Pleasanton North Rotary Spreads Holiday Cheer to 60 Orphans in Mexico

By Jim Brice

Direct financial aid and sweat equity from Pleasanton North Rotary are ensuring a Merry Christmas and secure New Year for 60 children who find hope, faith, and love at El Oasis orphanage in the Baja desert about 70 miles east of Ensenada, Mexico.

Led by rotary members Don Routh of San Ramon and Bill Wheeler of Pleasanton, a party of 16 Tri-Valley residents joined the club’s 7th annual Christmas expedition to the site Dec. 8-11.

The orphanage, sponsored by the non-profit International Children’s Care, Vancouver, WA, serves as a refuge of last resort for abandoned Mexican children as young as three.

Unlike the young wards at conventional orphanages, these children are not usually put up for adoption. They are raised and educated in group family home settings by the El Oasis staff through their teenage years, before attending an off-site religious boarding school for secondary education and college. The Seventh Day Adventist Church provides spiritual guidance.

The annual PNR visits are key events on the El Oasis calendar. Over the years, club members have financed construction of a school building, solar-powered well, computer laboratory, and library at the site.

The children refer to Routh, 59, as “Papa Grande” and Wheeler, 51, as “Mucho Bill.”

For this year’s trip, PNR and its members raised more than $6000 for food, building materials, clothes, and Christmas gifts.

Several hundred pounds of bulk food that now fill the pantries of the on-site group homes for the children and their support families.

PNR members helped lay a new tile floor in the living room of a currently vacant
group house. Bags of shoes, school uniforms, casual clothing, soccer balls, and toys from PNR await wrapping and distribution to the children on Christmas Eve night.

During ceremonies the mission church Friday night, PNR member Tina Case of
Livermore gave each child a colorful, hand-sewn scarf.

The children and staff renewed friendships with the aforementioned PNR members as well as Case’s young companion, Briyana Oellrich, Josh Routh, Jim Brice, Mike Gallarado, Audrey Glafkides and her daughter Elise Pritchard, Kevin and Yvonne Greenlee and their daughters Sasha and Mira, PNR president Ronda Henstorf, and Jerry Pentin.

The children entertained the group with choral singing, an original skit in the style of Uncle Tom’s Cabin spoken in Spanish, many hugs, smiles, and laughter that night and again on Saturday – the Sabbath day for the children.