‘Tree of Life’ Is Bearer of Gifts for Body, Soul

When 5-year-old Yolanda Roman finally smiled, it was no hesitant little grin. It was a full-blown smile of delight that stretched her wide face to the limit.

The little girl, one of 13 children in an impoverished family, had been given a pair of panda slippers. She wore them a full five minutes before the astonishing truth hit her--they were hers to keep.

Yolanda’s moment of joy took place one recent Sunday in the rain on a muddy hilltop in a part of Tijuana that tourists seldom see. The members of Tree of Life Ministry, a loose-knit Christian group from the San Fernando Valley, nearly didn’t see it either. Their yellow bus packed with gifts had failed in three previous tries to reach the hilltop, turned back by slippery dirt roads, potholes and an abandoned car.

But when the bus arrived at the summit, where homesteading Mexican families have built a series of ramshackle dwellings, the 35 Americans were met by a group of about 70 singers. While rain fell and small children, some barefoot like Yolanda, stood by cold and uncomprehending, the groups of Mexicans and Americans sang religious songs to one another and held a prayer service.

Gave Away Own Coats

Afterward the visitors handed out gifts of clothing, food and toys, then said goodby and headed for their second stop, where a similar meeting took place. When their supply of gifts ran out, some Tree of Life members gave away the coats they were wearing. They arrived back in the Valley at 11 p.m., more than 18 hours after their pre-dawn departure.

“What they do for these people is wonderful,” said Jose Hernandez, 37, who works weekdays as an auto mechanic in San Fernando and as a minister in Tijuana on Saturdays and Sundays.

Hernandez’s one-room, blue clapboard church, Monte el Sinai, was the second stop on the trip. During an emotional service, some Tree of Life members joined those of the regular congregation at the altar in a laying on of hands. As Hernandez preached in Spanish, the Mexicans and their guests wept and hugged one another.

Tree of Life dispenses a spiritual message along with material gifts. It is made up of so-called New Age Christians who believe that a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ is essential for contentment.

Cindy Anderson, 32, said that many members also belong to Vineyard Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational church in Reseda, but that the charity’s activities are open to anyone who wishes to join. On the Tijuana trip were persons who attend Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Encino, First Baptist Church of Canoga Park and Hillcrest Church in Thousand Oaks. Hillcrest Church provided the bus.

In addition to a December trip to Mexico, Tree of Life runs an ongoing food program in the Valley. Anderson remembered how she and her husband, Steve, 37, began the effort.

Crisis Led to Group

“We had a picture-framing business in Tarzana and we were doing very well, then we just went under. Two of our biggest customers left us, and just like that we were destitute. We had to take our three kids and move into a two-bedroom apartment with my mom. After we went through our own crisis, we decided we wanted to help other people go through theirs.”

Steve Anderson began selling advertising for direct-mail coupon booklets, and the couple recovered sufficiently to rent a house in Van Nuys.

The Andersons started Tree of Life Ministries four years ago, running it from their garage. They said their food program assists between 60 and 100 people a month, giving each enough to eat for a week.

“People donate food and money and we deliver it to the poor,” Cindy Anderson said. “A big part of our ministry is to keep the families together. We go into the home and get to know the people. We also give them good quality food. People have a tendency with charity to say, ‘Oh, they’ll take powdered eggs and powdered milk,’ but we give good quality.”

Tree of Life members say, however, that their spiritual sharing with the poor is more important than the gift-giving. The group visiting Mexico was in enthusiastic agreement with Joel Ley, a minister in Tijuana and one of their guides, who spoke as the bus crossed the border at San Ysidro.

“Some people thought that you were getting out of a sermon today, but no way,” said Ley, 29. “The highest way of serving the Lord is by giving, but giving is not our only mission today. We will give them material things, but we want to give them ourselves. We want to give the word of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

“How do you say ‘Jesus loves you’ in Spanish?” someone shouted from the back of the bus.

“Cristo te ama,” Ley answered.

“Now we’re all set,” another person said.

Like Hernandez, the Valley mechanic with a Mexican congregation, Ley has an unusual method of financing his ministry. On Tuesdays and Saturdays he travels from his San Ysidro home to the San Fernando swap meet, where he sells health and beauty products that are made in Mexico.

