Unlivable

Unlivable...

The ravine is maybe a quarter mile across, half as deep as it is wide, with steep inclines on either side. It runs a number of miles in each direction, emptying onto a boulevard at one end and disappearing into the rugged mountain range that forms the Baja on the opposite end.

Unlivable...

Each wall of the ravine is a combination of clay and protruding rock, rugged and unforgiving, dusty in the dry season and muddy in the wet season.

Unlivable...?

The Mexican government deems this area, dubbed the "freelands" by the American missionaries as unlivable, and yet it is filled (packed) with the makeshift "houses," if you can call them that, of squatters trying to find work in Ensenada. In fact, thousands live here! It is the poorest of the poor when it comes to city living. I would compare it to the conditions at the "concrete village," in the agricultural areas south of the city.

Unlivable...?

By many American standards, yes. Most of us wouldn't think of living in the conditions we found in the "freelands." Yet, the people come, looking to improve living conditions for their families. The people here work hard...some in the factories, some in the shops and the tourism industry of Ensenada, a growing port city that hosts three cruise ships a week. This is a step up for many, who simply want to make enought to provide housing for thier children. So they construct homes from cardboard, old tires, old RV's, corrugated steel, plywood...basically whatever they can scrape together. Their is no plumbing, no electric, except what they can tap into off the live wires passing overhead to the nieighborhoods just up the mountain. This is after all, an area deemed....

Unlivable!?

Lantern Hill has established a ministry site only blocks from the "freelands," with Mexican partners Javier and Martha. This inner-city location, called Baja 89, is a concrete house that houses Javier, Marta, and their children Junior and Anna on one floor, and a ministry center on the other. Javier's dream is to provide better education for the children of the neighborhood. He is convinced that the only solution for the people of this neighborhood to escape their poverty (many live in conditions just a little better than the "freelands" in the ravine below), is to better educate themselves and not settle for a life of drugs, crime or worse.

Javier and Marta provide the neighborhood with early childhood development kinds of activities, a feeding program on weekends, Bible study, and classes in english as a second language. Lantern Hill is collecting computers for Baja 89, to be used in a computer class starting there, hopefully in 2010. They are a blessing to their community and to those of us who serve alongside them. They are taking unlivable conditions and making them just a bit more livable.