"Home is a shelter from storms --- all sorts of storms"
--- William J. Bennett (Former United States Secretary of Education; 1943 - Present)
What can I say of Riveras? Even though I'd passed through Reynosa before, it was the first city I stepped foot in when I arrived in the mission and we'd visited for a few holiday activities, my time in Riveras was my first long exposure to the city. And I spent a great part of my mission in Reynosa. Riveras wouldn't be the only part of the city I'd get to know, but you never forget your first.
Click to Navigate (Table of Contents):
Much happened during my time in Matamoros. I was in Buena Vista for a grand total of six months before being transferred again (See "2nd Area: Buena Vista, Matamoros"). I was companions with my trainee, Elder Chavarria, just short of 5 of those 6 months (See "Trainee to Trainer"); a considerable span of time (I don't think I had a companion for longer). I felt like I’d talked to everyone within a three-mile radius by the time I left. We didn’t have busloads of baptisms but I know that the Lord was happy with our efforts, knowing that we were trying our best and preaching repentance. So long as I followed the spirit, opened my mouth, and worked with a love for the people in my heart, I felt successful.
Saying goodbye wasn’t as hard to do as it was in my first area (See "1st Area: Monterreal, Rio Bravo" and "Onward!"). Of course, I would miss people I met but if I were to come back one day, it would be too soon.
ELDER FORTALEZA
I was assigned to Reynosa to serve in the Riveras (Ree-veh-rahs) area with Elder Fortaleza (For-tah-leh-sah), my 8th companion. All they told me beforehand was that he was from Brazil and about three months into the mission. He’d gotten to serve a few weeks in Brazil before obtaining his VISA to Mexico but he was still in his twelve-week training with us. So technically, I was supposed to finish training him (See "Testimonies and Trainers"). I never considered him as such but I was technically his trainer and he was my second trainee. But the fact that when I got there, he was the one showing me around and introducing me to people, he didn't feel like the new guy.
As far as I was concerned, Elder Fortaleza didn’t need training. He already knew Spanish from having lived abroad for a few years. He retained a thick Brazilian Portuguese accent throughout his whole mission but that was okay. We all have our own way of speaking. As companions who are together 24/7, you get to know each other well. Something that amazed me about many of the missionaries I served with was how many of them were recent converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was amazed at Elder Fortaleza’s story. He'd worked in a pharmacy down the street from his chapel in Brazil (as a phlebotomist I believe) so he’d always see the missionaries pass by his workplace on their way to the chapel. That’s how he was introduced to the Church. To make it even more amazing, Elder Fortaleza had just been baptized about a year or less before, and here he was devoting 2 years of his life as a missionary far from home. It makes me appreciate the seemingly little decisions of life that make a huge difference in the future. If he hadn’t made that decision to be baptized, who knows how that would have impacted my future, let alone everyone else Elder Fortaleza met and had an impact on.
REYNOSA
Reynosa (pronounced rei' nosa) was the largest city in the mission, hence the name of the mission (See "Mission Call --- Reynosa, Mexico"). The Riveras area was one of the bigger areas too (about four square miles), although it was far from being the largest geographically. The entire city covers over 1200 square miles. Walking the diameter of the Riveras area could take about an hour although it felt longer. As mentioned before, we wouldn't usually knock on every single house, even though we could have. Instead, we'd break it up by selecting specific neighborhoods beforehand to work in each day.
Sometimes we’d take the pecera (See "P-Days and Peceras"). The Soriana (grocery store) was a half a mile walk to the East and back unless we could afford a taxi, otherwise, we'd only use a taxi when pressed for time because it was typically pricier for what it was worth. The hardest part about grocery shopping was the walk to the store and the rare times we had to walk home carrying everything by hand or in our backpacks like mules.
The distance from where we lived to the chapel building was also about a ten-minute walk and caddy-corner to said Soriana. The chapel we attended was on the same plot of land as the Mission Offices (See "Mission Administration"). Our Ward (The Riveras Ward) shared the chapel building with the Ribereña Ward.
As of 2015, there were eight meetinghouses in the city to accommodate the fourteen Wards in two Stakes (organized in May of 1980 and March 2003). It'll be exciting to see where things go in the years ahead.
