Virgin of Guadalupe
“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from thy spheres, thy knotty and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine.” Shakespeare
I have such a tale, which I am now setting down in the form of a book entitled Searching for Fernando: a true story of destiny, astrology and reincarnation, that I plan to self publish if I ever get an ending to my story. It is the story of three people (myself, an American woman, and two Mexican men) who are linked by intense past life karma. It is also a detailed account of how one man experienced his first Saturn return.
“Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.” Revelation 12: 1-2
I am an astrologer. I have been studying twenty years. I also have a history of dreaming future events, speaking with saints and spiritual beings, and people who have passed on, in my dreams. Often when I have a question I pray for an answer before I go to sleep and sometimes I receive an answer that night.
My sister with the Pinata I made in 1973
This story really begins in 1965, when I was five years old. I developed an obsession with Mexico. It was my dream to go there, especially at Christmas. I think I drove the people in my life crazy talking about how I would someday live in Mexico. At Christmas I made piñatas and forced my siblings to play along. I listened to Mexican music and painted dozens of pictures of the Mexico of my dreams. Where this came from was a mystery, because I lived on the Oregon coast and had no contact with Mexicans. This lasted until about the age of seventeen and then went dormant for 27 years. So dormant, in fact, that in 2000 I received a free plane ticket to Mexico and I gave it away because I had no desire to go there.
Often I look years ahead in my ephemeris (an astrologer’s guide to the stars), just to see what’s coming down the road. In May, 1997, I was looking ahead and I saw that in May, 2004, a foreigner, younger than myself, would enter my life and change it forever. Over the next seven years I wondered about this man and where he would be from. I always thought it would be a English speaking country.
Jose with his nephew in Mexicali, May 2006.
In the year 2000 I became very ill after a Yellow Fever vaccine. I don’t believe in vaccines and I would have never gotten one except that I had to have it to go to Africa, and I felt pressure to see Africa while I could, because I knew in a few years it would become very difficult to travel by air. So against my better judgement, I took the vaccine. The ironic thing is, it was all for nothing. I was never asked to present my certificate of immunization. I’ve read a lot of bad advice in travel guides, but this was the worst.
I was pretty much housebound for four years. It was like living death. Besides the pain and suffering, I was nursing three beloved pets through serious illnesses, two of which died during my illness. My pug was sickly the last nine years of his life and needed constant care. I was closer to that dog than any other creature ever in my life. His birthday was the eighth of May. This was to become the most important date in this story. I was also facing possible homelessness every day. I felt if the illness didn’t kill me, the stress would. I became a vegan, and by using herbs and natural methods I slowly regained my health.
The Lilly Pond in November
Towards the end of 2003, I discovered a nature park had opened near my home. I had known the woods were there since I was a child, however it was opened as a park when I had briefly lived in Washington (1998). One day on my way to the grocery store, I had to make a detour for road work and I saw the entrance to the park. I started to ride my bike there and sit by a Lily pond on a bench for two hours every evening. I tried to breathe deep and relax. It was the only thing that helped my stress in four years. I kept returning evry evening because I knew in some way, sitting at the Lily pond was improving my health. Unknown to me at the time was the history of the land where the park had opened. For the last 148 years, the place has been known as St. Mary’s Woods. In 1861 the property was purchased by the the Archdiocese of Oregon, and held undeveloped until 1981, when it was sold to the Parks Department. An oasis of peace that slowly had a city grow up around it.
Lily Pond: photo by Arthur Soto
Soon I noticed that the wildlife lost all fear of me. Rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks played around my feet. Once two fawns came up and sniffed my legs. One evening an owl flew down and perched beside me, so close I could have touched it, for half an hour. Something else I noticed. Worried and troubled people would come to the Lily pond and confide their problems to me. I tried to listen with empathy and give helpful advice.
I have had only two dreams of Jesus in my life and both had a profound effect on me. One evening at the pond I remembered a dream I had in 1994. In the dream, Jesus was standing by me and we were looking at a Lily pond. He was telling me important things, none of which I could remember when I awoke. I had puzzled on the meaning of that dream for years. This evening at the pond I felt I finally had the answer. Jesus was showing me the place where I would get my health back. Later I would realize that He was showing me the place where my life would change forever.
During my illness I had not thought about the foreigner in my future, but now I thought about him every day at the pond. May 2004 was two months away. On the night of March 17th I said a prayer before I went to sleep.
My Dream
In my prayer, I asked God to show me the mysterious foreigner in my future. I must have been sleeping for several hours when I had this dream: I was in Los Angeles, standing face to face with a man who had brown skin, black hair, high cheekbones and a hawk nose. He looked Middle-Eastern to me. The strongest aspect of the dream was the emotional bond I felt with this man. He said “I have to go to Oregon.” I said,”I have to go to Oregon too, I wish you could ride with me.”
Then I awoke. I was elated my prayer had been answered. I ask God to let me see him again when I went back to sleep (it was about 4 am). I was so excited that I had a hard time sleeping again, but when I did fall asleep I saw him again. We were in my house in Oregon, and he said “I have to go now.” I said “Please don’t go”. He reached out for my hand and kissed it. Then I woke up. I was sure, with the certainty of dried cement, that the guy was Persian. I was inclined towards this belief because I love Iranian food and culture, the astrology I practice has it’s roots in Persia, and I knew that Los Angeles has a large Iranian community. I had never used the Internet before, but now I went to the Library and found iranianpersonals.com. I put up a profile and began writing to Iranian men all over the world. Every time one sent me a picture, I was disappointed it was not the face I had seen in my dream.
The Nature Park: Photo by Arthur Soto
I still went to the Lily pond every day. A few times it crossed my mind that maybe he would show up at the pond, but I quickly put these thoughts out of my head. It was too fantastic, like the old cliche of meeting a stranger on a park bench and your life changing. Once it even entered my head that perhaps the guy was Mexican, but I dismissed this quickly too.
The third week of May I was at the Lily pond one evening, I think it was the night of the new Moon. A man came down the path and my first thought was that this was the guy from my dream. I said “Hi” but when he returned my greeting I could tell he was Mexican from his accent and I immediately dismissed any more thoughts that this was the guy, because I was so invested in my Iranian theory. I really wanted the dream foreigner to be from Iran.
Right away I saw this man was very troubled and I wanted to help him. He sat beside me and explained his problem. We talked for a long time, like old friends who had just connected after years apart. I remember thinking at the time, that never before had a stranger opened up to me so casually. I advised him to go back to church and pray more. I said I would pray for him. My words seemed to help him. I could see he was feeling much better. When he got up to leave, as he walked away, he turned around and said “Remember, Fernando.” For the next two weeks I did not think about him, except once or twice, at which times I said a prayer for him.
Two weeks later on June 3rd, the night of the full Moon, Fernando came back. He was a very different person than the last time. He seemed almost jubilant. He said he was happy that he had seen my bike chained to a tree and he knew I was at the pond. He said he had been thinking about me every night before he went to sleep. I asked him how his life was going and if my advice had helped. He said yes, but I could see that he didn’t want to talk about the subject, that he wanted to ask questions about me instead. I asked him his birth date, and he said May 8th, 1967. I gave him a prayer card of St. Michael that I had been carrying around for two years. Somehow it seemed like the right thing to do. It was not until three years later I would learn that May 8th is the Feast of the Apparition of St. Michael http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/festivals/may/feast-of-st-michael.html ; and on May 8th, 1637, St Michael appeared to a dying Mexican peasant, healed him, and led him to a miracle spring of healing water, where the church of San Miguel del Milagro http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4056116 was later built. A place I have since made a pilgrimage to.
Fernando told me he liked to play soccer. Then he asked me if I was married, and said that he was divorced, and that his x-wife and seven year old daughter lived in Los Angles (he showed me a photo of them). I suddenly realized he was flirting with me. This distressed me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I had had nothing to do with single men for the last seven years (the last four of those years I had been very ill) since I broke up with David, with whom I had lived for 10 years. Only someone who has slowly recovered from a long illness can understand my feelings at the time.
Fernando and I talked for two hours, but always the conversation returned to his request that I go out to dinner with him. The more I told him that it would never work, the more persistent he became. When it got dark I offered to walk with him to the Light-Rail station where he would catch a train home. As we walked he seemed to get desperate, like someone trying to talk their way into the last open seat on a lifeboat. At one point he grabbed my hand and kissed it. I still didn’t make the connection to my dream. As we parted at the station, standing face to face, he asked me to give him a kiss. Now that I know a lot about Mexican culture, I realize it was a natural thing for a Mexican to say, I’ve certainly heard it enough times since then. Reflecting back on the episode, I would characterize the request as sweet and gentle. Compared to what I would later experience in Mexico, it was downright genteel. However, at the time it seemed pushy, and forward, and I said “I can’t believe you asked that!” I could see from his eyes that I had really hurt his feelings, and I felt badly about it. He walked away, but called over his shoulder that he would be back at the pond the next day.
The nature park photo by Arthur Soto
I went home very upset. The last thing I wanted was to have someone pestering me at my peaceful spot every day. I still hadn’t totally regained my health. The next day I changed my time at the park, going early, and I went to sit by the big pond instead. At dusk I went back to the Lily pond expecting him to be there, but he was not. I felt relief, but a tiny bit disappointed too. The next evening when he was not there, I couldn’t deny my disappointment. What was up with this, I wondered? When I got home I looked up his birth date in my ephemeris. That’s when I realized I had made a terrible mistake. He was the man I had been waiting for and I had sent him packing. However, I was not overly worried because I thought he would come back eventually.
