For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. (Jeremiah 8.21)
“The coyote left me alone, abandoned,” said the young man from Central America. “I was lost for four days in the Arizona desert. But God helped me find the highway. I knelt down in the middle of the road and begged the cars to stop. They just drove around me. Finally a car stopped and left a bag of food. I think they called the Border Patrol. Thank God I am now safe.”
“We waited in the desert for three days and three nights,” said the 14-year-old girl from El Salvador. “Do you have any idea what it feels like when you are so thirsty you cannot even make saliva? But God was with us all the time, that’s for sure,” she said with conviction.
The Reverend Canon Mary Moreno Richardson was recently honored by Episcopal Relief and Development for her work with young people in dire situations (Central Juvenile Hall in East LA, a detention center for undocumented youth, and victims of human trafficking ). She was asked to write vignettes of her pastoral experiences and one of them (April 6) appears in their Lenten devotional, which was distributed nationally. The others will be used by ERD in future publications; we’ll be providing them to you here, so that they can be part of your Lenten journey.
So proud to be able to call this amazing woman “friend.” Thanks for all you do. You’re making the world a better place.