Three weeks ago Hilaria and Santos Cruz Garcia, with their four children, were living a regular life as best they could in one of the neighborhoods of east Tijuana, where life is a daily struggle.

Life dealt them a bigger challenge when on March 19 a fire took their house and all their meager belongings in the middle of the night. Someone was burning garbage near their house and embers jumped to their roof.  They woke up to the smell of the fire and only just had time to run outside.  Mom Hilaria said “We had to run outside with just the clothes we had on, there was no time to grab anything.  But thanks to God we are all OK.”

Kind neighbors helped them put together a scrap wood shack and gave them some old furnishings and extra clothes to keep them going until circumstances improved.

Project Mercy had built the Cruz Garcia family a house a few years ago.  They had been very kind to us and allowed us to use their yard as a shortcut access to a road into the neighborhood of Fuentes, where we worked for over two years.  We built them a house back then and eventually moved on to work in a different neighborhood.

We were so happy to be able to help them and although they had lost everything the lady who sponsored their home also funded buying new basic furnishings to get them going again. Project Mercy construction manager John, his friends and the Mexican crew, built their brand new home this past weekend.