Before I came to Ejido Wonderful, Professor X was there.  He taught at Compton Community College or something like that.  No matter.  He built the biggest, finest hacienda in a ten mile radius. I never met him because the hacienda was abandoned when I started living here.

One day Joe showed up  and started working on the place, installing new PVC water and sewer lines.   I was a Nosey Parker and I wandered over to see who was working on the old place.  Since  plumbing is a perpetual issue at my place, I immediately glommed on to him. He was a member of some  nondenominational Protestant church, and he was  getting the place in shape as a base for missionaries.   Unfortunately, the roof was more than he could handle, as a hurricane had blasted the entire roof off, leaving nothing but the timbers for the second floor's ceiling.   Some months later, Tom and Kelly took his place.

They were good looking, California Christians from Cabo San Lucas who looked like they were related to Mitt Romney.  Besides being the gurus to their sect, their game was real estate -- selling time shares and condos to the gringos drawn to that giant tourist trap at the end of the Baja Peninsula. I think their Century 21 slogan was, Doing the Lord's work for your Baja getaway needs since 1997. With their perfect white teeth, Dockers slacks, Gap shirts, and Old Navy dresses -- you get the picture.

The little woman and I encountered them in the dark one night when we were walking back from the beach.  They announced themselves by singing a few stanzas of Let's Do the Time Warp Again from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  It was immediately clear that these were no tight lipped, prissy, tea drinking Christians. They had charm, social skills, and charisma up the yin yang.  They were filled with pep and the American 'can do' spirit.You couldn't help but like them, even though they were both a little odd. But what do you expect of missionaries?

In a very short time, there was a team of workers on the roof.  More workers were doing everything you could possibly think of to rehab the interior.  I'd stop by from time to time and be amazed at how rapidly things were progressing.  It seemed as if money was no object in getting the whole mission in full operation.  There was only one problem.  The House of Jesus had been set up to take care of the abandoned street children in the area, and there were no children like that in any direction for hundreds of miles. Hell, we don't even have any roads for hundreds of miles in any direction!

No problem.  Although there was some delay in processing the paperwork through the Mexican government, eventually the House of Jesus got the necessary lost child souls under some service provider contract with the equivalent of the national Childrens Service Division.  I suppose the kids were imported from the mainland.   Not only were Tom and Kelly charismatic, but they had political clout as well!  I was impressed.

One kind of hectic got substituted for another.  Once the mission was fully operational, Tom and Kelly had their hands full.  The six to thirteen children needed a small army of support staff to take care of them, and this meant a small army of Mexican workers, as well as any volunteers that could be dragooned for part time work from the States. Now Ejido Wonderful had too many strange strangers around. Occasionally, I'd run into  a group of some preppy looking, home schooled teen agers from Cabo who looked at me like I was a space alien.  I'm sure it was a WTF moment for both of us.

In addition to running the place 24/7, Tom and Kelly were busy constructing worker housing and a small church.  The work hardly ever stopped for them. Since I have a great house and garden, my house would sometimes be a refuge when things got too intense.  Once, Tom just showed up at my door one afternoon and stayed for four hours.  I think  that it was his vacation  for that year.  At other times, we'd invite Tom and Kelly over for one of our gourmet dinners.

Despite the fact that we had political and philosophical differences, the little woman and I found them to be excellent company with a sophisticated and intelligent view of the world.   You might say that we were not unlike a duet of musicians playing the same song, as far as trying to make the world a better place.  One interesting tidbit that I found about their personal lives was that before becoming Christians, they had engaged in a whole variety of promiscuous and kinky sex when they were young and in San Francisco. I guess that's why they found God.

They were full time residents, and we're only half time.  So you can imagine our surprise when we returned one year to find the House of Jesus abandoned.  I got back into town  ust in time to see many of the residents of Ejido Wonderful gathered at the mission with their pickup trucks.  They were hauling furniture and everything else out of the mission, and it looked like the whole village was getting some new home furnishings.

I asked Olga what had happened, and she said that the mission had abruptly ended one day.  They just made a public announcement that the House of Jesus was ceasing operations, and they gave permission for the villagers to take anything they wanted.  I even got some Mantovani LPs, and my wife got a few wrought iron table lamps that are sitting with broken bulbs in my shed.

It was never totally clear to me what had happened.  One story was that the children were just too much for the missionaries.  After all, I found out that one  hot summer day, one of the ninos picked my locks, broke in, and cleaned out my entire wine collection. This did not make me happy.  There was some talk that the Mexican government had  maybe pulled the plug.  But the gossip that made the most sense was that Kelly had started sleeping with one of the Mexican child care workers.  The marriage blew up, and Tom pulled the plug financially, giving her some community property in town.

When we visited Todos Santos last year, we ran into Kelly.  It turned out that she was staying in a gringo trailer park down there, but she was still acting as a landlady to some of the worker housing in Ejido Wonderful.  We had some chitchat, but it was all so very superficial.

Now I have to tell you the story of Sonny at Playa Perro.  Certainly one of the most disagreeable persons at the beach, he's not only a fundamentalist Christian, but incredibly miserly in every way. You'd think that an old Baja hand like Sonny would have Mexican auto insurance, but he didn't.  And he didn't for many years until he had an accident where he injured a guy with his car in Cabo.  

Mexican law being what it is, when you're in that kind of situation -- you go to prison.  And that's where Sonny went for three months.  As he used to volunteer at the House of Jesus, the story goes that he entrusted Kelly to look after his belongings while he was in the joint.  Sonny says that Kelly stole his stuff as cleanly as a dog's skeleton on the beach after the vultures have feasted.

Frankly, I don't know whether to believe Sonny or not.  He's a totally unreliable guy.