Visiting Tabor House

  Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico
Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Peter and Betty choose to live in a drug-infested, sometimes violent, neighborhood of Juarez in a place they named "Tabor House." Well into their 70's and 80's, when most folks are kickin' back, they want to be with the down-and-out folks in a "3rd world" place...simply to be there as neighbors and friends, to be there as who they are: a Catholic priest and sister with a lay community of friends who extend around the world.

I joined a group of university women for the visit and tour of their house. Peter and Betty, former missionaries in Peru, learned from the Peruvians that as guests in another country it would be appreciated that they not come into Peru and "move things around"...just as you wouldn't start moving the furniture around in a friend's house when you stop in for a visit. Now in Mexico, they experience life in the barrio and live in solidarity with the poor who surround them. They also receive many delegations from the US and help them see how US foreign policy--imposing a neoliberal economic model--is responsible for the poverty and violence in Latin America. (By the way, they also do innumerable 'good works' and ministry as clergy, but they'd see that as secondary.)

Peter and Betty have lived in other Tabor House communities, in Washington DC and San Antonio, TX. Paul met them in San Antonio in the '80's, and it was his relationship with them that was pivotal in our setting up residence here in El Paso. We're grateful to them for the joy we experience every day we're here.