MR says: Every Thanksgiving, Builders Without Borders of Utah puts the thanks back in the holiday by traveling to Tijuana to perform service that has changed the lives of thousands.
Jamie Christensen is looking forward to his traditional Thanksgiving dinner this week. The main dish is six letters long and starts with a "T."
Tamale.
Jamie is part of an annual caravan that leaves Utah every November the week before Thanksgiving and travels to Mexico, crossing the border at San Diego and stopping in a southern suburb of Tijuana called La Gloria.
There, the Gringos, the majority of them from Utah County, sleep in a hostel by night and build stuff by day. For an entire workweek, Monday through Friday, they work sunup to sundown erecting new houses from the ground up and remodeling others. They do kitchens, bathrooms, bedroom partitions, stucco repair, re-roofing. You name it. If it requires a hammer, nail gun and people standing on the street scratching their heads trying to figure out what comes next, they do it.
Why? Because the need is there. There are families less than 10 miles from the American border who sleep under tarps and have no running water nor kitchen. That’s the short answer.