A Gaithersburg congregation has taken the lead in efforts to help the city’s day laborers.
At 6:30 a.m. on a chilly morning last week, Esther, a member of Camino de Vida Methodist congregation, arrived at the kitchen of Grace Church with six loaves of Food Lion King sandwich bread and price club brand sliced, extra-lean ham.
The church’s parking lot is a de facto hiring place. The approximately 30 day laborers that gather there every day like it because is next to Gaithersburg’s main road in the middle of downtown. That makes it easy to be picked up by contractors and other employers.
While Esther's congregation doesn't meet at the church, it is allowed to use the kitchen and a basement that doubles as an AA meeting room to provide breakfasts.
Half an hour later the first day laborers begin to grab sandwiches and a cup of coffee from the four pots that Esther prepared.
“We are noble people who just want to work,” said Esther as she applied a thin coat of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spread to a slice of bread. “Normally I put cheese but I am out of it.”
Her congregation’s budget, albeit small, provides the only form of assistance the day laborers get. Esther was also a beneficiary.
After her husband died, leaving her with three children, she worked as branch manager for a bank in Ecuador. Then, the economy collapsed in 1999. The country’s banks closed and the government abandoned the local currency in favor of the dollar. Esther lost her life savings.
She came to America as a tourist but decided to stay and work. Her fist job was cleaning homes. She also mowed lawns and drove a truck. Last year her son and two daughters joined her.
She said that she found in Camino de Vida a family that helped her when no one else would. She even said that last Christmas was the best her kids ever had thanks to the presents other parishioners bestowed on them.
Esther’s congregation, which in English means path of life, was founded by Pastor David Rocha, himself a former day laborer who emigrated from Colombia 15 years ago. He calls it his baby.
The congregation began its social work about two years ago when Rocha noticed that the men who gathered on the parking lot could not get any help. He said that even the church’s staff denied them coffee.
Today, besides Esther’s breakfasts, Rocha’s congregation provides clothing, acts as a conduit between day laborers and police and assists them in getting money when they are wronged by employers.
But assistance of the less tangible kind is what Rocha believes day laborers need the most. On Friday, Rocha counseled Oscar Orlando, a soft-spoken, watery-eyed Honduran who had just arrived in Gaithersburg. “Who are you staying with,” Rocha asked. Orlando said that he was staying with some friends. Rocha urged him to come to church and stay away from alcohol.
The partnership between Rocha’s congregation and Grace Church is tenuous. The church provides the facilities but Rocha has to provide the rest. He said that even within the Methodist community there were some that would rather see the day laborers gone.
Gerson Yonathan, who came from El Salvador in a month-long journey last year after a sour business deal left him deep in debt, said that Rocha and his congregation where the only ones he and other day laborers could count on. At times, the free breakfast was the only meal he would get during the day. “Sometimes one leaves home only with the bus fare,” he said.
He spoke after Rocha’s Sunday service at Asbury Methodist Village, one block from Grace Church. After worship Rocha announced to his flock that the Methodist clergy had decided against ordaining him. “My only sin has been to preach something alien to what others preach,” he said.
