Steve & Mary Kreis

Here is a little insight into the men’s lives. I will not be using their real names to protect their privacy.

First, to let you see the economic position many of the men are in when they first come, I will tell you about my recent conversation with Roque.  Roque is a gentle, honest man just starting his first contract in the USA.  In his small town in Peru he was constantly looking for odd jobs to support his family.  He could earn $5 a day, when their was work, working in his neighbor’s field, otherwise he constantly was on the hunt for odd jobs to supplement the provisions of the family garden and cows.   The other day as we were about to have lunch I asked Roque what his family ate in Peru.  He hesitated then meekly replied.  ”We are a poor family.”  ”We cannot afford much meat.”  I asked what they would eat for breakfast.  ”Some milk and a potato.”

Sosimo, also from Peru, and I had a great time together the other evening.  As we hugged I was amazed by his rock solid build.  Later when he showed me a picture of his wife and daughter I asked him who the man in the picture was.  ”That’s me.” he replied.  I couldn’t believe the “body builder” beside me was the same man in the picture who was so thin and drawn.  He is about to finish his first three year contract.  He told me that he has known men that have worked here in the USA for many contracts and have nothing to show for it.  He has seen these men come home and throw grand parties, with the best bands and lots of beer.  Soon their money is gone and they return for another contract. Sosimo was clearly disgusted that men would waste their opportunity here and waste their lives.

His father was a mean alcoholic and left him nothing but a determination not to be like his father.  His wife’s father was not happy with this poor young man’s interest in his daughter but Sosimo married the girl telling her father that he knew how to work and he would take care of her.  He and his wife have one child, in her teens now, and his wife and daughter live with his father-in-law until they have their own home.  He is also the god-father for a boy in his community who lost his father so now when he sends money home for clothes or school supplies for his daughter he makes sure that an equivalent amount goes to his god-son.

Sosimo has been careful with his pay. He has sent money to an older brother who has been his agent to buy a prime lot located between two schools.  His goal is to have a five story house that will include a floor for computers and a photocopier for students to rent and thus provide he and his family with a future income.  At this time the first floor is ready for windows and doors but that will have to wait till next Spring during his second contract.  Meanwhile his father-in-law, who has been very critical of him in the past is now asking him for loans, after all he is the man with that good job in the USA.

These two examples are fairly typical in my ten years of experience.  I have had the opportunity to visit with one of the former shepherds who returned to Peru about five years ago now and is making it in Lima with his business there.  Life as a shepherd is not easy but it has been providing hope and opportunity for many generations of men who have come to the deserts and mountains of Colorado.

PICTURES FROM RECENT TRIPS

Thanks to Shannon Palmer for the first picture.

Last night as I watched the news they went to the story of the immigration law in Arizona.  Suddenly I was captivated as I recognized the face of a local professor speaking strongly against that law.  You see I met him in January and it was a difficult meeting.  Here is a little background including some video clips that will help you get better acquainted with a shepherd’s life.

I have been watching this battle between the professor who is involved with a local group and the ranchers grow since February 2008 when I read a post on a local blog.

(http://web.me.com/cinn06/gjredpill/mainpage/Entries/2008/2/19_Slavery_In_America:_90_Cents_an_Hour_and_20F_Below_ZeroColorado_sheep-ranchers_take_advantage_of_immigrant_workers_in_the_Badlands_of_Wyoming.html)

Just before Christmas a donor to the Shepherd Ministry contacted me and said he had met a man that wanted very much to talk with me.  Come to find out it was the professor that I saw again on the news last night.  In January I met with him briefly at a coffee shop in Grand Junction.  I was so nervous and upset by the imbalanced presentation in the videos that I couldn’t sit down to have an extended conversation with him as he wanted.  I just wanted to avoid anything that might hurt the ministry so I cut the meeting short.

