Honduran Teen Finds Home with EP Couple

	Yencis Contreras, 18, center, originally from Honduras, has found a home with the Rev. LoraKim Joyner and her husband, the Rev. Meredith Garmon, at their Central El Paso house.

by Louie Gilot
El Paso Times, May 9, 2005

When the Rev. LoraKim Joyner and the Rev. Meredith Garmon decided to take in a teenage migrant boy alone in the United States, they didn't think they'd end up debating religion until all hours of the night.

The pastors are progressive Unitarian Universalists -- the church that conducts gay marriages and pet blessings.

The boy, Yencis Elijardi Canaca Contreras, 18, of Honduras, belongs to the conservative Assemblies of God.

Joyner dresses in Guatemalan tunics and dabbles in Sufism. Garmon wears his hair in a ponytail and has a soft spot for Buddhism. Contreras studies the Bible. His hair is closely cropped and his button-down shirt freshly ironed. He enrolled in JROTC at Chapin High School and dreams of becoming a police officer.

This is the stuff of sitcoms, a la "Family Ties."

"Progressive religious ministers take in conservative religious boy. Laughter ensues," Garmon joked.

And laughter did ensue.

"Our house just came alive," Joyner said. "There's always somebody on the phone, laughing, joking. We have someone sharing our dinner with us. We really scored with Yencis."

Joyner, 47, has no children, and Garmon, 46, has two grown children.

They still split up on Sundays -- Joyner and Garmon go to the Unitarian Universalist Community Church and Contreras to the Templo Trinidad, both on Byron Street. And Contreras is still shocked by the idea of gay marriage.

But the members of this de-facto family respect each other.

"The doctrine is different but the love is the same," Contreras said.

The couple serve as the boy's managing conservators, a type of guardianship, while he goes through immigration proceedings to obtain a special juvenile visa granted to abused children. Contreras said his father often beat him and once hanged him by the neck from a tree.

The teenager spent 18 days on a train though Guatemala and Mexico last year, was robbed twice and finally crossed into the United States at Nogales.

He was caught by the Border Patrol near Lubbock, on his way to find undocumented cousins who live in Georgia, he said. He spent four months and 14 days in the children's detention center in Canutillo before coming to live in Joyner and Garmon's two-bedroom house in Central El Paso.

There are four such placements in the El Paso area, including one girl with a Las Cruces family and another with nuns in El Paso. A fifth child, 13-year-old Nelson Alvarez, who was staying with a Lower Valley woman, was reunited with his father this year and left El Paso. Over the years, a few dozen local families have volunteered to take in immigrant children with the help of Las Americas, an El Paso advocacy group. About 100 migrant children are normally detained in the El Paso area at any given time.

Contreras said he prayed while in detention that God would bring him someone to help him.

Last July, Joyner volunteered to conduct religious services at the Canutillo center. She brought her guitar.

For Contreras, this was a sign.

In Honduras, the boy shared his time between working in the fields and playing electric guitar at church. The guitar was powered by a car battery that someone would take on a horseback for two hours to get charged and bring back for church services.

In El Paso, Contreras, who hadn't been in school for five years, is thriving as a freshman at Chapin High School and has learned English.

As for the religion issue, Joyner said Contreras has brought their two churches closer together. She invited him to be a guest preacher at Unitarian Universalist Community Church on Sunday.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com, 546-6131.

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