A Note from Courtney and Rebekah

Hello friends of Casa MAMi! This is Courtney Washburn and Rebekah Moore, and we wanted to tell you a little bit about our month long visit with the girls in Reynosa.

The first thing you should know is just how much we loved those girls - from the teenagers who laughed at our pitiful Spanish to the little kids who climbed all over us thinking we were actually human jungle gyms. They are wonderful, and by the last day when we said goodbye, we wanted to take them home with us.

Not only did we come to love the girls themselves, but we came to love the way the girls love each other. A home with thirty girls sounds like it should be a haven for drama, and while these girls knew how to fight in the true sisterly fashion, there was much less squabbling than you would imagine. In place of it, they had an understanding of how to take care of and love one another.


This is Belinda (who they call Beli for short, though they do not get the irony of it). She is a five-year-old with a loud laugh who has been at Casa MAMi for a couple of years, and she is the perfect example of how these girls take care of one another. Beli goes to the daycare during the day, and once after naptime while the other workers were tied up, she stepped in. After helping to wake the other little ones up, she took it upon herself to fold their blankets and stack them in the corner - not something you usually expect from such a little girl.

In fact, these girls were full of surprises. Unwittingly they taught us another lesson - one about how blessed we are.

We joined in their swimming classes, which consist of a lot of laughter but little actual lesson. (Our instructor was a very sweet old man who never got in the water but led entertaining games from the edge with a whistle.) In this pool, we learned something new - most of these girls do not know those typical water things that we thought just came naturally. For one, most of them can't swim. Or float on their back. Or do a front flip. Or a handstand. Or 'surf ' on the boogy boards. Most surprising of all, it was like they had never even thought to try to do those things, and they were in awe as we did them. So of course we spent most of our pool time trying in vain to teach them these tricks, marveling at the differences between our lives.

Listing all the differences would take much too long (and I'm not sure we have thought of them yet), but we will name a few that impacted us the most. We can sleep in late when we are tired or feeling lazy. We have ice to cool down lukewarm tap water on a hot day. We have gone on shopping sprees in the mall rather than in a pile of donated clothing. (Though to be fair, we were not nearly as thankful as they were for that one 'new' shirt they got to pick out.) We can watch television whenever we want. We can go out with our friends. We can throw away our food when it tastes bad. (They have to clean their plates, which was a real struggle at times, we assure you.) In discovering each of those differences, we learned a little bit more how fortunate we are in our own lives.

Pictured to the right you will find Ana (short for Anastacia, but she thinks that sounds old-fashioned) and Diana. Ana is sixteen and has been at Casa MAMi for a little over three years. On our last day, she gave us a note sealed in an envelope that we were not allowed to read until we had left. We opened it to find a very sweet note that said over and over again "no me olvides" - do not forget me. Little does she know that we could not forget her, or any of the girls, even if we wanted to.