Mission Trip to Cuatro Ciénegas: Carmen’s House

Camino de San José: Lessons from Cuatro Ciénegas

What looked like a simple cleaning project became more complicated once I realized how much I didn’t understand.

By the time we were divided into work teams, Dave was sent outside with the painting crew and I joined a few others inside a small stucco house belonging to a young mother I’ll call Carmen.

She’s eighteen and lives there with her younger brother, her three-year-old daughter Rosa, and another baby girl due any day.

At first glance, the house felt overwhelming. Clothes were everywhere, scattered on the floor, stuffed into cabinets, and even piled in an unused crib. Toys were spread across the house, many broken or missing pieces. In one hallway sat a washing machine that looked like it had been out of commission for a long time, and outside there was another one that appeared equally retired.

My friend Linda and I folded clothes from the line, sorted small piles into sizes, and began picking things up from the floor. At one point, we moved four large trash bags full of dirty laundry to the storage room just to make a path across the hallway.

The whole time, I kept coming back to the same question. Why so many clothes? I was fairly confident this was a problem I could solve.

I thought there were far more clothes than one small family could possibly need. Many were stretched out, torn, or stained beyond repair. My natural instinct was to start weeding things out. In hindsight, that was not the skill most needed in that moment.

But whenever we asked Carmen if something should be thrown away, she usually said no. Keep it.

That answer was harder than I expected. The clutter didn’t bother me nearly as much as the trash on the floor and the sense that so many items seemed unusable. I kept thinking about how much lighter the space could feel if we could just let a few things go.

Eventually I asked Roby, a missionary who was translating for us, why the family had so many clothes. She explained that many of them had been donated, and Carmen didn’t want to get rid of them because she was grateful for the gifts.

As we talked more, I began to understand a little more of Carmen’s situation. She is young to be carrying so much responsibility. Her grandmother, who had been a steady presence in the home, had passed away not long before, and with her father not available, much of the daily weight of the household had fallen to Carmen.

She was doing the best she could with what she had. That made sense to me immediately, but it still didn’t quite resolve the lack of storage space.

Later that night, I thought I had come up with a helpful idea. Maybe, I suggested to Roby the next day, we could ask Carmen if she might want to pass along some of the extra items to another family who might need them more. That way she wouldn’t feel like she was rejecting the gift, she would simply be sharing it.

Roby smiled kindly and explained what I had missed. “They use all of them,” she said. The more clothes they have, the less often Carmen has to do laundry.

And laundry, it turns out, is not a simple task in this house.

The washing machine in the hallway wasn’t broken in the way I assumed. It had simply become storage for dirty clothes. Outside, the second washer also wasn’t functioning.

What Carmen actually used to wash clothes was a metal basin sitting near an outdoor spigot. Water ran through hoses from the cistern on the roof, and that spigot might have been the only reliable source of water for the house. Quickly the entire situation came into focus.

Of course they had so many clothes. It was a system. Just not one I recognized at first.

If washing laundry meant filling a basin by hand, scrubbing clothes manually, rinsing them, and hanging them to dry, I would want to do that as rarely as possible too.

I began to realize my instinct to make things better according to my standards was getting in the way of truly serving here. From my perspective, the house needed less stuff. For Carmen, the house needed to function within the limits of the resources she actually had.

Once I understood that, the work shifted. This wasn’t a disorganized space that needed fixing. Instead this home was being held together by someone doing her best under circumstances I had barely begun to understand. Letting go of control didn’t happen all at once, but it started to loosen its grip.

When we followed Carmen’s lead, she seemed more at ease almost immediately. What had started as uncertainty turned into participation. She began pointing things out, helping us organize, and sweeping the floor alongside us. She didn’t need us to take over. She needed us to follow.

Rosa, meanwhile, was fully engaged in her role as supervisor.

She’s three, which means she had very strong opinions about which toys were definitely keepers. Princess dresses, princess toys, princess everything. Her world made perfect sense, and she was not about to let us disrupt it without discussion.

I picked up a small board book from the floor of her bedroom. The cover featured princesses too, but now it was broken into several thick cardboard pieces scattered across the dusty floor. When I asked if I could put it in the trash bag, Rosa adamantly shook her head. Okay, back to the keep pile.

Nearby I spotted a small princess umbrella. At least, it used to be an umbrella. The fabric was torn and metal spokes poked out at odd angles. There was no chance this umbrella would ever open again, let alone protect anyone from rain.

I held it up and asked gently, “Trash?”

Rosa immediately said, “No.”

I tried appealing to Carmen, holding up the umbrella as if to say surely this one could go, but she gave a small shrug that needed no translation. I know it’s broken, but good luck convincing her.

Roby crouched down and explained in Spanish that the umbrella could not be used anymore. There was a pause, a little negotiation, and finally Rosa agreed. The umbrella went into the trash.

It was a small moment, but it felt like a turning point. Once she realized that letting go of one thing didn’t mean losing everything, the mood shifted. She started helping, pointing at the trash or her bedroom shelves and taking part in the process instead of just guarding her things.

The next day, Father Brandenburg introduced gummy bears as motivation. Each time Rosa helped by picking something up, throwing something away, or putting things in order, she received a small handful of gummitas. Very quickly, our tiny supervisor became an enthusiastic member of the cleanup crew, and a fan of gummy bears.

Before we left, Father asked Rosa to promise something important, that she would keep helping her mom take care of the house and the new baby. She nodded with complete seriousness. Whether that promise lasts five minutes or five years is anyone’s guess, but in that moment you could see a spark of confidence growing. Soon she’d be the big sister of the house, and she was already working alongside the rest of us.

As we were finishing up, a group of nuns and members of the local St. Joseph community arrived carrying a large statue of St. Joseph as part of a novena leading up to his feast day. They came into the house to pray for Carmen and her unborn baby, bringing food and giving her a rosary.

Fr. Daniel entered too, paint spatters on his arms and face, and offered a blessing over our gathering in the humble room. For such a simple moment, it was deeply moving. Carmen began to cry, and Linda and I found ourselves doing the same.

Love filled the space. It had been there before we arrived too, proven by the cherished family photos hanging on the newly painted walls. Now the tidy beds and crib felt warm and cozy, welcoming all who entered.

Later, Roby told us that we had not originally been scheduled to work at Carmen’s house. The plan had changed at the last minute when they realized how close she was to delivering. She smiled and said she thought the Holy Spirit and St. Joseph might have had something to do with it.

Looking back, I think Roby was right.

We spent our time folding tiny shirts, cleaning floors, painting, and slowly letting go of the ideas I had brought with me about how a family should work. By the end, the house was more ready for the baby, but I was the one who had been rearranged.

This is part of a series about our mission trip to Cuatro Ciénegas, Mexico.

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