"Vengeance has consumed you. It's consuming them. I'm done letting it consume me. Justice will come soon enough"
--- Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther (Marvel's "Captain America: Civil War")
I'd be lying if I didn't say that life on the Mexican frontier didn't have its dangerous moments. I wish it weren't so, but that's how things are for now. I was only there for two years (in various border cities) but such is life for the inhabitants of Tamaulipas. Nothing bad ever happened to me, but my heart goes out just the same to all who aren't so fortunate. I don't have a positive opinion on war and that's not what this post aims at conveying anyway, but what I do feel strongly about is turning our hearts to the Prince of Peace, even Jesus Christ.
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THE 100-METER DASH
February 2015 was just rolling in. I’d been in Buena Vista less than six weeks and Elder Lopez and I were getting the ball rolling. We had an appointment in “Infonavit Buena Vista” (Een-fohn-ah-veet) which was an apartment community. This was unusual since most buildings in the mission were two stories tall or shorter. Like everything else, the apartments were entirely concrete, square, and simple (See "Upon The Rock"). A sketchy winding concrete staircase with that precarious gap you can see through each dusty step ran up three floors. The look and condition of the buildings was something out of a "Call of Duty" video game. The paint was chipped, everything had a murky turquoise, swampy green, or pale pink or yellow color. It was anything but homey. It was so quiet and desolate, most of the time they felt more like empty dungeons than apartments. I didn’t understand how the buildings held together in their cracking pealing crumbling condition.
The streets in this particular neighborhood were difficult to navigate. Some were dead ends and others sent you in circles. You'd wonder if there was an exit just around the corner, but then there wouldn't be. It was a desolate concrete maze. An added challenge was getting to the next street over since some streets were walled in by the tall buildings and fences. An impenetrable hedge of habitations. It was quite disorientating. The community didn’t venture into the streets unless they had to. The whole place always gave me an unsettling feeling and I tried to avoid it if at all possible. We saw cartel guys there more than a few times because the maze-like infrastructure was ideal for concealing their activities. The locals referred to them as "mañosos" which literally translates to "the clever ones", but was an umbrella term for any dangerous criminal.
It wasn’t our favorite place to go but Elder Lopez and I took it with a grain of salt and missionary optimism as we started walking to the follow-up appointment with a good man we’d previously visited in that eerie community. On route, we heard what sounded like a loud construction hammer or nail gun off in the distance. I didn’t think too much of it.
The already few people in the streets retreated back into their houses like frightened critters to their caves leaving the two of us, naive young adults in white shirts, ties, and backpacks, strolling down the street alone. A few minutes later we heard it again but it was louder and the air cracked like a whip. The sound was fast and repetitious, like someone smacking a pie tin. It was too fast to be any nail gun and more like firecrackers in a fire pit. And then the sound stopped for a while.
When we were on the same street as the apartment we had planned to visit, we heard the sound again louder than ever. It seemed to be coming towards us. It was close. Elder Lopez immediately pulled out our brick of a cellphone and called Elder Rangel to report it shouting, “Elder Rangel! ¡Balazos! Elder, más balazos! Elder hay balazos! ¡Corre, Elder Robertshaw! Corre, Corre (cohrr-eh)!!”. I didn’t know what balazos meant but I knew that corre meant “run!”. By now it sounded like a full-out finale of a fireworks show next door. We started booking it down the street towards the closest church member’s house which was the Lastra family who we knew well and knew us well (See "Member Missionary Work"). Turns out, balazos (Bah-lah-sohs) means “gunfire”. We were near a shootout, or in Spanish, "balacera" (Bah-lah-seh-rah).
My veins surged with adrenaline. Elder Lopez told me to book it as fast as I could and I obeyed. My survival instincts were in motion. He followed closely but fell slightly behind because he was larger and slower; I didn't take the time to stop and look back. I couldn’t believe what was happening! It felt like something from a disaster movie.
I got to the house first about 100 meters down the road. Elder Lopez didn’t take long to catch up in our roughly dozen-second dash. The house had a chain fence gate that came up to about my chest but instead of opening the gate or hopping it, amidst the echoing pops and crackles of the gunshots reverberating off every building, Elder Lopez started belting, “Good Afternoon!” in Spanish. “Good afternoon!”, in polite missionary fashion all the while nervous and jittery, whimpering, and unable to stand still. We weren’t thinking straight. After what seemed like an eternity, the L. family opened the door and insisted we run inside and stop wasting time asking for permission. After all, we weren't strangers off the street! There were even a couple of times under similar circumstances in Mexico where strangers unconditionally welcomed us into their house until things had passed. I believe that even on this occasion there was a couple across the street on the ground floor that shouted out the window inviting us to take shelter with them, but we insisted that the Lastra family would take care of us. Who has to ask permission to come inside a friend’s house during a shootout?! What would you have done?
