I've spent part of today on the computer getting registered for the Mennonite Church USA convention which will be in Phoenix the first week in July. Once you go through the registration process, you get to go the the housing portion of the web-site and get your hotel reservations.
It actually is a pretty efficient process, but I was not able to get the reservation I needed. I emailed the folks at the Conference office and got a suggestion of how to change the request. After playing around with dates and room requests, I was able to get the room reservation we needed. I really appreciate having the kind of folks in the office who are so helpful!
We made a quick Costco run this morning and for the first time ever that I can remember, we actually got out of a Costco with a bill that was only two figures! Of course, the fact that they were out of Starbucks K-cups probably helped!
It's finally gotten warm in Mesa again. I think it was in the high seventies today with beautiful sunshine. Today was the third day of Spring Training in Peoria for the Mariners. Maybe they brought the nice weather with them?
Showing posts with label Mennonite Church USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mennonite Church USA. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2013
Saturday, January 12, 2013
BorderLinks
Early Friday morning (7 AM) we (Members of the Executive Board of Mennonite Church USA, a couple of spouses, the CEOs and staff of church agencies and our Executive Director) boarded a charter bus at the Sheraton Hotel where we had been meeting and headed down the highway to Tucson, Arizona. We were going to the headquarters of BorderLinks, a partner of Mennonite Central Committee. BorderLinks was going to take us on a tour that will also be offered to attendees of Mennonite Church USA's Assembly this July in Phoenix.
After a bathroom break, we gathered in the living area of BorderLinks for an orientation. The lady in the middle speaking is Fernanda Morillon and the lady in the cap next to her is Rachel Winch (Rachel was the driver of the van I rode in.)
There were twenty-seven of us in our group. We left BorderLinks in two vans and headed for Nogales, Mexico. We crossed the border almost without knowing it. They have a random system. If you get a green light you go on through. A red light diverts your vehicle for questioning. Both vans got green lights and we stopped just the other side of the fence.
This is where deportees from the United States are dropped off. There is a Red Cross clinic here, but there was no one around it.
We had enough Spanish speakers with us that we were able to talk to some of the people who had been deported that day. I was hesitant about invading their privacy, but it turned out they were anxious to talk. This group of folks had been abandoned in the desert by their "coyote" when the Border Patrol came upon them. (They had paid the coyote $3000-$6000 each to be safely transported across the desert.) As Fernanda talked with them, the young woman on her left broke my heart. She was 23 years and her face looked so much like my oldest granddaughter. She had three children (all born in the US) and had spent six years in California picking strawberries. She went home to visit her family and now is separated from her children.
One of the women had become separated from her younger brother in the desert and had not heard whether he was alive or dead. They were trying to check with the Detention Centers to see if he might be at one of them.
A cemetery adjacent to the deportee area --
This area, with its services for deportees, is actually a service of the Mexican government --
Next door is one of the many factories established following NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) --
Nogales is NOT the sleepy little village I remember from visiting over forty years ago. There are many American chains represented here -- and the Mexicans say they "take all of their earnings back to the US as well!"
No different than the US, there was lots of road construction everywhere --
After our visit at Grupos Beta, we drove to the top of a ridge overlooking Nogales where and organization named HEPAC (Hogar de Experanza y Paz A.C.) was our host --
Here we ran into something I hadn't seen since we were in Bolivia -- composting toilets! There's a bucket of wood shavings out of sight over on the left for throwing down the hole when you've finished your business. Used toilet tissue goes in the waste basket...
Due to the incredible numbers of workers moving to Nogales to work in the factories, the hillsides are filled with various shanty barrios --
Most families have both parents working in the factories. The schools are open only four hours per day. Therefore, there are lots of children left alone most of the day. HEPAC tries to run camps and classes for children. A good share of their work is trying to educate the children that they do not have to allow inappropriate touching by others...
More of the hillside housing. The mountains in the rear are across the border in the US.
More housing --
This is housing built by one of the factories as part of their contract with the Mexican government. This unit houses a couple of hundred workers, but the company employs over five throusand!
That housing complex is next door to this Maquiladora, one of ninety-five huge factories in Nogales.
Another Maquiladora. You can see the border fence in the background --
We crossed the border back into the United States without incident. The Border Patrol agent took the fourteen passports from our van, ran them through her little machine and waved us on by. We drove around to look at the infamous wall from the American side of the border --
It's an ugly steel thing, twenty four feet high, rusting away --
Incongruously, there are gates in the fence about every hundred feet or so --
And of course, a couple of our group had to try and see if they could climb it --
We hadn't been there long before the Border Patrol stopped by. We were very close to the spot where a couple of weeks ago, a Mexican sixteen year old had been shot (on the Mexican side of the border) eighteen times by US Border Patrol after he threw rocks at them. We heard a lot about it while we were in Nogales, but I sure hadn't read anything in the Phoenix paper.
A chilly prayer vigil at the fence; some quiet time for reflection then it was back to Tucson and Cas Miraposa where a wonderful hot meal was waiting for us.
Casa Mariposa is a house of hospitality for people being released from immigration detention. Our meal was prepared by recent detainees who later shared their stories with us.
