HELP!!

I am a little hung over from the long weekend of activities with celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! I was totally blessed by some good friends at a church who made Easter Baskets for 100 kids, teens and grandmas in my group. We were also fortunate enough to make 300 burritos to take to our homeless friends in the downtown on Saturday for an Easter blessings. I am sure these homeless friends loved the burritos, chips and salsa, orange slices, gift bags and Starbucks Coffee. We have an amazing Sunrise Service on the top of South Mountain. We actually get there at least 30 minutes before the sun is even close to showing itself. We listen to the Easter Story being read by a few of the adults. We sing about Jesus coming from heaven to earth to show us the way, as he has become our redemption.

I am driving back form dropping off some of our kidz/teens and get a call from a good friend saying that his laptop has decided to go on the fritz and he needs a different dvi adapter. So I rush home, get three different ones and try not to get a ticket as I drive to their church that meets in an office complex 20 minutes away. I get there in like 12 minutes and to my dismay none of the adapters work. I ‘m frustrated because I know that my friend has been sweating bullets over this. So I drive back home via Starbucks to get a cup of coffee and now get dressed to attend another Easter Service.

We return and quickly get started on our family gourmet Easter dinner. We have a rump roast, leg of lamb roast and left over ham. Obviously we aren’t going to starve this Easter. Yet, I am humbled and convicted to think that I have a few families who didn’t have much for Easter dinner. I will take over leftovers today but that isn’t the same and I feel horrible. As we take my dad back to his group home and return to finish the dishes, pots and pans it is getting late. I get a text from one of my teens asking if I’ll go to court with his mom. I quickly text back that I need the address of her work place and also need to have her answer a few questions.

I get up early, regardless of how my body feels and we take the dogs for a walk on the canal before the sun is any where close to being visible, In fact the moon is still casting enough light that we can see in the dark as we walk along the canal and watch our dogs play in the tall grass and almost run through the irrigation or jump in the canal after a couple of ducks. I get Anne’s lunch ready, give the dogs a morning treat and then head off to write at my Starbucks.

After I get a refill I notice two Phoenix Police Officers and decide to ask them questions about my teen’s mom and dad’s situation. They gracefully answer questions about impounded vehicles, what is a minor infraction and what is a misdemeanor. As I am listening I am coming to the conclusion that my friends are ‘screwed’ because without a valid Arizona Driver’s license they won’t be able to retrieve the dad’s truck out of impound. The unfortunate part of this story is that all of his painting equipment is in the back of his truck. The towing company won’t release anything in the truck or the truck itself without a release from the city where it was impounded.

The teen of this dad is a good friend and someone who I do care about deeply. He has posted on FB something about life being hard and is seemingly getting to be more difficult. I know that he is afraid that his mom or dad might get arrested and get deported. What is he going to do with a younger brother and sister if mom or dad is sent back to Mexico? The real question is what am I going to do? I’m taking the mom to court and know that without the proper documentation that she can’t do anything and is walking into what could be an unfortunate situation. She or her husband could get in trouble for not having proper identification. So what do we do? The truck might stay in the impound for a month and have a $1000 fee that they can’t pay. Bigger concern is that the dad might now have a warrant for his arrest if he can’t produce some type of driver’s license. God want am I to do? This type of situation shouldn’t’ happen to a mom and dad who are both holding down jobs and paying their own way. This isn’t fair, but it happened and the consequences for not being legal in our country are you might go to jail and also be deported. I could also get in trouble for helping. Yes, driving the mom to court, I am transporting an undocumented person that is illegal. I too could be in court or jail.

Help!