What Martinez Taught me About Today

We lived in Martinez de la Torre for the first hard horrible year we were in Mexico. Funny how much I miss it. I commented to my friend today, that I miss it. I miss the people and the church memebers, and how much we served there. I miss the priceless friendships that we made there. I miss the real quality of the people. Funny how people change when you mix humanity with just a little bit of money. Poverty is a reality to almost everyone in Martinez, even those who didn't live it directly, felt it, or at least saw it enough to keep it real. When pretense is gone, people can just be people. Humans who all feel, and love and long, and dream.

Tonight we came home and there was a message on the messanger I left open from one of the youth from our church, Gloria. She told us that Marta Franyutti died today. Marta was out neighbor. She was like four feet tall, and she looked older than my mother, but was really way younger. She was a worker. Her husband has epilepsy and couldn't work. She limped and had a heart condition but she cooked chiles rellenos and sold them, and raw chicken, and whatever she could think of. She dreamed of owning her own Panederia, a bread shop. She was a baker and she loved to make breads and cakes. She came and rubbed me with some icy hot crap when I hurt my back. One day I lost the church keys, and I knew Justino was going to kill me. She lived right next door so I ran to her house to see if she had a flashlight so that I could look in the truck. She took me by the hand and pulled me to my knees and prayed the most sincere prayer that she could help me find my keys. She found them. It was her faith that night, not mine, that rose that prayer to heaven. Justino used to stand up in church every week and ask the members to be on time for the services. He told them every Sunday that chuch started at 11 sharp, not 11:15, not 11:30, not 12 or 12:30. We would start every Sunday with just Marta in the audience. SHe was never late. As the service would move on the 50 other attending members would trickle in. Not Marta, she was right on time, every single week.
One time at a Relife Society meeting she sang, with no accompianment at the top of her raspy almost masculine voice, off key. She told me later how grateful she was that God have her the talent to sing. I didn't have the heart to tell her that he didn't give her that talent. She was always singing. She was grateful for life. She thanked God for one more day of life every time I ever heard her pray, and she meant it. I remember thinking once when I heard her say that, What is the big deal with one more day of this torture. Life felt like that to me, often when I lived in Martinez, but Marta had figured it out. She had learned that it wasn't about having everything, it was just about having enough. She taught me a lot about what enough really is. I have thought alot about the difference between a want and a need. There is a gray area there that I can't always define, but Marta got it.

We called our friend Frank tonight to get the details, and he told us about all the other awful things that are happening there right now. How Jimena the four year old daughter of out stake president has a tumor on her kidney and they are going to operate on Monday in Mexico City. He told us about how another Brother that was in charge of the Young Men in his ward, was caught selling drugs. His wife has cancer, he had no work. I hear that drug buisness is pretty lucrative, until they put you in jail. I don't know why he did it, but if I had to guess, he was despearate. Just trying to keep his wife alive. Maybe I am wrong but at any rate, how sad. And Marta is dead. Frank told us that they were missing us and talking about us in a meeting that the bishops had with the stake presidency. That made me feel good. We really did work hard there in the church.

It makes me wonder, what are we doing here? Is life really only about having a job and earning money? That is why we came here. The bishop here hasn't even given us a calling. Should we have stayed in Martinez? Really, we couldn't have. WE were out of money, we were out of options. It just makes me think, what I am supposed to be learning from this whole experience?

I was suffering in Martinez, and tonight I am longing to be there again. I guess the point is to learn to love the moment I find myself in. To cherish it, and be in it, and also realize how fragile it is, because it will be gone someday. Stages of life come and go, and come and go. I remember being at the flea market one day and feeling strongly impressed to savor the experience because it would be gone soon. I had closed my mind to all possiblities except for going to back to the states, and so I of course interpreted my feelings to mean that we would be going home soon. I had no idea we were headed for the center of hell, cuidad juarez, and the longest separation I could imagine.

So now I am going to bed still wondering why God has sent us here. To a place where we have all the unimportant things, like enough money and three wal marts, and not the real life defining experiences and realtionships that we had in Martinez. And yet, we have to eat right? Why didn't we ever find work there? What is God thinking and planning? What is this really all about? I guess I just don't get it. But something is telling me not to make the same mistake here that I made there. I need to savor this experience as baffling as it is to me, because I didn't savor Martinez. I was baffled then, all I could think about was what we didn't have, a job and stuff and stablity. Now I can see what the whole thing was about, and I couldnt then. It must be the same now. I truly can't see the forest for the damn trees, but I better start eating the fruit and loving it because in a minute I might be in a whole other jungle with new trees and new fruit.

Good Night Martinez, I love you Marta.