It was a long, emotional day that will require a great deal of reflection and processing on my part. Id you are going to be attending the Mennonite Church USA Assembly in July in Phoenix, you can sign up to spend a day with a BorderLinks/MCC trip.
After a bathroom break, we gathered in the living area of BorderLinks for an orientation. The lady in the middle speaking is Fernanda Morillon and the lady in the cap next to her is Rachel Winch (Rachel was the driver of the van I rode in.)
There were twenty-seven of us in our group. We left BorderLinks in two vans and headed for Nogales, Mexico. We crossed the border almost without knowing it. They have a random system. If you get a green light you go on through. A red light diverts your vehicle for questioning. Both vans got green lights and we stopped just the other side of the fence.
This is where deportees from the United States are dropped off. There is a Red Cross clinic here, but there was no one around it.
We had enough Spanish speakers with us that we were able to talk to some of the people who had been deported that day. I was hesitant about invading their privacy, but it turned out they were anxious to talk. This group of folks had been abandoned in the desert by their "coyote" when the Border Patrol came upon them. (They had paid the coyote $3000-$6000 each to be safely transported across the desert.) As Fernanda talked with them, the young woman on her left broke my heart. She was 23 years and her face looked so much like my oldest granddaughter. She had three children (all born in the US) and had spent six years in California picking strawberries. She went home to visit her family and now is separated from her children.
One of the women had become separated from her younger brother in the desert and had not heard whether he was alive or dead. They were trying to check with the Detention Centers to see if he might be at one of them.
A cemetery adjacent to the deportee area --
This area, with its services for deportees, is actually a service of the Mexican government --
Next door is one of the many factories established following NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) --
Nogales is NOT the sleepy little village I remember from visiting over forty years ago. There are many American chains represented here -- and the Mexicans say they "take all of their earnings back to the US as well!"
No different than the US, there was lots of road construction everywhere --
After our visit at Grupos Beta, we drove to the top of a ridge overlooking Nogales where and organization named HEPAC (Hogar de Experanza y Paz A.C.) was our host --
Here we ran into something I hadn't seen since we were in Bolivia -- composting toilets! There's a bucket of wood shavings out of sight over on the left for throwing down the hole when you've finished your business. Used toilet tissue goes in the waste basket...
Due to the incredible numbers of workers moving to Nogales to work in the factories, the hillsides are filled with various shanty barrios --
Most families have both parents working in the factories. The schools are open only four hours per day. Therefore, there are lots of children left alone most of the day. HEPAC tries to run camps and classes for children. A good share of their work is trying to educate the children that they do not have to allow inappropriate touching by others...
More of the hillside housing. The mountains in the rear are across the border in the US.
More housing --
This is housing built by one of the factories as part of their contract with the Mexican government. This unit houses a couple of hundred workers, but the company employs over five throusand!
That housing complex is next door to this Maquiladora, one of ninety-five huge factories in Nogales.
Another Maquiladora. You can see the border fence in the background --
We crossed the border back into the United States without incident. The Border Patrol agent took the fourteen passports from our van, ran them through her little machine and waved us on by. We drove around to look at the infamous wall from the American side of the border --
It's an ugly steel thing, twenty four feet high, rusting away --
Incongruously, there are gates in the fence about every hundred feet or so --
And of course, a couple of our group had to try and see if they could climb it --
We hadn't been there long before the Border Patrol stopped by. We were very close to the spot where a couple of weeks ago, a Mexican sixteen year old had been shot (on the Mexican side of the border) eighteen times by US Border Patrol after he threw rocks at them. We heard a lot about it while we were in Nogales, but I sure hadn't read anything in the Phoenix paper.
A chilly prayer vigil at the fence; some quiet time for reflection then it was back to Tucson and Cas Miraposa where a wonderful hot meal was waiting for us.
Casa Mariposa is a house of hospitality for people being released from immigration detention. Our meal was prepared by recent detainees who later shared their stories with us.
It was a long, emotional day that will require a great deal of reflection and processing on my part. Id you are going to be attending the Mennonite Church USA Assembly in July in Phoenix, you can sign up to spend a day with a BorderLinks/MCC trip.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
At Sun Seekers Adult RV Park
Today was a catch-up day here at Sun Seekers Adult RV Park. I did several loads of laundry -- after we finally got up and going this morning.
One of the things that still surprises me about the south is the number of evergreen trees. I had always envisioned this kind of tree as indigenous to the west -- to the Rockies and especially the Pacific Northwest. I was quite surprised to discover that lumber was one of the top cash crops in Mississippi. This campground in quite treed. We're not getting very good satellite reception on TV. We may try moving Auntie Violet forward a foot or two. After all, got to watch the Super Bowl commercials on Sunday!
This is what was happening today at the park. The gentleman on the left spent all day with a shovel, pickax and a pair of pruners digging a trench for a new sewer line for the sites on the edge of the park. (They do have a small backhoe on the back of that little tractor, but evidently the tree roots were more then it could handle.) The two gentlemen on the right were serving in a supervisory capacity. There was a pretty steady parade of retirees trading off on that important role all day today.