When a month went by and he had not come back, I began to search for him in the large Mexican community of my town of Hillsboro. It was very hard for an Anglo to penetrate into this segregated world.
Seven months prior, in November 2003, a piece of the Tilma of Juan Diego had been touring the west. When it stopped at a church in Portland, I had gone to pray and ask for healing for my health problems. Now, at the pond every day, I began to pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe to intercede for me and help me find Fernando. Slowly over the weeks, a plan began to form in my mind. I would make a pilgrimage to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City on Dec.12th, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to pray for success in finding Fernando and improvement in my health. I had made three solo pilgrimages in the past: to Glastonbury, the Hopiland and Mt. Shasta.
October 2004 through February 2005
I had rented a jeep in Kenya and driven alone, so I didn’t have any fear of driving through Mexico, although my family thought I would get my throat slit by Zapatistas and I would never be heard from again. Jupiter was just going into my third house and it was an excellent time for a trip.
The town of San Blas as seen from the old fort
That summer and fall of 2004, I never missed one day at the Lily pond, but I knew now that Fernando was not coming back there. He had told me where he was from in Mexico at our first meeting, but try as I might, I could not remember. In the fall as I planned my trip, there was one place I knew I had to go. When I had lived with David, for ten years I heard him praise a small town on the Pacific, near Tepic, called San Blas. He had lived there in his hippy surfer days and he said it was paradise on earth. Once we even made plans to go there for Christmas, but it didn’t pan out. Now I wanted to see this place and see if it lived up to all the praise. It would be my first stop on the way south.
Waterfall near San Blas
As I planned my trip, far away in the central Mexican state of Michoacan, a twenty-seven year old man was about to embark on a journey that would change both of our lives forever. His name was Jose, and he was six months shy of his Saturn return. He had been in jail in Mexicali from 1998- 2002 for leading people across the border (the slang term for a person who does this is ‘coyote’). After he was released, he returned to Michoacan and entered a drug treatment program, from which he had recently graduated. In 2002 in Zamora, Micoacan, Jose had met Gina, his dream girl. She was beautiful, kind and artistic, but her family was upper-class and did not like Jose. Her father forbade her to see him. Jose brainstormed about how he could improve his status and win the family’s approval. He thought that if he could only get to the United States, he could make good and return for Gina. He had lived in Wenatchee, Washington for a year with an uncle during his senior year of high school, but he had never learned English. So one day he set out.
This is a classic case of Saturn in the 7th house natally, which Jose had. The placement of Saturn in the birth chart represents negative karma brought into this lifetime from the past. The Saturn return occurs for everyone, roughly between the ages of 28-30, and again at 58-60, when Saturn returns to the place it was at birth. It always signifies a major karmic test, often involving a thwarted desire, which galvanizes the native into (usually futile) action. The 7th house represents marriage and all partnerships. Jose wanted to marry Gina, but the karma in his 7th house caused his plan to be denied, so as his Saturn return approached he was going to make a huge effort to over-come the blocking force of Saturn, in the meantime living out his karma, and learning hard lessons about partnership, which is the weak spot in his birth chart.
Jose and a companion hopped a freight train going north, determined to get to the border. They had no money. In my story destiny is always present. In so many ways fate takes over to ensure everything happens as it is supposed to. Now destiny was working to get Jose to San Blas where he would meet me. After two days on the train, they were hungry and had run out of food. When the train got to Tepic, the two men jumped off and went to near-by homes to beg for food. When they returned to the train, it had left without them. They went out to the highway and began to hitch-hike north. The first driver who stopped said he was going to San Blas, and did they want to go? Jose had never heard of San Blas. He asked if it was north. The driver said yes, so they went with him. In San Blas Jose ran into a friend that he had known in jail. This guy helped him to get a job. In a few days, his traveling companion moved on, but Jose liked San Blas and he decided to put his dream of going to the United States on hold for the time being.
In my frustration to find Fernando, I did something I would normally never do. I went to see a psychic, a woman who called herself “Amen Ra”. She charged me seventy dollars, an outrageous fee for what I considered to be rubbishy advice. I asked what town in Mexico Fernando was from. She said Nogales. Thinking she was referring to the large border town, and because everything else she said was either vague, or way off-the-mark, I totally dismissed this. This woman’s most ridiculous prediction for me was : “Your time of suffering is now over.”
A week after I spoken with the psychic, on Oct. 7th, I asked in prayer for a dream to confirm that I would find Fernando. That night, I dreamed of a castle on a lake. There were four swans on the lake, two black and two white. I knew one of the black swans was Fernando, and one of the white swans was myself. When I awoke I took the dream as a yes, because all my life I had the dream and desire to someday own a home with a lake where I would keep a pair of swans, one white and one black.
My pick-up stopped by a roadside shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe
A few days before I left for Mexico, I was at the Lily pond, and I asked in prayer, that if I was going to find Fernando, I wanted to hear the ABBA song “Fernando” that day. I went straight from the park to the grocery store and as I was shopping the song “Fernando” played on the store’s music system. I then went straight to a record store and bought an ABBA album with the song, which I recorded on tape and took with me on my trip.
“to everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under Heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
So I left December 5th, 2004. I planned to be gone a month but it was March 5th before I got back. I only knew a few words of Spanish, but I would learn fast, being dumped into the deep end of the pool, as it were. Near San Bernardino, once again fate intervened. The clutch went out in my pick-up, delaying me. I knew I would not have time to stop in San Blas on the way south, so I would make it my last stop on the trip home. If I had stopped in San Blas on the way down instead of the return trip, I highly doubt Jose would have returned to Oregon with me. For one thing, we would not have been able to communicate with each other.
Christmas lights in Mexico City
When I got to the Basilica of The Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, I made my prayers. I had a painful rash on my face for two years, and nothing I tried had helped, but within 24 hours of my prayers at the Tilma of Juan Diego, the rash was gone. This really boosted my spirits. I headed south to Oaxaca, San Cristobal and Palenque. Then I went to Acapulco for a month. There, I had a health breakdown and was confined to my hotel bed with a raging fever for several days. I had done too much, too quickly, and this was a warning for me to take it easy. From Acapulco I went to Michoacan to visit the Monarch Butterfly Reserve. From there it was on to Lake Chapala in Jalisco.
Templo de Guadalupe Christmas Eve 2004 San Cristobal Las Casas - I attended midnight Mass here
Then I spent a week in Guadalajara. In the city park, there were a pair of black swans. When I went into the large church by the city marcado there was a black swan flower vase/planter filled with flowers. I felt these were signs. I had been all over Mexico and that was the first time I had seen a black swan flower planter. I wanted to buy one (I already had a white swan flower planter, purchased many years before) but I had no idea where to find one. One evening as I walked down the street in Guadalajara, I asked in prayer to talk to someone that evening who was named Fernando, as a sign that I would find him. A few minutes later a car pulled up and the driver asked me if I wanted a ride. I said no and then asked him his name. He answered “Fernando” and then drove off.
I knew I would be in San Blas the next week and I saw in the stars I would be making new friends there (Venus on my 7th house cusp). I wondered about who these people would be. As it turned out, besides meeting Jose, I made three good friends in San Blas.
Black Swan in San Juan De Dios Church in Guadalajara
Jose returns to Oregon with me
The first thing I learned when I got to San Blas was that the Virgin of Guadalupe had been appearing inside the ruins of an old Spanish church (on the hill above the town next to the old fort) since the previous Easter. This was told to me by an American woman, Ana, who had lived there for thirty years. When I told her I had come to Mexico on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady, she unbuttoned her over-shirt to show me her t-shirt. It was covered by a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She said she had known there was a reason why she had picked that particular shirt to wear that day. I took it as a sign. Even though it was 2 am and the ruins were closed, I walked up there and clandestinely entered the church. I asked Our Lady to send me a sign if I was going to find Fernando.
The old Spanish Church
A few nights later, I went to visit Ana at her wonderful little oasis a few miles from San Blas. In the course of our conversation a told her about my swan dream, but did not tell her the story of Fernando, or of my prayer at the ruins for a sign. Towards the end of the week, I literally bumped into Ana on a street in San Blas. She told me that she wanted to tell me something that she felt was a sign. After I had left her home the previous Sunday, she picked up a novel she had been reading and came to a passage where the hero brings his new bride home to the family estate. On the estate is a lake where a pair of swans, one white and one black, have always been kept. That was a good enough sign for me.
I went back up to the Spanish church to talk to Rosa, the caretaker, who had seen more apparitions of Our Lady than anyone else. We were standing in the ruins and she asked me my name. When I said Kristina, she jumped a little. She said a woman in white, who said her name was Cristina, had been appearing at the exact spot where I was standing for more than a year. I took that as another sign.
Caretaker Rosa standing at the spot where Cristina the lady in white appears in the church
I met Jose in the main plaza on the evening of Feb. 20th. By now I could carry on a conversation in Spanish (Jupiter transiting my 3rd house). When he learned I was from Oregon, and saw I had Washington plates on my pick-up, he told me about living in Washington. He began pressuring me to take him back with me . When I asked him how he would get across the border, he said he had done it more than forty times, and it wouldn’t be a problem. I told him I always travel alone, and to forget it. We made plans to meet the next night. I asked him to tell me his birth date as he was leaving. My jaw almost hit the floor when he said May 8th, 1977. The same day as my Pug and Fernando! Jose was born ten years to the day after Fernando.
