do it. If you want me to start my own orphanage out here and run it my own way, I will do it.
“I will do anything you ask, but you have given me 8 incredible children already and a good husband and you know that whatever we do, we need to do it together, so you will have to plant this desire in their hearts too, so that we can make whatever it is you want us to do, come to be.”
Bring Others With You
Through this very long prayer on our 12 hour drive home, I felt impressed that it was not enough for just my family to keep going back to visit and love those kids. I felt that I needed to help others feel this connection too, to be transformed by it, and to share their love with these kids. I felt I needed to start a school dedicated to this purpose.
The school, Find Your Path Academy, began in September of 2021. The week before school started, I went on another trip to an orphanage with my son Dallin through the homeschool co-op he was a part of. It was a different orphanage, but through the same organization that we had gone with before.
While I was there, I asked the trip host when the next trip to the first orphanage we had gone to was scheduled (since I hadn’t seen anything about it online.) She told me that there were no scheduled trips to that orphanage until December of the following year. They didn’t yet have enough people yet who wanted to go there since they had just started a relationship with them, and we were the only group who had visited.
I knew we had to get out there sooner than that, so right when I got home, I paid the deposit to reserve a trip there for that December (4 months away) and prayed we would be able to fill it with the 40 people required.
We didn’t just fill it, but we had many people donate gifts for the kids, and a dear friend who organized a giving tree for each child so that they each got a backpack, art supplies, a game, PJs, and more. I began to see that love has an incredible power for good that is far past my abilities or capacity.
We next took a trip over spring break which also filled up and changed many lives. The next month a few of us went out there again to start a garden and a compost system (something the orphanage director had said he wanted to eventually get to).
We went again with a group in July that also filled up and in which we were able to take all the kids out to a waterpark. They were so happy. It felt so good to be a part of it.
The trip ended a week later, but my family and another family stayed for the month to do activities with the kids while the director took many of the older kids on a family vacation that month.
I learned so much from the kind caretakers and from the beautiful kids that month. I also learned of things that I wished I could change… This fueled my desire to start a home and school of my own that would help the kids understand how much they are loved, who they really are, and of their potential as children of God.
The experience of being there so long, bonded us to those kids as we were with them through some really hard experiences, learned with them through activities and devotionals, and sung hymns together. Leaving that trip was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I thought I’d be back for my birthday the next month so that helped ease the pain somewhat.
If I had knows that an accident was going to prevent anyone from visiting the orphanage for months, I don’t think I could have left.
The Land
Earlier that year, I was running on the Provo River trail, missing the kids, and asking again, “Dear Heavenly Father, is there anything more I can do for these kids? I feel like we are just scratching the surface of the great issues we see (lack of education and addictions in parents that land their children in orphanages, and a flawed system for restoring families or helping the children see their potential), but I don’t know how to go deeper.”
I had already spent time looking for land in Tijuana that we could afford to build some sort of refuge or school in where kids could grow things and feel loved and where parents could get support to fight addictions and restore their families. It was just a dream… my husband had no desire to move to Mexico… but still I searched in hope that God could work His miracles. But I could find nothing.
As I was running, I had the thought suddenly enter my mind to text a cousin who lived in Southern Mexico to see if she knew of any land in that area for sale.
It didn’t make a lot of sense, because the kids in Mexico that I loved were in Northern Mexico, but I knew couldn’t bring any of them into the US… so maybe I could find a way to get them to southern Mexico?
She didn’t know of anything available at the time, but told me she would do some research and get back to me.
"How Much Did you Say?"
A couple of weeks later, my cousin texted and said her boyfriend’s friend was talking to him about how he is buying land now in other places (where his new wife is from) and wants to sell the land he had bought near my cousin (where his ex wife was from).
He now lived in New Jersey, but had owned land in Southern Mexico for over 10 years and was feeling ready to let it go. He told his friend about me and what we wanted to do. His friend offered to sell it to me at a very affordable price.
The price for his 12 acres was so good, that it motivated Bill to at least go look at it. “How much did you say?” he asked, “Are you sure that’s what he told you?”
If nothing else, he reasoned, going to look at it would be a fun vacation for the two of us, something we hadn’t done in a very long time.
Is this right?
We arrived in Cancun at the end of May to see the land and and surrounding area.
The land that was for sale was about 1 hour and 45 minutes away from Cancun in a very small little town in the jungle. I wasn’t sure if this was what God wanted so I asked him for a spiritual confirmation that when we saw the land we would both feel peace and know that it was right.
