Pilar Castrillo
CEO of Migrant Journey, Florida
This is a mercy’s history.
What I have I give you.
Peter gave healing.
What could I give as a migrant, with a small organization, to help other migrants? That was the question after Hurricane Ian devastated parts of Florida. It affected migrants like me who, with their deft hands and light feet, get food produced on the ground to the supermarket shelves.
A week after Ian, we made it through flooded carts. The first contact, a mother with her son. My skin still prickles and my heart bleeds as I relive her low-volume words asking for water. It was the first day she was able to leave her house. She was incommunicado, with no access roads. Her pleading face, her low voice and trembling hands asking for water, where she could find it for her family. The hurricane had devastated her mobile home.
She asked for water and I had none. She asked for help in mute language with sad eyes, and what I had I gave her: hope that I would return in two days to help her and others with resources and to remedy their need. There were thousands in the same conditions; there was no work as the hurricane took away the crops; no money; no hope of help.
I am a migrant like her; this is not her final place of life just as it is neither mine nor yours. We are all migrants in this land increasingly hit by greed and destruction that cause chaos in the natural forces. Peter gave what he had. And we, a team of volunteers united by a passion for service, provided what we had as immediate help for basic needs. We are giving help that represents dignity, mercy and whatever we have for that neighbor who is helpless and in need.
As I write this near the city of Arcadia, Fla., the wagons are again full of supplies to assist. We will again give what we have, which is neither gold nor silver. We have love and hope.
And you? What do you have to give to others?