By Carolyn Krause

While many Hispanics south of the border yearn for a piece of the American Dream, 12-year-old Ben Terpstra of Oak Ridge seeks a taste of the migrants' nightmare. Last fall Ben traveled to the Arizona-Mexico border with his parents, Dan and Peggy Bertrand Terpstra, as members of a mission group. They talked to Mexican and Central American migrants through interpreters. They also observed the poverty of Mexicans employed in American factories on the Mexican side of the border.

Ben was shocked to learn that migrants felt they had no choice but to risk dying in the desert in the quest for an American job. Low-paying jobs are the only way they can help their starving families survive. One problem is that imported American corn and beans are now cheaper than corn and beans produced in southern Mexico, devastating the farm economy there.

Some 485,000 Mexican migrants yearly seek to join 11 million undocumented workers in the United States. After arriving in Sasabe, Az., a town on the U.S.-Mexico border visited by the Terpstras, the migrants must walk 45 miles across the Sonoran Desert before they reach the first road on the U.S. side. They risk apprehension by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Of the thousands of migrants who walk across the desert, carrying water bottles, food, and sleeping bags, some 400 a year die trying. They succumb to heat, cold, dehydration, rattlesnake and scorpion bites. This summer Ben is planning to join a group that will walk in the desert in support of the migrants. "I was disappointed from the last mission trip that I didn't experience what the migrants have to go through in the desert," he said. "We will sleep in tents. We will have life support-people in vans who provide water, food, and medical care."

Ben has faced danger before. When he was 9 years old he was hospitalized with Guillain-Barr‚ syndrome, a life- threatening disease in which the body's immune system attacks the nervous system. He attributes his courage, compassion, and belief in God to that frightening, painful ordeal.

The desert walk is supported by BorderLinks, the nonprofit organization that conducts mission trips and education seminars to raise awareness about U.S.-Mexico border issues. BorderLinks sponsored the mission trip in which the Terpstras participated last October.

The Rev. Lerry Chase, a Presbyterian minister and fundraising coordinator with BorderLinks, will address border issues during the 10 a.m. worship service Sunday, February 26, at First Presbyterian Church of Oak Ridge. The Rev. Chase, who will also speak during the education hour, is the father of Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly and founding director of BorderLinks.

Ufford-Chase inspired the Terpstra family to go on the mission trip when he gave a talk in February 2005 at Maryville College. In his talk he argued that television isolates people because too many watch TV alone and lack a sense of community.

Ben agreed to give up TV if Ufford-Chase worked a deal with his parents for him to join them on a BorderLinks mission trip. Ben also agreed to raise $800 to pay for his trip by doing chores for members of First Presbyterian, his family's church. He ended up raising $1100.

The Terpstras talked to migrants after a church service at Sol de Justicia, a little Presbyterian church in Nogales, which straddles the Arizona-Mexico border. One problem the migrants have is staying in touch with their families by phone. Sol de Justicia could no longer afford to keep its telephone because so many migrants used it to make long- distance calls to their families.

So Ben had an idea. With the extra $300 he earned, he decided to pay off Sol de Justicia's debt to the phone company and buy phone cards for the migrants who stopped by Sol de Justicia so they could contact their families for free using pay phones. Because the Terpstras had quit paying for cable TV, Ben convinced his parents to donate the $30 they saved monthly to the migrant phone card fund.

All three Terpstras were moved by the migrants' stories, especially the story of a Honduran father of three who rode a bus for two days to the Guatemalan border, swam across the river into Mexico, walked for 27 hours in a driving rain, and then held onto the top of a moving freight train for 17 days without sleeping. "My family needs me to get a job," Juan Antonio told them. "They don't need me jobless back home."

The Terpstras also experienced a home stay in a squatter's village, where the houses were built from old tires, wooden pallets, cinder blocks, and trash. "The people are very sweet, but live in adverse conditions," Ben said. "Their water is polluted."

Most breadwinners in the village labor for about $5 a day in American factories on the Mexican side of Nogales. "I played soccer with Mexican kids on a heap of garbage and gravel," Ben said. "We found old bleach bottles, pieces of wood, and rocks, and piled them to make goal posts." The Terpstras were changed by their experiences and now wonder about the past hardships of every Mexican they see in Tennessee. For Ben it's not easy to make his heart for mission understandable to his classmates. When he told an affluent classmate last fall about his family's planned mission trip, the classmate replied, "I'm going to Mexico, too-we'll be in Cancun."

Photos from the trip:


WaterStation - Ben Terpstra relaxes by a barrel of water in the Sonora desert in Arizona. Water stations such as these are set up by volunteer groups along the Arizona-Mexico border with the hope that they will help lower the number of deaths occurring in people migrating across the border.a


Marshmallows - Ben Terpstra, left, roasts marshmallows with new friends in Nogales, Mexico.


FloresMagon - The morning sun shines on Colonia Flores Magon, a squatter's village in Nogales, Mexico. Houses in Flores Magon are built from packing crates, blocks, and whatever spare materials the residents can find.


Soccer - Ben Terpstra, second from left, enjoys a game of soccer with new friends in Nogales, Mexico.


Soccer - Ben Terpstra, left, enjoys a game of soccer with a new friend in Nogales, Mexico.


The Group - Ben Terpstra, holding the soccer ball, enjoys a moment with the rest of the Borderlinks mission tour group in Nogales, Mexico. His father, Dan, and mother, Peggy, appear to his right.