Mercy Mission Helps Develop A Sincere Love

Mexico didn’t erase Anne Willhite’s grief, but it restored her will.

The retired teacher built a simple cinderblock house there, dispensed medicines to poor families and collected trash in impossibly neglected neighborhoods last February, just months after burying her husband and mother.

“Being able to give of myself was healing after such a great loss,” Anne says. “You feel life isn’t over for you, that there is still something worthwhile to do.”

Anne was among 29 Coeur d’Alene Methodists and Catholics who traveled just south of Texas’ tip to Rio Bravo, Mexico, this year.

It was the second such mercy mission from Coeur d’Alene. Community United Methodist parishioner Carol Skellenger learned last year that United Methodists send volunteers to help poor people all over the world.

With help from the Rev. Howard Jones, her pastor, Carol gathered 14 volunteers, including three doctors, six nurses and parishioners from Coeur d’Alene’s St.

Pius X Catholic Church.

In February 1999, the team built a cinderblock house in Rio Bravo, a town with 130,000 people, and offered basic medical care to residents.

They stayed one week, and came home determined to return together to the dusty Mexican city.

“We became like family,” says Carol, a retired nurse. “Now, they come to our church and we go to theirs.”

The volunteers’ excitement over their adventure was contagious. They chattered with everyone about the warmth of the Mexican people, satisfaction of building a house from scratch and gratitude of the families they helped.

Anne listened to the stories at church last January and decided to go.

Her husband, Carlis had wanted to go on the 1999 Mexico mission with Anne. But they were caring for Anne’s 89-year-old mother and couldn’t figure a way they could all travel.

They gave up on the idea. Two months later in April, Carlis’ heart gave out. In December, Anne’s mother died.

“I decided to go on this trip as a tribute to my husband,” Anne says softly. “And, to help me heal.”

So many new volunteers signed on for this year’s mission that Carol divided the group into three teams that went three separate weeks.

Volunteers included doctors, nurses, teachers, firemen, dentists, ministers, engineers and medical technicians.

People who couldn’t leave town for a week donated money, sewed quilts and blankets and filled plastic bags with toiletries. Nurses at the North Idaho Cancer Center collected surplus medical supplies for the cause.

“It became a community project,” Carol says, beaming.

Each volunteer paid $568, which covered airfare, lodging, food, van rental, salary for a local construction foreman and building supplies for three houses. The United Methodist program buys construction materials in Mexico.

Anne knew she was in for adventure the moment she arrived in Rio Bravo. It was midnight, and someone had forgotten the Americans were coming.

A drunk priest met them. Their beds had no sheets. Anne heard a car arrive, then four quick gunshots, then a car depart.

“That’s why I commend everyone who goes,” says Carol, who, with Patsy Sorenson, stayed two weeks in Rio Bravo this year. “They go into a strange culture. It’s dirty. There are cockroaches, and they have no complaints. They dig in and get the work done.”

The cinderblock houses went up among makeshift shacks with curtains for doors and cesspools for yards. Anne met a 14-year-old girl with a 6-week-old baby living in a patchwork hovel. The girl hoped Anne’s team would return and build her a house.

“It does change your focus,” Anne says.

For three days, she mixed powdered antibiotics with water and dispensed them to children while dentists pulled teeth, doctors checked aches and pains and nurses and other volunteers handed out lice remedies, prenatal vitamins, blood pressure medicine and more.

Mexican women fed the Americans rice, beans and chicken. The sanitary conditions were so bad - chickens and pigs grazed in the cesspools - that volunteers ate timidly.

“I ate so many Tums,” Anne says. “I didn’t get sick until a week after I came home.”

By then, a light had returned to her saddened eyes. She was as determined to return next year to Rio Bravo as everyone else who went.

“The fellowship that grows while you’re there is amazing,” she says, hugging her album filled with trip pictures. “You develop a real sincere love for each other.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: TO HELP Donations

Community United Methodist Church is collecting gallon Ziploc bags filled with toiletries - shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, combs, hairbands, soap, etc. - to take to Rio Bravo next year. To donate or volunteer, call 765-8800.