How do you know Erin and what is your role/job now?
I met Erin in August 2018 here at Casa Adobe, the intentional Christian community where I still live with my family in Costa Rica. Since we met we connected very well, I remember it was because we started washing the dinner dishes together and there I learned that her little brother also has the same autism condition as my son, Tuti. Erin and myself became family. My children call her Aunt Erin—she and I are soul sisters. They've even told us we look like real sisters!
I currently work with the NGO that the same community, Casa Adobe, founded with the same name, "Asociación Casa Adobe.” I am in charge of the migration and refuge area, and I also supervise a new project on the northern border of Costa Rica that we have called "Casa Esperanza" to provide migrant humanitarian and pastoral assistance in addition to assistance for the rest of the community of that border town.
How have you experienced her growth in Christ?
Erin is a woman with a very noble heart, very dedicated, selfless and helpful. She is so intelligent, brilliant but so humble that she never flaunts or boasts about it, even though she might as well. She is a woman of deep reflection, with a learning attitude. Her character to me, she reveals how she is shaped by God, because in her way of being and living from her you can see the “fruits of the Spirit,” as she says in the book of Galatians 5: 22-23.
What memory do you have with Erin, one in which she is using her gifts/following in her Christ's footsteps?
I have so many it's hard to choose: the times he helped me with household chores so I could rest, when she took care of my small children with such tenderness so I could focus on other things, when she listened to me for a long time and comforted me with his alone company and validated my feelings because I was facing difficult times. When she generously gave us money to overcome financial crises. And something special that she did was when she visited my family in Lima, Peru, as a kind of messenger of mine because it was impossible for me to do so and I had not been able to be with my mother and sister for several years, she intentionally put my family in her travel schedule. My mother always remembers her and she even recorded a video with the song that Erin sang to her and played with her ukulele— my mother felt like she had another daughter.
