You might remember a couple we worked with for a couple years in the local church as we helped the youth ministry there. Juan and Carmen have been good friends and Beth tutored their two high school kids all of last year (in math) and some this year as needed.
They’ve been through some very tough times with Juan having lost his job at PPG (Pittsburgh Paint and Glass Co.) here in San Juan two years ago. He had high hopes for a couple of opportunities that fell through. One of them was in Mexico City with the electric company there. I recall him mentioning this over a year ago about how if he paid some money he could get in line for a job there because he has a relative or two working for this same company. At the time I thought that this sounded about right for Mexico. A month or so ago the president of Mexico (Calderon) abruptly and apparently without warning shut down this “company” that provides electrical service for much, if not all, of the Mexico City area. The organization had 55,000 employees but apparently over half of them didn’t even work and yet all received nice salaries and benefits. It was a racket of Mexico City-sized proportions. Needless to say, he never did work there and even if he had, he’d be out on the street now anyway.
Carmen called today to tell us that Juan is now working at a plastics company in Silao, Guanajuato. The company makes plastic parts for vehicles and Juan is going to be a supervisor of an aspect of quality control. He was involved in QC work for PPG so has some applicable training and experience in this area.
Carmen was very excited about this and so are we. They’ve really struggled to make it and Juan has been struggling with a bit of depression or at least discouragement from the lack of progress in finding a job and not being able to care for his family as he would like. He’s in a 4 month trial period and we’re praying this will become a permanent job for him.
Silao is about 30 minutes from León where they will probably move to should this become permanent. We’ll miss them if they move but knowing some of their struggles here with schooling and church and work…this might be just the ideal time and place for them over there. León is a drive of about 2 1/2 hours from here.
We hope to have them over for a nice dinner sometime in December when they’re able to come on a weekend.
Knowing Your ABCDs 
Very nice to get a good news update on this family! Will be praying that this job works well for him…seems like jobs are extremely hard to find all over these days…
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yes…the economy has been pretty bad here and jobs losses have been in the thousands in our little city. Mitsubishi makes parts for (or the entire piece) electric train motors. They just announced they are expanding their plant and adding 350 jobs. That sounds like things are moving in a better direction. Juan's factory makes plastic parts for trucks so that's probably a good sign if that company is adding as well. Nice thought to think maybe there is some job creation going on in this industrial-based economy.
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