I spent almost two hours on the phone today in a conference call with other members of the Church Resources Committee to review the financials of Mennonite Church USA before our scheduled Board conference call this coming Saturday. After I got off the phone, Forry and I headed into town for a much needed stop at Winn-Dixie for groceries. We ended up at Taqueria Jalapena, a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican spot that turned out to have really good fajitas.
When we got home, we had a chance to talk on the telephone with Daughter Dawn who has just returned from a ten-day medical mission trip to Guatemala. Sounds like she had a wonderful time (though she's fighting a bug...) and was able to do some good work. We're so proud to her -- and a bit jealous if truth were known...
One of the things that still surprises me about the south is the number of evergreen trees. I had always envisioned this kind of tree as indigenous to the west -- to the Rockies and especially the Pacific Northwest. I was quite surprised to discover that lumber was one of the top cash crops in Mississippi. This campground in quite treed. We're not getting very good satellite reception on TV. We may try moving Auntie Violet forward a foot or two. After all, got to watch the Super Bowl commercials on Sunday!
This is what was happening today at the park. The gentleman on the left spent all day with a shovel, pickax and a pair of pruners digging a trench for a new sewer line for the sites on the edge of the park. (They do have a small backhoe on the back of that little tractor, but evidently the tree roots were more then it could handle.) The two gentlemen on the right were serving in a supervisory capacity. There was a pretty steady parade of retirees trading off on that important role all day today.
I spent almost two hours on the phone today in a conference call with other members of the Church Resources Committee to review the financials of Mennonite Church USA before our scheduled Board conference call this coming Saturday. After I got off the phone, Forry and I headed into town for a much needed stop at Winn-Dixie for groceries. We ended up at Taqueria Jalapena, a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican spot that turned out to have really good fajitas.
When we got home, we had a chance to talk on the telephone with Daughter Dawn who has just returned from a ten-day medical mission trip to Guatemala. Sounds like she had a wonderful time (though she's fighting a bug...) and was able to do some good work. We're so proud to her -- and a bit jealous if truth were known...
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Opryland Hotel
After a very lazy morning, Juni and Tom came over to Auntie Violet and we went back past downtown Nashville to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Resort to look around and have lunch. This hotel complex is an incredible place -- there are nine acres of atrium, flowers, fountains and waterfalls all under climate controlled glass.
Devastated by the floods of May 2010 that saw the grounds under ten feet of water, the resort has made a remarkable recovery. This video was on You Tube during the flood.
This picture is in some of the same area shown in the video --
Mennonite Church USA met here for its biennial convention several years ago -- we pretty much took over the whole space --
I remembered it as being very green (we met over the 4th of July), but didn't remember all of the gorgeous flowers --
This Christmas cactus is just beginning to bloom. It will probably be in its splendor by the holidays --
One of the multiple waterfalls --
Those are white orchids blooming on the trunk of this palm tree --
Everywhere you looked, there was something in bloom --
Part of the glass roof that covers the entire property --
Another of the waterfalls and pools --
A couple of the "characters" outside of the shops --
On the lower level of the atrium, there is this area of programmed fountains that shoot from one island --
to another --
They were just beginning to hang Christmas garlands and decorations. They will have a "grand Christmas Opening" on November 18th. I understand they go all out!
This is a blown glass "fountain" in the main lobby. You can see a portion of the Tiffany glass ceiling above it --
During one last look down into the three level atrium, I was bemused by this plant. Looking somewhat like an elephant ear, the leaves were four to five feet across!
We were going to spend some more time downtown in Printer's Alley after we ate our lunch, but after all the walking we did last night and all the walking we did at Opryland, we settle for a tour by car before heading home for some football games and well-deserved naps.
Devastated by the floods of May 2010 that saw the grounds under ten feet of water, the resort has made a remarkable recovery. This video was on You Tube during the flood.
This picture is in some of the same area shown in the video --
Mennonite Church USA met here for its biennial convention several years ago -- we pretty much took over the whole space --
I remembered it as being very green (we met over the 4th of July), but didn't remember all of the gorgeous flowers --
This Christmas cactus is just beginning to bloom. It will probably be in its splendor by the holidays --
One of the multiple waterfalls --
Those are white orchids blooming on the trunk of this palm tree --
Everywhere you looked, there was something in bloom --
Part of the glass roof that covers the entire property --
Another of the waterfalls and pools --
A couple of the "characters" outside of the shops --
On the lower level of the atrium, there is this area of programmed fountains that shoot from one island --
to another --
They were just beginning to hang Christmas garlands and decorations. They will have a "grand Christmas Opening" on November 18th. I understand they go all out!
This is a blown glass "fountain" in the main lobby. You can see a portion of the Tiffany glass ceiling above it --
During one last look down into the three level atrium, I was bemused by this plant. Looking somewhat like an elephant ear, the leaves were four to five feet across!
We were going to spend some more time downtown in Printer's Alley after we ate our lunch, but after all the walking we did last night and all the walking we did at Opryland, we settle for a tour by car before heading home for some football games and well-deserved naps.
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