For a week he pestered me to take him north. I kept saying forget it, but then a plan began to form in my mind. If Jose was living in Hillsboro, he could open doors for me in the Mexican community and look for Fernando. I decided to let him come with me.
But then Jose disappeared for a few days. Now I really wanted to put my plan into action. I asked Our Lady to send Jose to me if this was a good plan. That night as I ate my dinner I looked up and saw Jose sitting on a bench outside the restaurant. We went to a cantina and worked out our plan. He said when we got to Mexicali he would call his family, who lived in Tijuana, to come to Mexicali, and he and his two brothers would cross the border on foot. I would take them to Hillsboro, and front them the money for housing and food, which they would pay back to me as soon as they started working.
It took us two days to drive to Mexicali. I realize now that Jose was on his best behavior at that time . It must have been very difficult to keep up the facade that would crumble as soon as he got to Oregon. Looking back, I remember two minor events when he slipped up and briefly revealed the real Jose. However, he quickly regained his savoir-faire. I also found out about his beliefs. Jose was the only Mexican I ever met who claimed to be an atheist. He scoffed when I talked about astrology and reincarnation. He expressed his distaste for the keychain I had bought at the Basilica that had a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In fact, he was hostile to any mention of religion.
Jose’s family arrived in Mexicali a few hours after we did. Only one brother wanted to go north. I told Jose the stars were against him in March and he was not going to get across. I told him to wait until April 12th. Of course he didn’t believe me and tried three times to cross, and each time got caught. I could wait no longer. I said I was going home, but if he got across, I would come back and get him. During the time I was waiting in Oregon to see if Jose would actually make it across the border, I had a dream that he was knocking on my front door, so I was pretty sure that he was going to make it to Oregon.
The evening of April 12th I got a call from Leo, Jose’s brother. Leo was the only member of the family who had been born in California, so he could cross back and forth across the border. Jose and Juan had made it across with a coyote and were in a safe house in San Diego. They had promised to pay the coyote $2,500. when they got to the United States. Jose and Juan would not be released until the money was paid. Leo hit me up for the money. I felt I had been put on the spot. I was struggling financially (and still am) but I had a lot of credit cards at the time. Leo promised that if I wired him the money, they would have it back to me in two months. So I took a cash advance on one of my cards and wired it. I talked to the coyote on the phone, and I couldn’t believe he would be so stupid as to give me the address of the safe house over his cell phone. The Border Patrol must have been listening.
On April 21st, at 5 am in my motel room in Santa Nella, California, I got a phone call. It was from Ricardo, the boyfriend of Jose’s sister Griselda, who lived in El Centro. The safe house had been raided. No-one knew where Jose and Juan were. I said to keep me posted and I would keep heading south. Just north of LA, Ricardo called again. Everyone in the house had been caught except Jose. He had escaped the safe house by crawling through a window, and made his way to a ranch, where he was hiding in a cattle barn. A Mexican worker on the ranch had called Ricardo to pass on the message. Ricardo said he would pick up Jose and take him to a motel in El Centro, and would call back with the name of the motel. Once again fate had intervened. I headed for El Centro, and after Ricardo called back, went straight to the motel. Jose looked terrible after his experience.
The next step was to get him through the border patrol checkpoints, one near San Diego and one near Temecula. I hid him in the back of my pick-up under blankets. Then we were on our way to Oregon. As we came down Grapevine, Jose was chatting to Gina about his exciting new adventure, on my phone. As time passed, these frequent phone calls to Gina would add up considerably.
Cliffside shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Michoacan
After we got home I printed a birth chart for Jose, since I now had seen his birth certificate with the time of birth. When I saw that his Saturn return had just begun and it was in the 7th house I realized that our bizarre partnership would be the karmic test for his Saturn return. Already I had tried to tell him about my search for Fernando, and each time I brought it up, he would change the subject. I knew I had to be patient. In all the chart comparisons I had done in my life, I had never seen the amount of bad karma between two people as I now saw between Jose and myself. His Saturn was rising in my 12th house, and my Saturn was rising in his 12th house. I could clearly see that Jose and I had come to blows in at least one past life together.
April 2005 through June 15th 2005
Jose had told me the story of how he ended up in San Blas as we were driving through California. In fact, I had become so engrossed in his tale that we ran out of gas on the Interstate. This story, his narrow escape from ICE, and what I learned from his birth chart, made me realize that Jose was here because he was supposed to be here. The test of his Saturn return in the 7th house was his relationship with me and our partnership. At this point I didn’t know he also had karma with Fernando.
We had problems from the first day. He couldn’t stay at my house because I live in a house that contains my dad’s business office (I am the groundskeeper). I had to get a motel for him. He didn’t have any I.D. so he couldn’t rent an apartment or get a job. He said things had really changed since he was last in the United States. Finally we were able to locate a place to get fake I.D. and he was then able to get day jobs as a temp.
Jose was nasty and difficult to get along with, more so with each passing day. I’m a very easy-going person, and was patient to a fault, but now he was driving me to the end of my rope. I rarely lose my temper, but he provoked me to that a few times. Also, the charges on my credit cards were racking up at an alarming rate.
It was not real clear just exactly what he was doing for me, other than making my life more difficult. I told Jose that he was like my pet, expensive, but not very productive. If he had been a pet, he would have been a rattlesnake. Interesting to observe, but you knew it would never show any gratitude to you. And it would bring excitment into your life, because you never knew when it would turn on you and strike. Even in his photo, Jose has a reptilian stare.
Strangely, he rapidly made new friends. However, all of these young men would come to me privately and tell me what a nasty person Jose was, and that they didn’t know why they were helping him. They also said in hushed and shocked tones “Jose says he does not believe in God!” It seems that for Mexicans, this was almost unheard of.
One of these young men I became good friends with. Noe is sweet and sensitive (natal Neptune rising in Sagittarius), the opposite of Jose. We spent many hours talking about astrology, reincarnation, the Mayan Calendar and his tales of the strange happenings in his Mexican village. He said I was the only one he could share his visions with. He ask me to read his chart, and I said when he had his Saturn return in 2006, I thought he would be deported (natal Saturn in the 9th house). He had not been in Mexico since he was eight years old. He was indeed deported in Sept. 2006.
I finally was able to rent an apartment for Jose in a private house. I paid first and last rent, $900. He kept telling me he would pay me as soon as he got a job. He started pressuring me to marry him so he could get a green card. Marrying in the United States would not affect his plans to marry Gina in Mexico. This is a perfect example of 7th house Saturn. Trying to use marriage as a means to improve living conditions and status, especially true for someone with a calculating Capricorn Ascendant like Jose. He was also pressuring me to buy him a car.
When he was still at the motel, Noe invited both of us to a big quinceanera birthday bash at Centro Cultural. As we drove to the party, Jose was nasty and verbally abusive. When we got to the party, he said I couldn’t go in. I said I was invited, and I was going in. I thought perhaps Fernando would be there, and that’s what I had paid all the money for; a ticket into the Mexican community. Jose suddenly attacked me, beating me and pulling out a hunk of my hair. He kicked the window of my pick-up and cracked it. He kicked my tape deck and broke it. Inside, Noe heard the commotion. He and two friends subdued Jose and pulled him into the party. I drove home.
Several hours later Noe called me and asked me to come as fast as I could to the party. When I got there he said that when a priest had entered the party Jose had caused a ruckus, yelling obscenities, he had to be forcibly removed and he ran off. Noe and I drove to the motel and found Jose passed out on the bed. The next day he remembered nothing after we got into the car to drive to the party. He admitted to having similar black-outs in the past. Now I knew Jose had a serious problem with a negative spiritual parasite. My friends and I were all praying for him but it didn’t help.
One day when he was bugging me for a car, I said if he found Fernando for me, I would buy him a car on one of my credit cards. This was the first time he let me finish the story of Fernando without silencing me (on his second day in Oregon I had taken Jose to the Lily pond, very much against his will). After several more weeks of relentless wheedling, I said I would buy the car but he could only use it for work and he would not get the title until he found Fernando.
We found Jose’s dream car, a red 1987 BMW convertible for $4,000. which I put on my credit card. That car was to become a big part of this story. We took it back to his apartment. He was happy, and said he would take a nap. As I walked to the door to leave, Jose suddenly picked a fight with me and insulted me. I asked him later why he would do such a thing when he finally had what he wanted and life was looking up for him. He said he had no idea why he said those words to me. Now we were standing face to face. I told him I was sick of him and I was taking the car and leaving him on his own. I also said something calculated to hurt his feelings. Suddenly I was on the floor! He had punched me in the eye. This blow could have blinded me as I have a tear in the retinas of both my eyes. I said I was calling the police and he would go to jail. He fell on me, and we careened around the room rolling and wrestling as he tried to get my cell phone.
Noe and the house where I rented an apartment for Jose.
Misolha Waterfall near Palenque
Jose finds Fernando
Finally I broke away from Jose and he let me go. He begged me not to call the police, and promised to go right out to the highway and start hitch-hiking south. By this time I knew what a liar he was and I didn’t believe him. I called 911.
When the cops got there, I saw for the first time the protection that would surround Jose for the next three months. From June 15th, to September 15th, there seemed to be a mysterious force helping him stay in Oregon. The cops called me a liar. They said that no-one developed a black eye so fast, and it must have happened the day before. They insulted me and said that I must have brought any problem with Jose on by my own actions. Just then then Troy, the owner of the house, walked up and testified that 45 minutes before, I had no black eye. Only then did the cops take Jose to jail. I filed a complaint against the cops but it was dismissed.
