I am writ­ing this from a nice lit­tle hotel in a sub­urb of Tijuana Mex­ico.  I’m here this week with my fam­ily, friends and clients.  Five years ago we started our annual trek to a very impov­er­ished com­mu­nity in Tijuana called Valle Verde.  We travel down here to help the peo­ple of Valle Verde by build­ing homes, build­ing a com­mu­nity cen­ter, and doing some needed repairs.

Tomor­row is Thanks­giv­ing, and as we all remem­ber to be a lit­tle more thank­ful, I am struck by the peo­ple I know who live with this atti­tude daily.  I’d like to tell you about a cou­ple of these peo­ple who have inspired me.

The first is a friend named Hec­tor, who lives down here in Valle Verde.  In his ear­lier years, Hec­tor raised five chil­dren in a one room shanty and rode a scooter for trans­porta­tion as he looked for work.  There is no way for me to do his story jus­tice here, but what I want to share is that he is a man who has known what it is like to have very, very little.

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