MEET MARIA TERESA

We have met and grown to love some very sweet people in this Branch where we serve.  One of them is Maria Teresa (she has three more names - they all do - but we'll leave it at that for her privacy.)  She rents a 10x10 room in an already-small apartment, and has a little hot plate and tiny fridge among her few belongings.  She works at Del Monte canning.  My two older sisters worked in the canning sheds in Central California when they were in High School, and I have heard from them how hard that work is.  It breaks my heart to think of a 50-year old woman having to work that hard physically.

Lovely Maria Teresa - Sorry the quality isn't better.

One of the things in her small room is a 55-gallon blue barrel, like the one below.  I asked her when we visited her this week what it was for.  She opened the lid and showed various food and clothing items.  She scrimps and saves her meager wages and buys items to send to her family in Cape Verde.  She said a barrel like this can ship for $90.  She is constantly bringing home items to fill it, and when it's full, she ships it off and starts collecting again. We were so happy that we "happened" to have a HUGE bag of clothes in our trunk that we were going to take to Goodwill for some of the Sisters in our area.  I gave them to her and told her she'd need to pull out the warm-weather items (I probably should have helped her do that...)  She assured me her family could use everything in the bag.  A lot of the Cape Verdians here regularly send these barrels home to their families.

We cannot comprehend the need that must exist in Cape Verde, if they depend on the struggling people in our Branch, and the other immigrants around them here in our area, for their survival.

Another not-great picture, but  I wanted to show you that we (including Craig,)
sit on the bed when we visit her, since there's no place else. 
Notice the blue barrel at the left.