I drove home in the car. I never regretted buying that car. I fell in love with it and enjoyed every minute of the short nine months I drove it. I had to go back that night on the bus and get my pick-up. I had made a spare key to Jose’s apartment because I wanted to be able to remove my furnishings, should he suddenly disappear. He had suspected this, and we had argued about it. Now I went into the apartment and stripped it bare. I took all of his clothes, every bit of food (that I had bought) even the soap and the toilet paper. All I left was a small statue of St. Michael that I had given him when he moved in. Once again, I did not know Jose’s birthday, May 8th, was the Feast of the Apparition of St. Michael, when I gave him the statue. I knew he would be out of jail in 24 hours and I thought when he saw he had nothing in Oregon, he would go back to Tijuana. I hid the clothes in my stable. I owned a horse at that time.
Even though he was not supposed to have contact with me, he began calling and coming to my house constantly. He told the police I had stolen his clothes and they threatened to come and search my home, but I didn’t flinch. I, and several of my friends, each called Homeland Security to report his address, his illegal status and his crimes. They always said they would take action, but in reality they didn’t give a rats***. I realized now that whatever I did, he was not going to leave on his own.
One day I went to Noe’s house and Jose was there. He offered me the olive branch and promised to go home as soon as he had the money. I didn’t believe him, but I said he could keep his clothing in the stable and come and go there as he pleased. Once again we began to spend time together. If he wasn’t going to leave, then I might as well have him continue to look for Fernando.
Over and over again, that long summer of 2005, I saw Jose getting help. When the two months of rent ran out, his many new friends would let him sleep on their sofas. Nicky at the temporary service took him under her wing and went way out of her way to help him get jobs. When he failed his urine drug test, a condition of his probation (for attacking me) the judge gave him “one more chance”. When I called his probation officer to report that he was breaking his probation by contacting me, the woman, Carla Pinto, said it was my word against Jose’s, and she wasn’t going to do anything. Jose said Carla was in love with him, and later events proved to me this was probably true. When I suggested to him that he marry Carla for his green card, he said he didn’t want to hurt the girl. “Since when have you cared about hurting anyone?” I replied. “You’ve never shown the least concern about hurting me!”
I was going crazy trying to understand what was going on. I knew he was getting help, but from where? Were dark forces maneuvering to keep him in Hillsboro to continue to harass me, or was he here for a reason, besides the karma? I felt any karma between him and me should have been exhausted by now. I knew that Jose puzzled on this also, because we had several conversations along those lines. Once I asked him “Who’s helping you, God or the devil?” He replied that he knew he was getting some kind of supernatural help, but he didn’t know where it was coming from. Jose speculated that perhaps he was getting help because while he had been a coyote, he had crossed several desperate people who did not have the money to pay him.
One day I decided to do a chart comparison between Fernando, Jose and myself. I didn’t have a birth time for Fernando, but with his birth date I had fifty percent of the data. The picture that emerged startled me. It looked like Jose, Fernando and myself had been in some kind of a love triangle in at least one past life. There had been jealousy and then violence. I felt one person, maybe two, had been killed. I felt it was Jose who had killed me because once, out of the blue, he had said “I will only be happy when you’re dead!” He immediately back-tracked and said it was a joke, but I understood what it meant.
The next time I saw him I said that we had to talk. We sat in my car and I said “Look, I know you don’t believe in astrology or reincarnation, but I do. I can see in the stars that you owe me a big debt from a past life. You came here to pay that debt. However, since you’ve been in Oregon you have only made the debt bigger. I don’t want to come back and see you in my next life. I want you to pay the debt now. You can’t pay it with money. The only way you can pay the debt is to find Fernando. God helps people to pay their karmic debts, and I believe He will help you to do this, so be ready when the time comes”.
I was shocked when this macho man and x gang member, began to cry! He told me he had already found Fernando, but he didn’t give him my phone number, or mention me at all, because he was afraid when I found Fernando I would abandon him.
Agua Azul Waterfalls near Palenque
Jose is deported
Almost every summer evening Mexicans play soccer in the Hillsboro city park. Jose often joined in these games because he loves soccer. He told me that one day in June (it was now the end of July) while he was in one of these games, he learned one of the other player’s name was Fernando, who fit my description, and also had the very unique tattoo on his right leg that I had mentioned. After the game he followed Fernando and saw him enter an apartment near the park.
I knew Jose wasn’t lying because he described details of Fernando’s appearance that I had never told him and also demonstrated a mannerism of Fernando’s. Of course I was angry. I insisted he take me to the apartment. When we did got to the apartment and knocked on the door, a neighbor came out and said Fernando had recently moved and left no forwarding address.
So the summer of 2005 went on and on and on. On August 19th I took Jose to the big event of the summer, when LOS TIGRES DEL NORTE played the Expo Center in Portland. Actually, I think I enjoyed the concert more than he did. Jose continued to have problems with the police, and continued to skate away every time. Meanwhile my treatment by the police was so horrible as to be almost unbelievable. I was doing nothing but reporting what was going on and I was made to look like the bad guy. Every time I went to the police to report one of his crimes, I was mocked and ridiculed. Twice the Hillsboro Police told me to go away and stop bothering them. Concerning an assault Jose commited against me (before the assault he went to jail for), a Cornelius police officer told me that he was urging the D.A. to drop the case, and if it continued, he would see that I went to jail for perjury. Among the many insults directed at me by our men and women in blue was ‘prostitute’. One would think it would have occured to the cops, that if I was really the drug addicted prostitute they accused me of being, I would have had some sort of criminal record because I had lived in the area for years. I suppose a case could be made that I had brought him to Oregon, so I deserved what was happening, but the police didn’t know that.
One night in late August when we were driving together in Hillsboro, Jose begged me to let him drive the car. I gave in, but told him to be very careful as I saw in the stars there was a potential for problems that night. In a parking lot he backed into a car and when I screamed at him to stop, he gunned the motor and raced off. He drove to my house, jumped from the car, and hid himself on the property. The police came because someone had written down the plate number. I gave them all the information on Jose and they searched for him but came up empty.
On Sept. 15th I was stopped by police in Hillsboro while Jose was riding with me. He was arrested on hit-and-run. This time he had an immigration hold at the jail because of my earlier calls to Homeland Security. I visited him one time at the jail. He said that he had actually cried when he thought about all that he had done to me. He said it was the first time he had ever cried out of remorse for hurting someone. He said that in all his years in Mexicali jail he had never cried for what he had done to his family. I told him this was normal for a person during their Saturn return, that this meant Saturn was actually teaching him something.
I felt Jose would be deported on Oct. 17th because there was an eclipse in exact opposition to his 9th house north node. Actually that was the day ICE took him out of the Washington County jail and transferred him to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. He was deported to Tijuana on Oct. 31, almost six months to the day that he arrived in Oregon.
Right away he began calling me and begging me to take him to San Blas where he said he had been happy. He knew I was going back to Mexico for the winter and that my first stop would be San Blas. I said on one condition; we would go together to a curandera (a shamaness/fortune teller) in Mexico, and if she could tell us the name of the town Fernando was from, we would go there together and search for information. He agreed. After all, I had taken Jose away from San Blas, I felt it was fitting that I should return him there.
In Nov. 2005 Jupiter was conjuncting my 4th house cusp. This happens every twelve years, and is the best time in a twelve year period for a person to try and get information about past lives. I had tried to have myself hypnotized many times and it had never worked. I wanted to try one last time when the conditions were as good as they were then. I wanted to know about the life I had shared with Fernando and Jose, and maybe the hypnotist could get me to remember the name of the town Fernando had told me he was from.
Monarch Butterfly Reserve in Michoacan
On Nov. 22nd, I went to see a hypnotist who claimed that he had never failed to hypnotize anyone in his forty plus years career. I didn’t even come close to being hypnotized. All I thought about the entire session was my date that evening. Like so many New-Age hucksters I have met in my life, he couldn’t admit his failure. He said he knew I had been hypnotized and I didn’t know it. I didn’t argue, I paid him the hundred dollars and left.
I had been taking treatments for my health with a EPFX/SCIO-cybernetic biofeedback machine in Vancouver, Washington www.healing-waves.com. About a week later, at a session with the machine, the operator mentioned that the machine had a past life feature, and did I want to try it? Did I want to? Of course, I jumped at the chance. I told Michael the story of Fernando. He typed the names Fernando and Jose into my past life program. The data that came out matched what I had seen in the stars. It said that the lifetime that came up was most likely in Africa (Jose had been fascinated with my photos from Africa), that there had been a ’social crime’, that there had been violence, and that jealousy was the main emotion connected with that lifetime. This data really gave me confidence. I had been going on faith that what I had seen astrologically was correct. This was the first back-up I had received and it felt really good and gave me confidence.
Monarch Butterfly Reserve in Michoacan
About a week before I left on my second trip, I again asked in prayer (at the Lily pond) to hear the song “Fernando” that day if I was going to find Fernando. Once again, I heard that song in the same grocery store as before, that evening. I had the BMW painted Aztec Gold before I left home. I then took the car to German Autowerks and said to go over the car from top to bottom and fix everything that could possibly cause me a problem, because I was going to take it to Mexico.