News of what was happening traveled rapidly up our missionary call chain of command and as you’d expect, we were told to stay with the Lastra family until instructed otherwise. It felt like the apocalypse and any minute the zombie forces would bust down our door and kill us all (although I might be over-exaggerating). It was like waiting out a tornado in a bunker. I wasn't very talkative, yet they made conversation with us for the two hours we relaxed on their couch and sipped on lemonade. For them, this was normal. Needless to say, we never made our appointment.
What had happened, so we were told, was that the 7-Eleven two streets down (640 feet, or almost 200 meters East of us) was robbed at gunpoint and the police got in on the action causing a shootout. The scene only quieted down when the perpetrator was shot and killed which wasn’t too long after we’d taken shelter. At least that's what we were told; I don't know how information like that gets around or if it's a lot of speculation.
Nevertheless, we stayed put to be better safe than sorry long after the silence; like the calm between the earthquake and impending aftershocks. What a foolish thing to die for! The path some people choose for themselves! How things could have been different! This is precisely why the world needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. That man in the 7-Eleven didn't have to do what he did. I have to believe that he wasn't always that way. At one time in his life, he went from what would have been a path of an honest and beautiful life to a short one of misfortune. People can change. If they can deviate from a good life, they can get back on it, even if it takes some work to do so. The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about change and repentance. Let me quote something that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints once said regarding the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ:
“However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”
Our situation wasn't unique. Crime across the entire mission got worse out of the blue that whole month of February; that day was like the spark in a wildfire. I don’t know that I wish to specify what was happening, not that I have a lot of details anyway, but for safety’s sake, our entire mission went into temporary lockdown. None of the missionaries could leave the house at all for about two days and for the next week or two, we had to be on alert and above all “be smart” in everything we did. By God’s protecting hand, we were not harmed.
The Lastra family drove us home for the evening. Within hours, street life went back to business as usual, but we kept our heads down until we got home just the same. During our short retreat indoors, we had to find temporary ways to be productive by planning or scheduling over the phone. I imagine it was a similar thing for many when COVID came around a few years later. The time that we were homebound was more boring than anything. On the one hand, it was nice not having to trek all day in the humidity but on the other hand, it wasn't a pleasant scenario to be in the middle of. We were advised not to email home about the danger because we didn’t want to worry family back home. Worrying wouldn’t help. I just told them the truth that the work was slower and we hadn’t had very many lessons that week. If things became unpredictably dangerous, I'm sure we would have been reassigned to another mission. Even though many of us had our close encounters to varying degrees, no one ever got hurt in our mission.
This story is one of my most exhilarating but I don’t like sharing it usually unless people ask me about it. There were so many good things that happened on the mission and I’d rather share the positive than focus on the negative. But there is an opposition in all things. You can’t really savor the sweet unless you get a taste of the bitter (See "The Return of the King: Part 1"). The mission is not all games and fun all the time. And this was just the corner of the vineyard that I was assigned to (See "Mission Call: Mexico, Reynosa"); I guarantee that there are other missions throughout the world with more joyous and beautiful things to speak of in terms of the architecture, the food, the recreational places, the customs, the people and so forth. No two missions are alike, each with things good and bad about them.
I'm confident that God’s hand was in it. I'm convinced that at all times, we had angelic bodyguards on our left and right (See "Tongue of Angels" and "Ministering of Angels"). The longer I served, the more confident I became. If I would have let fear get the best of me, I would have had zero success as a missionary. The essence of being a missionary is getting out of your comfort zone. It was a necessity but also a blessing that allowed me to grow. I survived. We all did, no worries. I had been promised in a priesthood blessing that I would be safe in all my travels and activities (See "Patriarchs and Potters") and I knew that many prayers were offered on my behalf by my family and others (See "Prayers"). I knew everything would be alright in the end. That's not to say that all missionaries are exempt from possible harm or danger because they're still as human as anyone else, and can find themselves in such situations, but I thought that if I couldn’t handle Reynosa, I wouldn’t have been called there. The Lord trusted me. These trials made me trust even more in the Lord.
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