“A lot of people in Los Angeles want these shampoos and things because they see them on programs that come from Mexico by satellite,” Ley said. “So we buy them in Mexico and take them to the swap meet. It is the Lord’s way of providing for our ministry.”

Ley is minister to a group of people homesteading on a barren Tijuana hilltop--the first stop on the Tree of Life trip.

Wanted Own Homes

“These people,” Ley said, taking in the tar paper shacks and leaning wooden cabins with a wave of the hand, “were living in other colonias , or colonies, but they were renting or living with friends, and now they want to have their own. But it is very difficult. Many work for the minimum wage, which is $11 a week. But the peso keeps going down. So they work, yet they fall behind.”

David Tolley, a Tree of Life member from Reseda, found that poverty did not stand in the way of hospitality. Tolley, 27, is a pianist who plays for television soap operas and has appeared twice on the “Tonight Show.”

“This one woman asked me in and gave me coffee,” he said as he climbed dripping wet onto the bus. “She has nine children and they’re living in a two-room house, but she said, ‘Ask you friends to come in for coffee, too.’ We talked about letting Christ into our lives, then she introduced me to her husband who said he used to drink too much and smoke pot until he found Christ through his wife. Now he’s clean for a year and a half.”

“Praise the Lord,” others on bus chimed in unison.

Incongruous Scenes

Outside, the Tijuanans walked away in the rain with their gifts, sometimes creating a incongruous picture. A Mexican man in torn pants and a paint-splattered coat sported a stylish plaid muffler around his neck. A barefoot little girl in a dirty, outgrown dress held a large new doll. Some of the youngest children carried their presents unopened, seemingly thinking that the brightly wrapped package was gift enough.

Mark Boltinhouse, 36, said the visit had been as moving as one that Hillcrest Church, which he attends, made last year to another poor Tijuana neighborhood.

“We brought plastic buckets with us--just those ordinary stiff plastic buckets,” said Boltinhouse, who owns a bicycle shop in Thousand Oaks. “The people went crazy for them--something as simple as a bucket. They use them for a dishwasher or a toilet or carry water with them or turn them over for a stool.”

Greg Jones, 29, of Chatsworth, dried off his guitar and returned it to its case. Jones and his wife Julie, 28, had led the Tree of Life group in song on the group’s drive down. Greg taught the others Spanish-language religious songs. The Chatsworth couple lived in Mexico, the South Pacific and South Korea during a 2 1/2-year tour of missionary work.

“What the people respond to is your presence,” Greg said. “They take you into their lives.”

By the time the Americans reached their second stop, the sun had come out and the patchwork beauty of old residential Tijuana was in evidence. Some homes are weathered shades of green, orange and brown, while others are painted bright blue or red. Paths up and down the hillsides weave through small, unfenced front yards.

For every piece of litter blowing about, there is a geranium or iris growing from a red clay pot or rusty blue enamel bowl. Retaining walls of every imaginable material--auto tires, cement blocks, shiny rocks from the Tijuana River--hold the hills together. Hens cluck, roosters crow and the shouts of children bounce across the valley.

After the singing and church service, Roberto Munoz-Flores, a Tree of Life member from Tarzana, and Hernandez, the commuting minister, stood outside taking in the scene.

“I was here last year and many beautiful things happened,” said Munoz-Flores, 49. “One woman was crying and it was for one of her sons, who had two compound fractures in his lower left leg. The doctor told her that the operation had not worked and the leg was growing wrong. She was crying because she could not afford another operation.

“We said, ‘Find out how much it will cost.’ We were going to pay--how, I don’t know. But we prayed, and in two weeks or a month, when I had not heard back, I called, and the leg had healed properly.”

Hernandez nodded, remembering the incident. He was asked why he has chosen to live a divided life the past 3 1/2 years, driving between the Valley and Tijuana each weekend.

“I love all these people,” he said. “Before, my heart was empty, and now my heart is full.”

At the border on the trip home, Tree of Life members became typical tourists. Several bought Mexican blankets, pottery and flowers as souvenirs. But all agreed that they had left behind far more--both in material and intangible things--than they were taking home.

Tree of Life Ministries can be reached at P. O. Box 1128, Reseda 91335.