So I left Dec. 8th 2005 (around 1:30 pm) on what was to become the most ill-fated trip of my life. That morning I got up at dawn, and went to the Lily pond to watch the sunrise, and to pray. Never again will I leave on a trip without doing a chart for the moment of departure. After a few days in Palm Springs, I got to Tijuana Dec. 12th. I suddenly realized it was the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I thought about how much had happened in the past year. It seemed more like ten years. Jose was very glad to see me, but he didn’t like my color choice for the car. He was not expecting me because I had said I would leave on the 14th. He had been trying to call me as I had pulled up outside.
In December 2005, Saturn was sitting exactly on the spot in our composite chart where all the karma was; Jose’s Saturn in Leo conjunct my Leo Ascendant/Uranus, with Mars making a station in a square aspect to Saturn. Because of this, I knew there was going to be trouble on this trip. But I also felt strongly this was something I had to do.
Jose and I are stranded in Mazatlan
I tried to think of the worst case scenario. Maybe Jose would abscond with my car in the night and leave me stranded in some little Mexican town. Maybe we would be involved in a terrible car crash. I felt the worst danger days were the 19th and the 20th when the Moon was in Leo. Often the Moon will act as a timer on a major event. I decided I would not let Jose drive my car.
I told him we would leave on the 18th because there was a lot to do on the US side before heading south for four months. Twice that week, Jose was arrested and sent to jail for having no I.D. (a common practice in TJ). When I pulled up outside his aunt’s laundromat on Sunday morning he was waiting. I said, “Lets get out of here before something else happens.” Suddenly Tijuana cops appeared on the scene. They grabbed Jose, and shoved him in the paddy wagon. At that moment, Jose’s father, who lives in California and happened to be in Tijuana that day, walked up. I explained what happened and he bribed the cops with fifty dollars to release Jose. Jose jumped in my car and we left Tijuana as fast as possible.
That first day on the road, Jose surprised me by saying that he was considering writing a book about our mis-adventures together. Coming from a person who had told me many times that he hated to read, this came as something of a shock.
The morning of the 20th I was too tired to drive, having driven very late the night before. I told Jose I would sleep in the backseat and to be very careful because I could see in the stars something bad was going to happen that day. When I awoke in the afternoon, the car was vibrating badly in the shifter area. Jose said it had been that way for several hours. We stopped at Culliacan and tried to find a garage, but all were closed. Jose wanted to wait until morning, but I said that I thought we would need a new part, and that BMW parts would have to be shipped from home (I turned out to be right about this). I said that if we were going to be stuck waiting for a part, I wanted to wait in a town with a beach and tourist facilities. I said we would try to make Mazatlan that night.
Lake Chapala in Jalisco
We got back on the road as the Sun was setting. I was driving. About twenty miles later, we heard a terrible grinding noise and the sound of metal pieces falling, but the car kept going and the shaking stopped. I knew that if I shifted, we would loose everything in the gear box. I tried to remember from last year if there were any stops between where we were and Mazatlan. All I could remember was a toll casita about ten miles north of Mazatlan. It was a very nerve-wracking hundred mile drive in the dark. I knew if we stopped for any reason, we would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. We made it to the toll casita and I was right, The shifter flopped uselessly after I shifted to neutral. We were towed into Mazatlan and taken to a taller mechcanico (auto garage).
The process of getting the part was agonizing. My shop at home had to find someone who spoke Spanish so they would know what part to send me. The part was no longer available, so Stacy at German Autowerks, went on-line, found the part second-hand, had to wait for it to come in the mail, and then send it off by U.P.S. I will be forever grateful to him for his kindness to me during what was to become one of the worst episodes of my life. It was just before Christmas and the volume of mail slowed everything down. U.P.S. promised the part in two days, but it took more than a week (I asked U.P.S. for a refund when I got home, but they wouldn’t budge). Everyday I walked six miles to the taller, to see if the part had come.
My stress was through the roof. I was already exhausted from the events of that past summer and fall, and now my health began to fail on me. For 25 years, whenever I get really stressed I get a case of shingles. Now I came down with the worst, most painful, longest lasting outbreak of shingles I had ever had. Jose and I had a hard time getting along during normal times, but now, trapped together in a hotel, we were arguing all the time. I was forced to share a room with him because my credit cards were butting up against their limits.
Ruinas De Palenque
The owner of the cafe next to the hotel asked us why we were traveling together. When Jose and I were on the road together, people were always trying to figure out just exactly what our relationship was. I always told them Jose was my ‘companero de karma’. This didn’t explain a whole lot, as karma is not a well known term in Mexico. When we explained to the cook about our search, she told us how she had met a man on a bus, and searched for him twenty years, only to find him on another bus. This comforted me. I felt it was a sign we were on the right track.
On Dec 23rd Jose told me he had met a man at the cafe who was going to Tepic for Christmas, and who offered him a ride. He said he wanted to go, and I was all for it, because I was sick of the sight of him by then. I said I would join him in San Blas when the car was fixed. He asked for money. I gave him a 500 peso note. Jose said he would call when he got to San Blas.
I spent Christmas day in bed, exhausted and feeling rotten. By Christmas night Jose had not called and I was wondering what had happened.
Jose and I face our biggest karmic test yet
The morning of the 26th there was a knock on my hotel room door. When I opened it, I was surprised to see Jose. He was angry. He said when he got to Tepic, he had tried to buy a ticket for a collectivo to San Blas, but the ticket seller thought the 500 peso note was fake and called the police. Jose said he had been in jail for Christmas. He had called his uncle in Michoacan to come and bail him out, and give him the money for a bus back to Mazatlan. He accused me of giving him the bill because I wanted him to go to jail. He gave the bill back to me and said he had fished it out of the trash can at the jail. I took the bill to a bank to confirm if he was lying. I was told it was fake, so at the time I believed his jail story. Actually, he had gone to Zamora to visit Gina. Jose told me later he had not wanted me to know he was going to visit Gina, because then I might have guessed it was he who had stolen my portable DVD player. It went missing the night the car broke down, and he claimed the taxi driver had taken it. Jose took it to give to Gina as a Christmas gift.
In the afternoon Jose returned to the hotel room, and began arguing with me. He was worried about his future. He started pressuring me again to marry him for a green card. When I said I would never do it, he said that he would take the money that he needed from me by force. He pushed me down on the bed and began struggling to get my money.
I had a velvet bag around my neck with my passport, drivers license, tourist card, credit cards, debit card, papers for the car and $800. in pesos. I had thought this would be the safest place. It was stupid of me to keep everything in one place, something I will never do again.
We were wrestling as he tried to get the bag from me. I thought I had it firmly, but he punched me in the eye, grabbed the bag and fled. It took me a few moments to comprehend the full extent of what had happened. I was alone in a foreign country, with no I.D., no money, and no way to get money. I ran into the lobby, blood streaming from a cut on my nose. Someone called the police. It took them a long time to come, and they were not much help. They drove me to their headquarters where they said I could fill out a police report (1 2) in the morning. I didn’t have much hope. I was sure Jose was already on a bus south.
When I got back to the hotel, I walked to my car in the garage to get the photo copies of all my I.D., that were hidden in the car. Everyday when I walked to the taller, I had to cross a high bridge over a railroad track. This night, and the next two days when I crossed the bridge, I just wanted to jump and end my misery. Words cannot describe how depressed I felt, and I was in excruciating pain from the shingles. I also had what looked like a large soap bubble in the field of vision of the eye Jose had punched. Fluid had leaked through the tear in my retina, and I wasn’t sure if it would lead to blindness in that eye. The worst thing was, what had just happened had taken away all my confidence in what I had seen astrologically. Now I felt that the story I believed about Jose, Fernando and myself, was just a fantasy I had made up in my mind. So this was the price I was paying for my stupidity. When the shifter broke, I had felt relieved because I thought that since the bad event I had foreseen had happened, I could relax a bit. I realized now that the bad event was much worse than anything I had contemplated.
The U.S. Consular Agency was pretty much no help at all. Thank God I still had my cell phone. I called my dad and asked him to fill out one of my checks( I had signed several blank checks before I left home) for $800., cash it, and send me the money by Western Union. I didn’t even have money for food. Luckily I had paid for a week in advance at my hotel, and I was used to fasting for my health. The Consular Agent was kind enough to pick up the money from Western Union for me, something I could not do without I.D.. However, she said it was a personal favor and the Consular Agency was not obligated to help me in any way.
On the evening of the second night after Jose fled, he knocked on my hotel room window (it was a ground floor room). I opened the window and said, “I hate you! Give me back my passport and other stuff and then I never want to see you again!” He begged me to come outside to talk. I said I would give him ten minutes. We sat on a bench by the busy street.
Black Swans in Guadalajara city park
Jose gave me my credit cards back (which I had already cancelled immediately). He said the money was all gone. He had spent a lot of it on drugs, and the rest partying. I asked for my I.D., and he said they were being held by someone as collateral for a drug debt. I told him about the bubble in my eye and said that it might progress to blindness. I had told him about my torn retinas after he punched me the first time back in Hillsboro. He started crying. He said he wanted to die, and had run in front of a car that day in an attempt to commit suicide. It barely missed him. As mad as I was, I could see that he really was remorseful and I had compassion for him. I recalled how difficult my own Saturn return had been. I had felt so confused and alone, and had no-one to turn to at the time for understanding or advice.
I said “Look Jose, you know I have told you many times you have a bad spirit. I have prayed for you, my friends have prayed for you, your family has prayed for you, but you have never asked for help for yourself. YOU have to ask God for the help you need. Pray with me now.”
