I have to carry cash with me to Tijuana. I must have $300 or $400. On me at all times. Sometimes I carry it in my sock, other times in my pocket or car.
In Mexico it's necessary to settle problems as quickly as possible and with "cash on the table." No other way!
Unfortunately people know I carry money. The neighborhood knows it. The gangs know it. This many years, who doesn't know it?
In my ministry I never know when there will be a sudden demand for cash ... often it's an emergency or an unexpected and desperate need.
One morning a mother in Tijuana called me; her teen son was in the hospital alive but comatose. Ricardo was in a coma. It seems like the two teen buddies were on a building roof top running from the police, one boy dropped between two buildings into a high power transformer and was electrocuted immediately. His buddy Ricardo, 14, tried to rescue him and in the process was hit hard by the voltage. (I shudder every time I drive down Fundidoris Ave and see the building and same open transformer that killed Juanito!)
Ricardo was taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital. I saw him laying there partly comatose, hooked to oxygen and a catheter and on an I.V. Most of his hair was burned off of his head. The hospital was a good one but an expensive one. The doctor told his mother Ricardo would have to leave that day for another hospital, maybe the general hospital, because Ricardo's mother couldn't afford the hospital and care he was in.
Mom was crying ... I quietly slipped her $200 in cash and told her to give it to the doctor, thank him and compliment him on his work on saving her sons life and ask for time to find some more dollars. Later I gave her another $200 and told her to give the doctor the same tearful pitch. We just needed enough healing to get him up to moving to the General Hospital. (Money well spent.) His life was saved; terrible scars though.
Would you believe I've had to "negotiate" (Work the price down.) for a corpse? A little dead baby boy? His tearful mother couldn't afford to pay the mortuary, so they kept her dead baby's body. We "bought" him out so she could have him buried.
Oh, and I've had to negotiate for a live baby too ... mom couldn't afford to pay the bill, so the hospital kept her little girl. We bought the girl and gave her to her mother.
Sometimes, like yesterday, we had to buy a load of food for a little family that had absolutely no food in the house.
I've plenty of stories as to where my sock-money goes.
Thanks to your prayers for my safety, I've never been assaulted. God seems to watch my back.