Reynosa was founded on 14 March 1749 by Carlos Cantú under the command of José de Escandón. But due to flooding in the area on the 4th of July, 1802, they decided to move five miles to the east keeping the same margin between them and the Rio Grande. It was not until 1926 that the state government recognized Reynosa as a city. Reynosa was first named Villa de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Reinosa. It was given the name of Reynosa as a tribute to the town with the same name in Spain. Today, it is the largest city in the state of Tamaulipas, and the 30th largest city in Mexico and is among the top 5 fastest growing cities in the country (mainly because of business opportunities in the maquilladoras, or factories).
To the locals, Reynosa was nicknamed, Reynosa la polverosa --- "Reynosa the dusty" --- for self-evident reasons. Remember, this is the same city that I was first introduced to from the moment I got off the plane in September of 2014 whose characteristics I described in "Culture Shock of Mexico". In 2017, Reynosa was described as a major hotspot in the Mexican Drug War, as a result of the internecine wars between the Gulf and Los Zetas drugs cartels. Reynosa may not be the most attractive or safe place, but there are a lot of people who need the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and that's why we were there.
HOME
The pictures above show the chapel and the front of our house at the time. If you remember, the Mission Offices were next to this same chapel. This meant that the Mission Offices were only a half a mile walk from where we lived, which is really close. If ever we needed anything from them, or them from us, it was only a fifteen or twenty-minute walk from home.
As was often the case, we were closer to Texas than it felt. Driving would have been incredibly quick, but walking made everything feel farther away. Our metric of choice for distance wasn't in miles or kilometers but in minutes and hours. When on a tight schedule, and you only want to go as far as your feet take you there and back, time is a good metric. But to give you an idea, the distance from my bed to American soil was about 1.3 miles as the crow flies. From the edge of our designated Riveras area to American soil in theory would have taken only about 15 minutes give or take to walk to (See "Crossing the Mexican Border"). Not that we ever walked that far from home to ever get to that edge, but you get the idea.
Our house was decent compared to other places I lived in. It was secluded enough by a solid wall and red gate that we kept locked with a padlock. There was a decent amount of space between the gate and the house and with the shade and cover from a few trees and bushes, we always felt safe and like we had privacy, not that we lived on a particularly busy street anyway.
Our home had a ceiling fan dead center of the main room, each of us got our own table to study at instead of having to share (even if mine was basically a large square makeshift desk made of recycled particleboard), there were two bedrooms each with a new awesome air conditioning unit (I slept in the smaller of the two; for some reason, the other bedroom cooled down a lot easier at night too which is a bit unfair), and we lived apart from our landlord so we didn't have to worry about noise like we did in my previous two houses. The landlord was a member of the Church with one ear and he lived in a little place just adjacent to ours but we almost never saw him around so it was as if we lived alone. He had a cute little tick-infested dog named "Camboni" who spent most of his time on our "porch" so he felt more like our dog even though we didn't have to feed him or take care of him. We even made him a makeshift doghouse out of a pile of old bricks and tin sheet to help shelter him from the rain but he hardly used it and our landlord apparently dismantled it on multiple occasions for unknown reasons; we'd come back at night and it'd be dismantled. Like all other places, our entire house had a tile floor that we had to keep swept but we were still required to wear sandals indoors for hygienic purposes. We had two small bathrooms, each with a shower. The study room was reasonably spacious but it heated up very easily because it didn't have any air conditioning so we'd often study with the curtains closed, the fans on, and the doors cracked to let in the cool morning air. The other downside of the house was the infinite amount of cockroaches that hid in the cracks and dark places of the kitchen; no matter how many we killed, there was always more hiding somewhere. There was a shelf hidden in a small closet in the hallway where we kept all our pamphlets and other paper supplies. All in all, it wasn't the cleanest place either, but it did the job; the fact that most of the day was spent away from home, it didn't bother us too much if a few things were left laying around.
FRIENDS
I was pleasantly surprised to find living with Elder Fortaleza and I was none other than Elder Brogan from the MTC (See "Adventures of District D -- Part 1" and "Welcome to the MTC!") who just happened to be companions with Elder Urias, whom I'd lived with in Buena Vista a few months earlier! I was stoked to be living with two of my friends even if I didn’t know Elder Fortaleza. I felt comfort and peace. At this point in my mission, I felt like we were all on equal ground; suddenly, Elder Brogan and I held seniority over the others in our house, the ones with the most experience. The feeling of moving to Riveras was like moving back in with old roommates whom you hadn't seen over summer vacation but felt like it hadn't been all that long. It felt natural and familiar. Once again, I felt that God was in charge and aware of me, and loved me. I already felt at home.
Comments