From Clawfoot to Mario – The Turning Point

Hello, friends.

Yet again, the months have flown by.

As usual, we’ve been extremely busy. We wish we could tell you an upbeat story of how things are going…  But unfortunately a story like that is not on the agenda for this time, since, as some of you know, our lives have been deeply touched by tragedy these past few months, and we thought we shouldn’t let more time go by before we gave you some of the details…

To start with, we should tell you that our friend and gang-leader, “Clawfoot” Mario, whom you may remember from our last newsletter, had been doing pretty well these last few months.  He was not totally clean, but had significantly reduced his drug use and was gaining interest in talking with us and in hearing about the things of God.

…But then one night our cell phone went off at around 3 a.m.

It was Mario.  He was crying.  It turned out that his brother, ‘Jorge,’ had wandered out of his gang’s territory and been caught by members of an opposing gang a few hours earlier.

Mario told us that his family had gotten a call and then rushed to the local emergency room… But by that point it was too late… Jorge had died from internal bleeding due to the knife wounds he’d received that night.

…The next day turned out to be sort of a blur,  as have been most of our days now since then.

First, there was the wait for several hours at the Justice of the Peace while the officials finished preparing the body for burial. Then sadly, there was no funeral, since due to the high number of homicides in our area local authorities are now hesitant to allow public mourning. And even though Jorge’s death was not specifically drug-related, they thought it better not even to allow a wake for him that evening.

… So instead of a ceremony that day the only thing we saw was the angry fists of Mario shoved into the dirt over his brother’s grave, where just moments earlier his family had buried the young man with a wheelbarrow, in haste.

…And when everything was over, and the people at the graveside finally managed to pull Mario up from having collapsed in the spot where his brother was lain, the only person he was willing to have take him home was “Larry…”

…So we walked him to our car.

What ensued from that moment on in the life of Mario has been harrowing.  We ourselves have been in contact with the family in some form or another almost every day for the past three months. There have been nights of wrestling Mario into the car, or bailing him out of jail… Nights of restraining him, taking him home “high,” confused and crying…

Nights of trying to find words for a mother who’s been left without a son.

But even in spite of all this, the hardest thing by far has been avoiding the constant, daunting temptation for “Clawfoot” Mario to take his revenge on the other gang members, who, due to the slowness of the justice system, are walking around scot-free just blocks away.

…One evening was particularly hard.  It was one o’clock in the morning. Our assignment, as usual, was to take Mario home in accordance with the pleas of his family.

But for some reason that evening Mario had fixed his gaze on the direction of those few blocks… Unfortunately there was no talking him out of the fact that he stood within walking distance from his brother’s murderers. And he’d been staring that way for hours… Completely unwilling to move, talk, or even look in any other direction.

Larry, unable to physically control Mario by himself if push came to shove, stood only with a hand on his shoulder, not saying much.

Two a.m. – After another hour of silent staring, and of considerable coaxing, Mario finally collapsed into our car.

The ride home was quiet as Mario continued to stare coldly out the window.  And when we got to his house and he stumbled out of the car, all we could do was look at each other in despair.  In terms of keeping Mario from taking revenge, we wondered how many more nights we could manage like that one…

It wasn’t until the next day that we found something strange in our car… It caught the light as Kim moved the passenger seat… Big, blunt, and shiny – it was a knife... Several inches long.   It was just sitting there where it had been laid on the back seat the night before.

Now… We feel it’s important to say that before then we didn’t even know that Mario had carried that knife on him, so it was impossible for us to have asked him for it….  It’s also impossible that something that big just sort of “fell” out of his pocket.  So the only other explanation we have is that without saying a word, Mario had left it there… On purpose.

To be sure, we would be lying if we told you that there haven’t still been many hard nights…  But since that night we’ve somehow gained a new sense of assurance… In the unspoken language of Mario and his gang, he has let us know that he’s given up something…  Indeed, it seems that “Clawfoot” Mario has given up his rights to revenge.

…And as far as the knife goes?  Well, right now we’re actually using it to cut vegetables in our children’s feeding program… Technically, it’s still Mario’s, so for a long time we had it just sort of stashed in a compartment of our car…  But since surely enough he never once said a word to us about it, we actually don’t mind coming across it in the kitchen from time to time.  In fact, seeing it there has oddly become a symbol of hope…  Certainly, there still are nights when we’re glad he doesn’t have it.

“Put your sword back in its place…
for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”
Matthew 26: 52

Mario Before:  (November 2009)

Mario before he gave his life to Christ…

Mario now

Mario, now clean, with Daniel Fonvielle, an evangelist friend of ours, after a special service that Daniel did while visiting Torreon.

Facts on Crime in Mexico

• In the Mexican city of Juarez there were well over six hundred homicides related to organized crime from January to April of this year.
• The city of Gomez, in the middle of our metropolis area, ranked 5th overall in the nation for number of homicides from January to April, with a per capita rate similar to that of Juarez.
• There have been over 3 thousand homicides in all of Mexico related to organized crime this year so far…

Three thousand lost…

… One saved.

Note: Please pray specifically for the families of “Voty,” “Guero,” “Panchillo,” and “Gera,” who are four other young men whom we’ve lost in the area of our church neighborhood, just in the space of time that it’s taken for us to get our thoughts together and write you about ‘Jorge…’ …Thanks for your prayers.