Life in the Canyon
Helping Children and Families in Tijuana Mexico
Providing food to those in need....
Dispensa's
This is a term used to describe a packet of various food items. The basics like rice, beans, oil, salt, sugar, tomato sauce, pasta, flour, soup, salsa and other non perishable items.
Families often find themselves in temporary situations where there someone has lost their job, has had no work, a parent has left the home or families have just moved to the Canyon.
We used to hand out dispensa's to the community on a weekly basis. However, we found that this just created a line of people that we did not know. It doesn't feel right without relationship. Plus everyone will get in line for free food. And then we found some were selling the food items.
Prayer Walks
One of the things that we often do when we have American visitors is to walk around the different parts of the community to talk with families. To meet them where they live. To get to know a little about their families. And to ask them if there is something that we could pray about for them. Almost everyone loves it when we pray for their families.
We also bring dispensa's with us and share them with the families that we visit.
I recall one family who received a dispensa and asked to speak to the group. The father of the family said to the group, "We appreciate the food that you have given us. It will sustain us temporarily. Would you pray for our family? That will sustain us for a life time."
School Lunch Program
One of the things we noticed, was that many children attending Kindergarten across the street from our office had nothing to eat at lunch time.
One of our volunteers, Karina, came up with the idea of a school lunch program. It started out as a brown bag lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cookies and something to drink.
As time went on, it grew into serving a hot meal to the kids right at the school. About t 60 to 80 children attend each day. ,
There is an Elementary school next door. We found that many of the children were standing at the fence asking for food because they had nothing to eat. So we expanded the program to set up another serving station for include 60 more children
