A Walk in the Park

I carried a sack of gifts as I made my way down the dirty streets to the homes where the gifts belonged.  Dogs barked at me from their pens while roosters casually strutted by.  Skulls and other decorations still adorned some homes from El Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, and Spanish music played in the background. Had it not been for the cold, rainy weather and the few African-Americans driving by, I might have believed that I made a wrong turn and landed in Mexico. Far from it; I was in a trailer park in Columbia, South Carolina.

I began volunteering with the trailer park ministry’s after school program my freshman year of college. The “real world” doesn’t allow me to volunteer consistently in the after school activities now, but I do have the opportunity to help with other projects.  Every year around Christmas people donate gifts for families to the ministry.  The gifts are arranged in a storage unit like a store and the families come pick out Christmas gifts for the children and even get them wrapped on site.

This year I grabbed a friend from church and we helped families choose presents at the Christmas “store.” Several families couldn’t make it to the storage unit, so since I knew my way around the park, my friend and I were loaded with bags of gifts and sent to deliver them.

The trailer park seemed to be in worse shape than the last time I was there.  One trailer looked as if it had caught fire and now all that was left was the floor. Children’s toys, a single pink child’s Croc and debris lined the paths to trailers.

We traveled those paths to the homes on our gift delivery list.  The recipients smiled and said, “thank you.”  That was the extent of our exchanges until the last home.  The trailer appeared better kept than most of the ones in the park.  A petite Hispanic woman answered the door and immediately voiced her appreciation for the gifts.

She started talking fast, as if we were already in the middle of conversation, telling us how much she loved the little children in the park and that the gifts would benefit them.  Then she told us about her own children, three boys already grown. Two served in the military, but were discharged for injuries while the other is in Iraq fighting now.  She choked back tears while she expressed her worries and prayers for him.

I sensed this lady’s gratefulness of her situation.  Though she lived in the trailer park and didn’t make a lot of money, she still had enough to survive.  While neighbors were being deported, she had obtained citizenship. There was pride in her voice when she would say the phrase, “We Americans,” while making a comparison between the U.S. and Mexico.  She had known harder times and instructed young, struggling mothers at the trailer park to “make sure your babies eat first. You’re stronger. You always eat last.”

As we left I felt a renewed gratitude for my life.  My church friend, who had never been to a trailer park before, was taken aback by the experience. S he later commented that when she returned home that evening, she realized how much she possessed.  She didn’t even know that there were places like the trailer park near us.  She thought struggling people were much farther away.

We don’t have to go to a foreign country to participate in foreign missions anymore.  We don’t have to fly over to third world Africa to help impoverished people.  The foreign countries have come to us. T he poverty-stricken are down the road in the trailer parks and broken down apartments, sitting in the public libraries for shelter from the cold, sleeping under our bridges and in our alleys near our dumpsters.  They come in all ages, genders and nationalities, reaching out for help, love and simply proof of existence.  They are us, perhaps with just less opportunity. To see them all you have to do is travel a little off the highway and open your eyes.