My Family

At least three times weekly we would travel a few blocks from our small house on G Street to our church on K Street to attend church service. I can still hear the piano music and the voices of the church congregation coming from inside the small old wooden church as we neared the church property. They named it the “Iglesia Bautista Mexicana” or as they say in English, the “Mexican Baptist Church”. It sat quietly surrounded by a Mexican community on K Street in Brawley. It was a small missionary church. On weekends, the pastor would take a small group of members to Mexico and travel to the out of town “ejidos” or villages to have services with the residents there. “Ejidos” are They would load their cars with Bible literature, toys for the children, food, and their musical instruments. The small old church was established around 1920 by the “Western Avenue Baptist Church” association, its mother church. The mother church was big and beautiful; it was much more elegant and a lot bigger that ours and it sat on the west side of town. Huge stained glass windows with images of the Shepherd and his sheep or the Mother and her child adorned its walls. Its finely padded pews matched the rusty rose color of the church carpet. A huge black piano and a handsome brown organ sat at the front of the church. Seasonal flowers decorated the preacher’s podium. The size of the church was breathtaking. It reminded me of the cathedrals in Europe, But, I only got to see this beauty during the church’s two-week Vacation Bible School in July. I never missed going to one of them while I was a kid.
My family had been going to our old Baptist church faithfully every Sunday and every Wednesday ever since I can remember, many times having to walk to the church because we had no transportation. I was small, no more than 5 years old. My brothers were 3 years, 7 years and 13 years old. My youngest sister was only a baby. My mother was very young, 32 maybe, and already a