Since then negative articles have abounded and a law was sponsored in the Colorado house but was later pulled.  The ranchers are waiting for the next round of the battle and I can say some very good men are nervous about the futures of their businesses.    This whole fight is very frustrating to me.  The professor and his lawyers have done their surveys with the aid of some disgruntled shepherds but by the comments they make I can’t believe they have really learned much about sheep or a life in the country.  After sleeping in sheep camps, working with sheep and just plain living with shepherds for the past ten years I will weigh in briefly here.

There are ranchers who are bad employers.   They are known and they are not, in my experience, by any means the majority.  The first hardship of the vast majority of the shepherds is not ranchers but loneliness.  One of the first shepherds I got to know, Mauro of Peru, told me that in the first months he had no radio and no reading material of any kind.  He said at nights he would lie on his bed and just wonder how his family was at home.  He said he nearly went insane.  An older Basque rancher I know, who came over when he was a young man, said that when he finished his first contract he told his two other brothers, who had come over as shepherds, that he was going home and not coming back as he couldn’t handle the loneliness.   He later changed his mind and today has his own ranch.  The loneliness takes a bit of time to adjust to but many have and in the process have built homes back in their native country and put their children through college.

But what about the abusive ranchers?  The H2A visa program is a security for the shepherd.  With it they have rights and can quit a bad situation and move on legally to another.  Another shepherd I know came here years ago and worked for a rancher who is one of those bad characters.  The shepherd quit and transferred to another ranch. He is now a resident and works in a different industry but his brother is currently a shepherd here.  One evening this winter he remarked, “A shepherd’s life today is a piece of cake.  Now they have DVD players and cell phones.”

Another friend, a chef from Peru working as a shepherd, was angry when he heard he was considered a slave by the professor.  “Slave! Slave!” he sputtered as he pointed to his boom box and then started listing the many things he had to make his life comfortable.

There is much more that can be addressed but this is only an introduction.  I have included these three videos to help you see the life a bit better.  While the news clip is in Spanish I have included it so you can meet a couple of the shepherds I work with and a few of the ranchers I know.  The rancher that speaks with an accent is a brother of the Basque man I spoke of in this article.  He seems to have walked right off the pages of a Louis L’Amour novel.  He is fluent in Basque, Spanish and English and they say he can out walk a horse!

This one is a good introduction to sheep camps.

This one I had to include!  This is a good representation of the Shepherds life.

The TV news clip.

“Eladio, Alfredo, I have an idea!” I eagerly told my friends, a Peruvian and a Chilean who were shepherds. “I would make a newspaper for the shepherds with news from Peru or Chile and things about the Bible.” They liked the idea and suggested that among other things it should include the latest exchange rate. I produced the first edition in March of 2002, “Mensjero de Saludos” (Greetings Messenger). It was one sheet of paper with both sides filled.

In the official first edition the name was changed to “El Periódico del Pastor” (Shepherds Newspaper). It has grown

substantially since it’s beginning. I obtained permission from newspapers in Peru Chile and Bolivia to reprint news from their web-sites. With permission from “Answers in Genesis”, “Crown Financial”, articles from Grace Baptist Church in the Dominican Republic, and the current exchange rate and pictures of shepherds it fills out 24 half sheet pages. It is now in four country specific editions for Peruvians, Bolivians, Chileans and Mexicans.

The men are eager to get each edition and from a ministry perspective it is a great leave behind tool. After I am gone even men that are not interested in the Gospel will read the new from their home country and also find articles that will lead them to consider Christ. I have been amazed to see some of the men saving each edition. More than once they have told me that they are saving them to take home to their family

It is also a great introductory tool. It is a service in providing news direct from his home country, and with the pictures of other shepherds it makes him apart of a community here where he is so far from family, country, culture and friends.

I will see very colorful literature from a cult with a shepherd it is rewarding to counter with literature that is connects to their working life and includes the real Gospel.

Alfredo is home in Chile and Eladio is now a ranch foreman who still looks forward to the “El Periódico del Pastor”.