We met the owner at a park a few days after we arrived and he drove us to the land he was selling to us. He didn’t think our small rental car could access it. We drove on a dirt road with huge potholes to reach it.
We walked next to it on the road, there was no way to walk through it since the undergrowth was so high and we knew there were snakes in the area.
I can’t say I felt peace while we were there. Mostly I felt the magnitude of how much work it would take to get the land ready for anything. But the area was beautiful and I didn’t feel opposed to buying land there and figuring things out. It was a slight peace with a bigger sense of the reality of what we were thinking of doing.
Bill, however, was asking a lot of questions. He seemed really interested and like he was actually thinking about it. This surprised me. When it came time to part, the owner was willing to sell it to us later that week if we decided to purchase it, so that we wouldn’t have to all fly back out later. It made sense to me, but Bill is not one to rush into anything so he said we would have to go home and think about it for longer.
I was both slightly annoyed that Bill had to move so slowly into the decision and also glad that he was considering it. I was also confused that I hadn’t felt a strong peace while I was there. I did feel a peace about living there when we were offered smaller piece of land next to a Bible park that was 4 times the price and 1/24th of the size.
I couldn’t make sense of it.
The owner said he was in no hurry to sell it and that we could just get back to him whenever it was convenient. It would just be sitting there until then.
Split in Too Many Directions
A while after coming home, we decided that we should purchase the land while we had the opportunity. Bill reasoned that if we were not to build a school there, we could always keep it as an investment and sell it again later.
We decided that after the month-long stay that the kids and I would have at the orphanage that summer, my oldest daughter, Cassia, and I would fly to Cancun and purchase the land while Bill drove the rest of the kids home.
Like I said earlier, we said a very tearful goodbye to the kids, still thinking we would see them the following month, and drove to the airport.
At the airport, Cassia (who had only stayed at the orphanage for a week instead of the full month, so she could go back to work), caught me up on what she had been doing. She was dating a young man whom she met 3 weeks ago and it was getting pretty serious. I felt terrible that I hadn’t been home to talk with her and help guide her through some of the experiences she had been having and I wondered if I had made a mistake in leaving my older daughters for so long.
Because we were in such a deep conversation, we somehow missed the gate call and when we went to board the plane, the attendants said we were too late. We tried begging, “The plane is still here… can we hurry on?” But they wouldn’t budge.
We had to go repurchase tickets for the next plane leaving in 6 hours.
This was a very emotional night for me. What was I doing? I missed the kids at the orphanage terribly and I felt I left them at a time when they needed a lot of support because of an accident that had taken place.
I thought about how much I loved my own family and wondered if leaving my girls on their own had been wrong of me.
I also felt the financial weight of buying more tickets and of purchasing land when we still had some credit card debt we were trying to pay off.
I knew there had been so much good in our being at the orphanage (see previous blog posts about some of our experiences there). The changes in the kids and the way they felt about themselves was evident. We guided them through some hard decisions and were there for them when they needed to cry and pray. But there are many good things all of us can do, was I doing them at the expense of things that ought to matter most?
A Late Night Panic
My parents decided to come to meet us in Cancun to help us get around while we were there, keep us safe, and to see for themselves what we were thinking of getting into.
They picked us up and we drove to Solferino. I was to sign the papers to purchase the land the next day.
That night I started to panic. What was I doing there? I loved my family and the life we had… the camping trips, the game nights, the opportunities, mentors, and classes they had in the US. I loved the kids in Tijuana. I wanted to adopt several of them and take them home. Why was I in Solferino, so far from it all, thinking about purchasing land? I was being pulled in too many directions. This couldn’t be right. It didn’t make sense. I hadn’t even received the overwhelming peace I had asked for when we went to see it. I sent Bill a late night text about how I thought that maybe this was not such a good idea after all.
The next morning I asked my dad for a blessing and then Bill called. He assured me that he had had a strong impression that purchasing the land was a good thing and that it was in God’s plan for our family. I was grateful he felt so sure and decided to head to the government office, relying on his faith and answers.
When I walked into the office and began looking at their city map, I felt a peace settle over me. That peace only increased as we talked about the land and logistics of what was in the papers I was signing. Somehow, at that moment, it all felt very right.
There were still so many unknowns and so many things that didn’t make sense and I was very unsure about how to do it all, but I knew God knew my intentions, that He knew I was following Him in the best way I could with my limited understanding, and that I could trust Him to do miracles with that, as imperfect as it was.
To be continued…
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