Margarita

Our first day at Cristo Rey I met a young woman, Margarita, that I immediately connected with and got to know more as the week progressed. Margarita and I are the same age but with very different life stories. She is a single mom of three beautiful children. She lives with her mother so she can work, go to school (via DVDs she said) and take care of her children. Her home is basically a cement walled shack. Part of her income comes from braiding tourist's hair such as us. She was at the church daily to braid girl's hair from our team and did an awesome job.

Through getting to know her I found out that she was introduced to Cristo Rey sometime this past year and loves having this new "family" in her life. She is a believer and her life has changed for the better since making new friends at the church. Wednesday we had all day together at our beach day. The church family and WBC team went to the beach that day to hang out and fellowship in a relaxing environment with less structure and agenda. She shared with me about her kids and how she wants so much for them. She has a daughter that is 10, and two sons that are 7 and 5.

I hope to keep in touch with her and encourage her as she presses on to make ends meet for her family. I was able to give her a huge bag of beads before we left. The kind she uses to bead hair. Something so simple for me, but so huge to her. Meeting Margarita really hit home and put things back in perspective for me personally how wealthy I am here in Alaska and how little you can live off of.