I took both of his hands and began praying for deliverance in English. Jose joined in, in Spanish. We were both crying now. Praying there on that bench, with the traffic roaring by, was one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life. For the first time in our relationship we were communicating as one soul to another, without gender, age or race between us.
Something changed that night. Jose did not become a saint by any means, but the deliberate nastiness was gone, and he started going into churches to pray again, something he would never do before.
When we finished praying, I demanded he get my I.D. back. He said he would try, and that he also had something important to tell me.
“I met a curandera and she wants to meet you and help you.” At first I thought he was making it up to get back in my good graces, but he told me things about myself that the curandera had told him. These were things known to no living person but me. Obviously, she knew what to tell Jose, to make me believe. It was enough to convince me. For the first time since Jose had fled with my things, I felt a glimmer of hope.
Jose meets a Curandera
Jose had been befriended by a young man on the beach. When this man said his mother was a curandera, Jose had asked to meet her. He was frightened when she appeared to know all about his life. At first he thought I had somehow made contact with her and told her the details of his life.
When he gave her my photo, she said, “Mucho sufrimiento”, and when he gave her my card, she exclaimed “Ahh… he is from Michoacan, you played soccer with him up north!” referring to Fernando.
She had said she wanted to help me for free because I had suffered so much in my life.
“O.K.” I said. “You have two choices: you get me a meeting with this woman and you can go with me to San Blas, if not, you can stay here and rot in Mazatlan.”
Jose said he would try his best, but that her family was very protective of her. The curandera was surrounded by a kind of family guard, made up of male relatives. In fact, I never saw any female family members. The expertize of this woman was finding missing persons. In Mexico, the mafia kidnaps many people for ransom. This women had found several of these kidnap victims, and her life had been threatened as a result. We would have to be checked out by the family before she would see both of us together. Just the fact of Jose and myself traveling together seemed strange to a lot of Mexicans.
In the next few days I got my I.D. back ( how this happened is another long story). Jose was staying at a cheap motel just down the street from my hotel, with some young men he had met on the beach.
We meet with the Curandera
I felt I would get a chance to talk with the curandera because that month Jupiter was trining my Pisces Moon, which means ‘help from a women’.
At 3 a.m. one night, Jose knocked on my window and told me to come to his motel quickly, because the curandera’s son wanted to meet me. The son must have inherited some of his mother’s talent, because he could read my mind. He took my hand and said, “You want to die right now but you are going to live to be very old.” He told me other things, all true. I felt it was a good meeting, and that he trusted me. Then Jose disappeared for 24 hours.
The next day I had to go to a government building in the old part of Mazatlan to replace my tourist card, that had been lost in the struggle for my velvet bag. It was about a five mile walk. I walked everywhere in Mazatlan because taxis are so expensive. Just as I was about to enter the building I got a call from Jose. His voice sounded queer, full of fear. He asked where I was going. I explained, and he hung up.
Olmec Head near San Andres Tuxtia
That night Jose returned with a young man whom he said was the curandera’s nephew, and who had been trailing me around Mazatlan for a week. During the 24 hours he had been missing, Jose was being held by the family of the curandera. The family had a hard time believing our story about the search for Fernando. They thought we were really working for the mafia, or the police. When the nephew called back to the family on his cell phone to report that I was about to enter a government building, the family had held a pistol to Jose’s head, and demanded to know what I was about to do. Petrified Jose had the gun to his temple as he was talking to me! When Jose described to me later how terrified he had been with the gun to his head, I have to admit the mental picture gave me pleasure. For once, HE was the one being terrorized. Now we were approved to see the curandera together.
I asked the curandera’s nephew if I could treat him to dinner. He said yes, if the restaurant was close by. He showed me the bottoms of his feet, covered with blisters from trailing me around Mazatlan, and said that I walked more than anyone he had ever known!
The next day I got my car back. Jose drove me to the curandera’s house that evening. It was a poor adobe house in the slums of Mazatlan that tourists never see. I was touched that this woman who did not have an easy life, would want to help me for free. What a contrast from American psychics, with their big egos, movie star clients, and hundred dollar an hour fees.
The curandera looked like she had been sent from central casting. She was about my age, intense and mysterious looking. She had a regal bearing, and commanded respect.
She said that Fernando, Jose and myself were three points on one triangle. She never mentioned reincarnation, but she said for us to achieve peace and harmony all three of us had to come together for ‘union’. If Jose did not help me find Fernando, he would never have happiness in this life, and when he was my age (45), all that he had done to me would come back on him double. She said that in the past two years, I had passed Fernando many times in public places, but that we had never made eye contact. She said Fernando was from the area of Tangancicuaro, in Michoacan, and his extended family had lived there for many years. She said if Jose and I went there together we would get information, but if I went alone I would find out nothing. It turns out that Tangancicuaro is five miles down the road from Zamora, the town where Gina, and Jose’s aunt live! Jose had even been to Tangancicuaro before. She asked us to return the next evening.
Main Plaza in Tangancicuaro
The next evening the curandera said that I would find Fernando some time in the future. She said that right before we made contact again, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up. The curandera asked if we would go to Tangancicuaro immediately. I said I needed at least two weeks of rest in San Blas because my health was going downhill. She said it would be best if we went right away. I thanked her profusely. I’m sure she knew how grateful I was. Somehow I felt it would insult her to give her money, even though I really wanted to.
So we left Mazatlan after 21 days. I’m sure the manager of Hotel Mazatlan was relieved to see me go. After the first two weeks of Jose’s antics in and around the hotel, the manager had stearnly said to me: “This is a family hotel!” and threatened to evict me. When I had stopped in Mazatlan on my first trip, I had disliked the touristy feel of the place, and had no desire to ever return. Now I will always have a special place in my heart for the town. Just when I had been at my lowest ebb, the curandera had come into my life, as if by magic, to restore my hope. The car break-down had turned out to be a good thing.
Jose was maintaining his ties with Oregon. While we were in Mazatlan, he called his probation officer, Carla, and fed her a sob-story about hitchhiking south and being stranded, penniless, in Mazatlan. According to Jose, although she cried and professed her love for him, at least she had enough sense not to to wire him the money he had hoped for.
On our way to San Blas we stopped in Tepic, and Jose showed me the spot where he had hopped off the train in the fall of 2004. In San Blas, I could not get out of bed for two days. I told Jose that I would go back to the Basilica in Mexico City to pray for recovery, and also rest and recuperate, and would return in ten days and we would go to Tangancicuaro. Meanwhile, I told him I could see a romance in his future in San Blas. What I really wanted more than anything else at that time, was a break from Jose.
Swans for sale and house with swan decorations in Nogales.
Small store in Belize
I am forced to abandon my car in Chiapas
The next day as I headed east, I drove through Tangacicuaro, but did not stop. About two or three miles east of the town, I was a little shocked to come to a village named Nogales! The words of the psychic in Portland came back to me with a jolt (o.k., so she was right about one thing… but nothing else). The village was so small it was not even on the map. Starting at Nogales, and for several miles east, there were many pottery/ceramic shops, and they all were selling the black swan flower vase/planters. This was the only time, except for the church in Guadalajara, that I had seen these. So the dream of Fernando being a black swan was a clue to where his hometown was, coming just a week after I had asked the psychic this question.
Burro in Oaxaca
First I went to Patzcuaro to pray at the miracle church, the Basilica of Our Lady of Health, for my health. I was in bed there three days. Then I was in bed four days in Mexico City. I prayed at the Basilica, but was still feeling horrible. Next I went to Veracruz and spent three days in bed there. By now I was on the opposite coast from San Blas. Since I had been planning on going to Cancun, it would have been a waste of gas to go back to San Blas, and then return to the east coast. I continued to head south.
When I stopped in Catemaco, on the shore of a beautiful lake, I consulted a curandero. Luguna Catemaco is famous for the number of brujos and curanderos (shamen) who live there. Although the dark, candlelit “office” of the curandero looked like a taxidermist’s shop; with the bodies and skins of just about every creature in Mexico; the man himself was clueless about Fernando. He said that my dream of Fernando as a black swan ment that Fernando would be dead soon. I didn’t bother to tell him about Nogales, or what the black swan symbol ment to me personally, because I could see that he was all show, and no go. For this worthless bit of information he charged me twenty bucks.
It was in Palenque that I started to feel better. Since I was already far south, I decided to spend a few months in the extreme south of Mexico before I returned to San Blas. Jose had been calling me and asking me when I was coming back. Now I told him I would be back for Semana Santa. He told me he had a new girlfriend in San Blas.
After I went to Cancun and Belize, I decided to nip into Guatemala for a few days. I saw in the stars a potential accident for myself (Mars square natal Pluto). I debated whether to sit in a hotel for a week until the transit was over, or hit the road again and take a chance. After all those days trapped in hotel rooms, trying to recover my health, I was restless. I didn’t wait it out. I asked many people if the road to Comitan (the jumping off town for Guatemala) was paved the entire way, and they all said yes. I didn’t want to drive on any gravel roads. I came to a fork in the road and debated which road to take for ten minutes. My map indicated straight, but the sign indicated right. I decided to go with the sign. It was a fateful choice because the sign was misplaced (very common in Mexico).
The only photo of myself and the car taken the morning of the day I lost the motor. Thats Guatemala on the other side of the river.
