Violence In Mexico Brings College Students To El Paso

EL PASO, Texas — With the situation in Mexico so unstable, many have had to cancel or alter their plans to cross the border for spring break.

Fifty-fivestudents from Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, were originally scheduled to go to Chihuahua for service projects.

Their school decided the trip would be too dangerous, so instead they travelled nearly 1,400 miles here to El Paso.

“I’ve gone down there for the last two years and I have a host family that I stay with there,” said student voluteer Amber Knutson.

But not this year, and Amber said she and the 54 other Bethel students she was travelling with were really disappointed when they heard the news.

“I think we didn’t know how bad it was,” she said.

Amber said her group contacted Habitat for Humanity and they set them up with service projects in El Paso, including building homes with Lower Valley Housing.

“This is really special because for people to volunteer like that. It’s incredible. It’s so kind of them to do that,” said Eric Hanson, the construction supervisor for Lower Valley Housing.

He said he appreciates the help and he knows these students could be enjoying their spring break on a beach somewhere.

“There’s no other way that I would rather spend my spring break, honestly…to lie on a beach, I think, would be kind of boring,” Amber said.

She also said while she likes the friendly people of El Paso, she misses Mexico and worries for the host family there she has come to love.

“It’s not just a conflict happening somewhere in the world. It’s people that have faces and people that have a part of your heart that you really care about that this is happening to,” she said. “My heart is in Mexico and for me to see something happening to a place I care about so much has really been difficult.”

Amber and the other students from Bethel University are working on three different housing projects across the Sun City.

They are working with Habitat for Humanity and Lower Valley Housing, a mutual self-help program that teaches families how to build their own homes.

For more information about the program, call the Lower Valley Housing Corporation at (915) 764-3413.