Jesus Ruiz once left the city of Juarez, Mex­ico and vowed to never come back. Years later, his wife Maria vis­ited Juarez and con­vinced her hus­band to do some­thing about the poverty there. The fam­ily started the char­ity ‘Jesus es Mana,’ they return to Juarez every week­end to bring food to the peo­ple of Juarez.

From the Voice of Amer­ica, reporter Roger Hsu gives us the heart­warm­ing pro­file of the Ruiz fam­ily charity.

A river — and an inter­na­tional bor­der — sep­a­rate the city of Juarez in Mex­ico and El Paso in the United States. Even though they are in many respects worlds apart — Juarez is poor and crime-ridden and El Paso is pros­per­ous and rel­a­tively safe — the two cities are bound by pow­er­ful ties. One of them is the fam­ily of Jesus and Maria Ruiz and the char­ity they have started.

U.S. Inter­state 10 is a major thor­ough­fare in the city of El Paso, Texas, bustling with traf­fic night and day. Just sev­eral hun­dred meters to the south, on the hill­tops over­look­ing the inter­state, sit the con­crete houses of Juarez, Mexico.

Jesus and Maria Ruiz and their 19-year-old daugh­ter Liz and 13-year-old son Jesus Jr. live in a quiet sub­urb of El Paso. Like 80 per­cent of the city’s res­i­dents, they’re Latin American.

Every week­end the fam­ily makes a trip across the bor­der into Mex­ico. They go not to visit rel­a­tives or friends but to help peo­ple in need.

“Once you cross the bor­der [into Mex­ico] you see so many peo­ple there already, peo­ple all over the place. You see a lot of peo­ple who are hun­gry, who need food, who need money, who are ask­ing for your help,” said daugh­ter Liz.

All along the way, they have to watch out for drug deal­ers and kid­nap­pers. They also have to be wary of the police, many of whom are cor­rupt. One hour after leav­ing their home in El Paso, they arrive in one of Juarez’s poor suburbs.

“These are the out­skirts of Juarez. Usu­ally the out­skirts are the areas that’s being for­got­ten,” Maria said.

As on every week­end, the family’s des­ti­na­tion is an aid office that is the base they use to deliver goods to the poor.

“When we come over, it’s not only the food. We bring hygiene sup­plies and school sup­plies,” Maria explains.

By 9 o’clock on this morn­ing, almost 200 peo­ple are lin­ing up out­side the aid office. The vol­un­teers inside pack rice, canned food and veg­eta­bles into paper bags. All the peo­ple in line receive a free lunch and a large bag to col­lect 10 items of cloth­ing, one pair of shoes and soap and shampoo.

Jesus is no stranger to poverty. He was born and grew up in Juarez. He came to the United States, ille­gally, when he was 14. The dif­fer­ence struck him imme­di­ately — and angered him.

“In those 14 years I lived in Juarez, I expe­ri­enced poverty, I expe­ri­enced every­thing that they are liv­ing right now till today, it has not changed even a bit. When I came across, I made a promise to myself, I turned around and I was so upset with the coun­try and the soci­ety, the way they han­dle things, I screamed and I yelled to Juarez and said Juarez, Mex­ico I will never, ever, come back to you, turned around and left,” Jesus explains.

But it was Maria, who was born in the United States, who changed his mind. She made her first visit to Mex­ico more than 10 years ago, for the funeral of a rel­a­tive, and was shocked by the poverty. “I had to tell my hus­band, I said, ‘I have to go back and I had to do some­thing.’ I couldn’t just turn around and say ‘Oh’ and pre­tend I didn’t see any­thing,” she says. “I told him I want to do some­thing, and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I said, ‘I want to take apples, oranges and bananas and sweet breads to the kids to the school.’”

Soon, when word got out on what they wanted to do, peo­ple in and around El Paso began donat­ing money, cloth­ing and food to the min­istry that the cou­ple started, Jesus es mana, which trans­lates as Jesus is the bread of life. With the approval of the local gov­ern­ment in Juarez, Maria and Jesus built a church and an aid office on an aban­doned lot in the mid­dle of the slum.

As for the Ruizes, they gave so much to the min­istry they started that their liv­ing stan­dard in El Paso was close to that of those they were help­ing in Juarez.

“Even though we were liv­ing under the poverty level, when I would cross the bor­der and see other people’s need, then my needs were noth­ing com­pared to what their needs are,” Maria said.

As the min­istry they started has grown, so have their ambi­tions. They are now build­ing a com­mu­nity kitchen with space to feed 500, an orphan­age for 100 res­i­dents and a trade school.

Why do they do it? “When you make a child smile,” Maria says, “it’s awesome.”

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