After a few miles the road turned to gravel. I stopped and asked three different groups of people walking on the road, and they all said that eventually the road would be pavement again, so I figured it was just temporary road-work. The road became worse, much worse, and just when I was debating whether to turn around and go back, I hit a rock in the road which ripped out the bottom of my motor. After being towed ($300.) to the nearest town, Benemerito de las Americas, I learned the terrible news. It would have been thousands of dollars to ship a BMW motor into the jungles of Chiapas, so I had to abandon my car. I also had to leave most of my personal effects with the car because it would have been too much to carry on the bus with me. As I walked away, it was especially depressing to see the mechanic and his friends celebrating his good fortune with my six-pack of Pacifico. They had laughed with delight when showing me the huge hole in my oil pan, jammed full of rocks. Jose called me the next day. Since he was so attached to the car, I expected that he would take the news pretty hard, but he took the news with typical Mexican fatalism.
Cliff Divers in Acapulco
I returned to the town on Jan.16th, 2008, and I learned the fate of my car. Just as I had suspected, The mechanic I left the car with had somehow got it driveable again, and it had been seen cruising the streets of Benemerito. However, the mechanic did not have much time to enjoy it because he was murdered within six months. Where the car is now, is anybody’s guess. I had joked to Jose several times about the car being cursed. Now I wonder.
A year before I went back to find the car, I had a dream where I had returned to Benemerito to search for my car. In the dream I cruised up and down the main street looking for the taller mechanico, and couldn’t find it. That actually happened when I returned there. I really had to look hard to find the former garage, driving back and forth, as in my dream. The reason was, after the owner had been killed, all traces of his former business had been removed.
I took the bus to Acapulco. Once again the stress of losing my car caused my health to crap. It was a month before I felt good enough to take the bus to Michoacan. I went back to see the Monarchs, and even though I was still weak from my health problems, I made the difficult climb up into the Pine Forest to see the butterflies. Then I took the bus to Tangancicuaro.
In Tangancicuaro I had a strange encounter with a curandero. He claimed to know Fernando’s last name, but the name he came up with was actually Jose’s last name. He also produced a few scraps of information I knew to be true, but most of what he said was rubbish. Perhaps Jose and Fernando share a last name, as well as a birthday. I stayed there five days, and just as the curandera said, I learned nothing. However, I did met another interesting fellow there, whose name is Luis Humberto.
After I shared my story with Luis, he told me his own incredible story. He spoke excellent English because he had lived in the United States for many years. He had gone to Villahermosa to work for several months. One weekend he and several companions went to visit the Mayan ruins at Tulum. At the ruins, Luis became separated from his friends and went missing for several days, while his frantic companions searched for him. They eventually found him in the ruins, babbling in a strange language. Luis has no idea where he was during the time he was missing, or even if he ate or slept. All that he remembers is talking to “spiritual beings”. From Tangancicuaro I took the bus to San Blas.
Palm Sunday in San Blas
Samana Santa in San Blas is great. On Palm Sunday a man dressed as Jesus, rides a donkey through the town, while people in the street wave palm fronds. Then he rides right up the stairs of the church and rides inside! I enjoyed the service even though it was hard for me to follow in Spanish.
Jose was happy to see me. He introduced me to his new girlfriend, JoAnna, but confided later that it wasn’t the same as his feelings for Gina. I told him that it would be too difficult for us to go on the bus together to Tangancicuaro, and I was running out of money. We would have to go next winter. Meanwhile, he wanted to make another try at life in Hillsboro. I wanted him to come back too, to continue the search. I felt that the curandera had influenced him enough, that he would do the right thing, should he meet up with Fernando again. However, he would be on his own, as I was pretty close to being broke with no prospects for the future. I know that sounds crazy after all he had done to me, but when you go through such a bizarre experience together, as we had, a bond is created. I was exhuasted from the events of the past twelve months, but I have to admit that I was becoming addicted to the constant excitment that Jose provided in my life. Everything is relative. After spending four years mostly confined to my home, staring at the walls and shaking for hours on end, in terrible pain and thinking that each day was my last, the events of 2005 seemed almost ‘fun’ by comparision. Maybe it was because I had felt alive again, after four years of living death. I told Jose that when I got home I would wire him the money to take the bus to Mexicali to his sister’s house. Then I would drive to Mexicali to pick him up.
Jose (right) with his friend Raul in San Blas
Jose got to Mexicali on his birthday, May 8th, 2006. There was no money for a coyote, so I agreed to try and cross him in the trunk of my car. Astrologically I gave it about a fifty-fifty chance. While George Bush was in Yuma to show everyone how secure the border was, I was driving through Yuma on my way to smuggle an alien.
We got caught, probably because I had a rental car, which tends to allert customs. I got a $5000. fine and Jose was dropped back over the border with a warning that next time he would go to jail for a year. I don’t really regret it because it makes an interesting segment for the book, but I will never try it again. Jose called me once in July 2006, to say he was going to try again. Then I did not hear from him for fourteen months.
Carlos
Two days after I returned from Mexicali and my aborted attempt to cross Jose, I met Carlos. Carlos was born in Guatemala. We were married in August, 2006. I know my marriage to Carlos is also part of my destiny because I had dreamed my wedding three times in August of 2000. In the dreams, I could never see the face of the man I was marrying. Also, for six months before we met, I could not get the name Carlos out of my head. I thought “Carlos” was someone I was going to meet in Mexico, because in the past this has happened with other people’s names, before I met them.
In 1954 the CIA ( Operation PBSUCCESS), fomented a bloody 36 year civil war in Guatemala, by ousting a democratically elected president. Jacobo Arbenz was intent on breaking up the foreign agricultural giants, and returning the land to the peasants of Guatemala. Of course, the United States couldn’t stand for that, and President Arbenz and his wife were sent into exile in their underware. Because hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans died; and the country was nearly destroyed; for no other reason than to save the United Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Banana; some Guatemalans have been grated asylum in the United States. At the time of the coup, the head of the CIA was Allen Dulles, a part-owner of United Fruit Company. Carlos first requested asylum in 1988. He was deported to Guatemala last month (September 2007) when his asylum was denied.
I am going to Guatemala for the winter, to visit Carlos, and bring him his clothing. Since I had no way to contact Jose, the last two weeks of September, I was sending him a mental message to call me. He called me on Oct. 2nd, and said he kept getting thoughts to call me for a week. I have asked him to go to Tangancicuaro with me in December. He wants to do this. After we search, he can return to either Tijuana, or San Blas, on the bus. I am still searching for Fernando because I need closure after having lived through this incredible story. So we will see what happens.
If God wants me to finish the book, then I will find Fernando. If not, then there is no book. The book idea came to me because I thought perhaps people could learn something from my story; that we are all connected and that the most routine activity, like a walk in the park, can have a domino effect that changes several lives. I don’t want to disrupt Fernando’s life. The stars are telling me that he has either re-married or something similar. I am happily married, although I miss Carlos dreadfully. However, this separation is only temporary. The events I have lived through in my life have taught me great patience.
What I hope for is one meeting between Fernando, Jose and myself. The “coming together for union” as the curandera said. If we do not come to some kind of resolution in this lifetime, we will be forced to keep coming back together until we do. It should be very clear why I do not want to come back and deal with Jose’s shenanigans in another lifetime. Also, I want to say to Fernando : “Thank you, a thousand times, for jerking me out of my invalid phase and catapulting me into a new life.”
The United States’ relationship with Canada, our neighbor to the north, has been like a placid, conventional marriage to a home-town childhood sweetheart. Our relationship with Mexico has been like a torrid affair with an exotic foreigner, full of passion and pain, secrets and exploitation. In a way, my relationship with Jose is a microcosm of the love/hate relationship between our two countries. If he and I can ever come to a state of healing, perhaps there is hope of healing the painful wounds spanning two hundred years between Mexico and the United States. I sincerely hope so.
Translation of an Advertisement in Puertolandia Magazine:
Advertisement in Puertolandia Magazine
Kristina – Searching for Fernando who’s date of birth is 8th of May 1967, he lives in Hillsboro with his sister. Kristina remembers when she gave him a card with the prayer of Saint Michael. She has wanted to meet again for 1 1/2 years. Fernando – If you want to communicate with her, send your address with a photocopy that proves your date of birth with the requirements of this section and a return envelope and we will send the information of Kristina.
Update: April 1st 2008 Well, I made it to Guatemala and safely home. Carlos and I spent a month cruising around the south of Mexico and Guatemala. We went to Lake Atitlan and Chichicastengo. I would say that the best thing was the nature park at Lake Atitlan and the spider monkeys there. Another highlight was when an ocelot crossed the road in front of our car on the road east of Palenque. I will post photos of that trip when I can afford to get my rolls of film developed. Jose did not go south with me. I spent a week with him in Tijuana. Although he badly wanted to go, I did not take him for two reasons: At the time of our meeting with the curandera Jose had been badly shaken and scared. Now the fear had worn off, and he was saying he thought the curandera was a fake, and all she had known were only ‘lucky guesses’. He still doesn’t really believe the story. The curandera had said that he needed to have faith in the story for us to get any results together. Secondly, he stole my spare cell phone. When I confronted him, he returned it, but it was too late. I had said “one more chance” to him before I left Oregon. I don’t need him to complete the story. It’s much bigger than him. I headed south alone, and in San Blas I had another strange meeting that has kept the story going.
December 2007 through October 2008
When I reached San Blas, the first thing I did was to go up to the ruins of the old Spanish church. Now, I asked the Virgin of Guadalupe for a sign if I would ever finish my book. Rosa was there and she said Our Lady was still appearing in the ruins of the church.
