You are sitting on a bench in the dusty hills of Juarez, , where Frank Alarcon is explaining why he chose to live among some of North America 's poorest people.

            It is night, and Alarcon is pointing toward a row of floodlights marking the border a few miles to the north. Look past them, into Texas, and you can see the glittering streetlights of El Paso .

             "The people here think it looks like a bowl of gold and diamonds, but that's Babylon over there," he says. "The people over there — those are the ones who are in trouble. The people over here are fine. They just don't know it."

            You have come to Juarez with 12 other Iowans who signed up for a weeklong mission trip sponsored by West Des Moines ' Lutheran Church of Hope. You thought you came to swing a hammer, cut a board, maybe build a little house for someone. But your most significant accomplishment might be to glimpse the world through this man’s eyes. 
            Alarcon spent most of his life in El Paso , where he was a mailman for many years. Now he is gray-haired and long-retired. He lives at the former site of Juarez 's municipal dump, where he has led construction of a fenced compound of colorfully painted, concrete-block buildings. Dozens of neighborhood children  come to the center for free breakfast and lunch,  plus help with homework and Bible  studies. Adults come for medical care and spiritual guidance. 
           Area women cook the food, wash the dishes, teach the lessons. Alarcon gives them groceries, but he can't afford to pay them. "They don't work for me," he says, "they work for Jesus." 
           Alarcon sleeps in a small bedroom in one of the compound’s buildings. He sinks his monthly pension check into the center. During the day, he ambles around the compound, wearing denim overalls and a flannel shirt patched with duct tape. He whistles and grins and claps people on the back. He sees grace all around. In his estimation, life’s experiences range from "neat" to "super" to "super-duper." 
           He is not blind to the problems of Juarez . More than a million people have crowded into what used to be a simple border town. Many of them have migrated from destitute rural areas after hearing that they could make up to $50 a week in the maquiladoras, which are American-owned factories set up just inside . 
           The World Health Organization says the average Mexican worker makes one-sixth as much money as the average worker. Mexican children are three times more likely to die by age 5. Progress is smothered by profound corruption in the government. 
           Poverty and drugs are fueling an explosion of crime. Even the humblest shacks have steel bars on their windows, because no one, no matter how poor, is immune to theft and robbery. For years, young women have been disappearing in Juarez . Some of them have been found dead. Others have never resurfaced. 
           Alarcon’s main regret is that he can’t fully empathize with his neighbors. He can live like them, eat like them, dress like them. He can give them all his time and money. But he is a citizen, and they are not. He knows that in an emergency, he could go back to the and seek help. His friends have no such safety net. “It really bothers me,” he says. “I’d like to feel like them, but I can’t.” 
           A few blocks up the dirt road from Alarcon’s place, Sister Donna Kustusch is trying to help Juarez’s women and children. Kustusch, a Catholic nun, moved from Michigan to more than 10 years ago. She runs Centro Santa Catalina, which includes a school, a chapel and a women’s sewing cooperative.
           Kustusch, 67, has an easy laugh and a solid will. She introduces you to her school’s students, and to the women working in the cooperative. One is Chavela Viscaino, 39, who talks about how she helped her sons sneak across the border. They were 11 and 16, and they wanted to live with Viscaino’s husband, who had found work and a new wife up north. He paid smugglers $2,500 to assist each of the boys. 
           Kustusch wonders how anyone could be surprised that Mexicans would  violate the law to get into the . Most people in Juarez are one bad break away from desperation. They can’t feed their children on what they make in the factories. The only Mexicans who can obtain visas are those who have secure jobs and money in the bank, she says. “No one that we go around with here can do that,” she says. “There isn’t a soul that ever walks in this center who could ever cross over into the United State legally.” 
           Kustusch translates for Maria de Luz Herrera, who moved north to Juarez 13 years ago so she could earn $30.80 a week assembling computer parts at a maquiladora. 
De Luz’s family squatted on the former landfill land, where they built a small home. They thought they settled the legality of the situation a few years ago. “There was this fella who said, ‘Pay me and I’ll get you some papers and you’ll own the land,’” Kustusch relates. “They paid him and they got some papers, but now the government looks at them and says,  ‘These are no good.’” 
           Another man claims he has title to the land, which is about a tenth of an acre. He says he’ll bulldoze de Luz’s house if she doesn’t come up with a $300 down payment within a month. 
           “The people here have no confidence in anything anyone says to them, because they have been defrauded so many times,” Kustusch says. 
           As you walk back to Alarcon’s compound, you see how this slum could shake your faith. 
           Two dead dogs lie rotting by the roadside. Gang graffiti mar every building. Children play soccer on a dirt field glinting with broken glass. Some families sleep in hovels cobbled together from wooden pallets,  cast-off cardboard and plastic sheeting. 
           If there is a loving God, how could he let people live like this? 
           But the power of faith is evident, too. It seems more abundant in Juarez than it does back home in Iowa . 
           You see tattered Bibles whose pages are marked up with yellow highlighter. You see countless crucifixes and paintings of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is the Mexican manifestation of Mary. 
           Back at Alarcon’s dining hall, you watch a boy carry a plate of donated beans and tortillas to a rough wooden table. He is about 10 years old, and he is wearing a ragged pullover jacket. You wonder how many other children have worn this same piece of clothing. 
           The boy sets down his plate and takes a seat. He folds his hands and closes his eyes in prayer. No adult is telling him to do this. For a few moments, his face relaxes into serenity. Where would that boy be without those moments? 
           When you talk to Alarcon again, you realize he is nobody’s martyr. He clearly loves his life. “It sounds hard, but it’s not,” he says. “I sleep good. Yeah, I sleep really good.” 
           He jokes that if Jesus hadn’t called him to Juarez, he’d be back in Texas , watching TV and drinking a cold six-pack of beer. 
           He knows he is powerless to solve every problem. Juarez is a tough place, and it’s getting tougher. He hopes God will fix it someday. But in the meantime, he will do what he can for those he can help. 
          “God gives everyone a corner of the world, and this is my corner,” he says. “You have to take care of your corner.”