That night as I walked to the home of friends, I was approached by a tall, thin man. He had features a little like Fernando. The same bone structure in the face. He tried to sell me a little boat he had made. He said that he had just been released from jail in San Luis Rio Colorado, two days before, for a crime he did not commit. I had just been in San Luis two days before. It was the first time I had begun a trip to Mexico crossing at San Luis. This guy, Yesse Cordoba, said he was desperately trying to get home to Michoacan and he had no money. I asked him where in Michocan he was from. He said Zamora. Since Zamora is a few miles down the road from Tangancicuaro, I asked him if he knew the town. He said he knew it like the back of his hand. I felt this was the sign I had asked for.
I asked Yesse what he was doing in San Blas. San Blas is at the dead end of a twenty mile, twisting jungle road. It’s not the kind of place you end up by chance. He said he had been hitch-hiking, and a guy had stopped and asked him if he wanted to go to San Blas. He said yes because he wanted to see the ocean. I had planned to stay five days visiting in San Blas, and then drive in one day to Tangancicuaro, spending Christmas eve there. I thought maybe there was a one in a million chance Fernando had gone home for Christmas, and I might bump into him. I told Yesse I was going to Zamora on Saturday, and if he wanted to sleep on the beach for a few nights, he could ride with me. Then I sat right down on the sidewalk and told him the whole story of the search for Fernando. I don’t know how much he understood of my bad Spanish, but he agreed when he got home he would continue the search in Tangancicuaro.
Before I left home, a friend had given me a sleeping bag as a gift. I didn’t need one, but I took it along because I felt I would meet someone who needed it. I asked Yesse to come to my hotel, and I gave him the bag and fifty pesos. I asked him to come back the next day. He had tears in his eyes because he was grateful, and he removed his bracelet, which had a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and gave it to me. That was a good enough sign for me. This being Mexico, I really thought I would never see him again, but I was wrong. We spent a lot of time together the next four days. Yesse was mostly on the beach, selling the little boats he made. I let him take showers in my room and I gave him a few of Carlos’ t-shirts and socks because he had no change of clothing. He used my cell phone to call his family, who had no idea he had been released from jail, because he had no money to call them. One evening Yesse bought me dinner, after he had a good day selling boats on the beach. As we bid each other good night, he gallantly kissed my hand, calling to mind when Fernando kissed my hand in the park, and making me wonder if perhaps hand kissing is a popular custom in the Tangancicuaro area. He was a very polite and respectful young man, and turned out to be a pleasure to travel with. We left San Blas at 8 a.m. and got to Zamora at 2 a.m.. Yesse turned out to be a big help on the road asking for detailed directions in little towns. It was the first time I had driven the inland route from Vallarta to Michoacan. Yesse’s family was very grateful for his help in returning home, and whatever he was accused of (I think it was a theft charge), I believe him when he says he was innocent. Being rail-roaded into jail is common in Mexico. Anyway, he has my photo, with my address, phone and fax on the back, and he promised to keep up the search for members of Fernando’s family at soccer games and other public events, so it is in God’s hands now.
Bracelet
There is a strange parallel between how I met Yesse, and how I met Jose. Jose was on his way to the border from Zamora, and ended up by chance in San Blas, when he was offered a ride there. In San Blas he met me, and I gave him a ride to the border because I was going there anyway. Yesse was on his way to Zamora from the border. He ended up by chance in San Blas, when someone offered him a ride there. In San Blas he met me, and I gave him a ride to Zamora because I was going there anyway.
Update: Oct. 30th 2008 A few days ago I received a phone call from Jose. He said he was in San Ysidro at his cousin’s house. He claimed to have crossed the border alone, on foot. I know he really was where he said, because it was his cousin’s land-line number on my caller ID. He said he was going to stay with his father in California and pick crops. I asked him why he was calling me, when I had told him never to call again. He said he wanted to say he was sorry and that he would pay me some money when he got a job. I don’t believe it, but I’m glad he called because it gives me important new astrological data.
Update Jan. 5th 2009:
There is a story I have wanted to share on this blog, But I have been waiting to get permission of the other person involved. Now I have the green light, so here it is:
Last July I decided on a lark, to do a google search on the title of my book to see if anyone else was using it. I was very surprised to come up with two links. The first remains a mystery to me. There is an American teacher in Guatemala who has named her blog SEARCHING FOR FERNANDO. I read the entire blog, and there is no mention of a Fernando in it. It’s as if she plucked the title out of the ether (this woman has since denied public access to her blog, but you can see an old pages by googling: Randi “La Cultura, revisited”). The second link proved to be much more exciting and fruitful.
This link lead me to a website selling art prints. The print in question was a beautiful tropical reef scene, and it was titled SEARCHING FOR FERNANDO. From there, a link lead me to the artist’s website www.artisticmurals.com . I was enchanted by the vibrant paintings. They radiated color and life. I knew the artist had to be a special person indeed. I sent Tamara an e-mail asking how she had come up with such and unlikely title for her painting. She e-mailed back to say that the Fernando she had searched for was a baby alligator! In 2005, Tamara was painting the mural, of which a small segment would eventually become the print SEARCHING FOR FERNANDO. Near the home where she was painting, there was a little stream, where a baby alligator lived. She named it Fernando, and visited him every day. One day after a heavy rainstorm, Fernando was missing. Although she searched and searched, he was not to be found.
I loved the gator story. As a child I had wanted a baby alligator as a pet, and later when I moved to Florida as an adult, I enjoyed watching the baby alligators that seemed to be in every ditch and pond. I knew only an old soul could find such tender feelings for a baby alligator. I asked Tamara if she would like to read my story and when she said yes, I e-mailed it to her. This was before this blog was up.
That night as I was washing dishes, I saw the Virgin of Guadalupe in my mind’s eye. Suddenly I knew that Tamara’s birthday was May 8th, that she had done an artistic rendering of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the past, and that she would graciously offer to do a painting for my book. All three things turned out to be true! Another synchronicity is that Tamara’s daughter and I share the same first name. Here in her own words, is Tamara’s story:
TAMARA’S STORY
Tamaras little lost Fernando.
“The story about the Virgin is very strange. In 1989 there was a cactus that was growing on the side of a busy street in Phoenix that looked like Our Lady of Guadalupe. It drew people from all over the states that left candles, prayed and gathered for hours. One morning I awoke and decided that I would go to the cactus with my sketch book and create a drawing of the cactus. While I was drawing lots of people kept asking if I would draw them a sketch, so I did. I drew as fast as I could. Then the Deacon of Our Lady Of Immaculate Heart Church walked up, broke the top of the cactus off and began walking to his church. Naturally the entire crowd of people followed, including myself as I still did not have a sketch for my personal collection. The church filled up with hundreds of people and there was no way I could draw fast enough for everyone that wanted a sketch. So I walked up to the alter in front of the statue of Mary, got down on my knees and prayed for guidance. Kris, the most incredible thing happened. As I was kneeling, a beautiful white light swept through my entire body, it flowed like a butterfly gracefully swirling inside me. At that exact moment I knew that what I needed to do was make one sketch and then have prints made of the sketch. So I announced to everyone that this is what I would do and that I would bring the sketches back to the church.
When they were finished I went to see the Deacon to see if he would let me sell the prints for $3.00 each and donate all but one dollar to the church. He said he had been approuched by many artists in the past but until then turned their offers down. The next day was the day of Ascension and he said I could bring the prints for the evening mass. He warned me that there would not be many people there. I smiled and said yes there would. I contacted all the news and radio stations and asked them to do a story on the cactus and my sketch. Three news stations showed up and two radio stations talked about the event. The church was so full that people were lined up outside to get in. The news teams had to literally crawl over the pews, it was truely a sight to behold! I sold several hundred prints that night and was on the news many times. Everyone kept telling me that I was blessed by the Virgin, and they didn’t know what had happened only a few weeks before. Anyway, I donated a fair amount of money to the church, who in turn set up a special fund to help poor Hispanic families and others in need. The kicker of it is that I was living with my daughter because I didn’t have any money for my own place. I had just returned from studying in NYC and was flat broke.”
What a beautiful story. It brings tears to my eyes every time I read it. Tamara is one of the few people I have met who truely understands what it means to live love, in action and deed. Giving to others in need, when she had almost nothing herself.
Some have said that my experiences were just a series of coincidences that I cobbled together to fabricate a story. These are skeptics who are stretching for an explaination. The synchronicities with Tamara stretches that explaination to the breaking point. If my true tale were just coincidences it would have petered out a long time ago. My story keeps expanding to include more people, and I will follow the trail where-ever it leads.
Mural on Herbalist shop.
Update: May 8th 2009
Happy Birthday Tamara! Thanks for your continuing support. I hope you have the best solar year ever. Happy Birthday to my little Pinger, patiently waiting to re-join me. Happy Birthday Fernando, where-ever you are. I pray for you every day. Happy Birthday Jose. I know where you are. You’re 32 now. Is this the year you are finally going to grow up?
The bench at the Lilly Pond.
“Such luster water lilies throw Upon the brook that lies below, Lipping their blossoms with it’s flow, ‘Twould make a landscape painter pine To win a hue to match with thine To make his martyr’s mantle shine.” Shelley
Update: July 21st 2009
It seems that Gina wouldn’t wait for Jose. She has married someone else. I’m not surprised. I told Jose four years ago, to expect this. I was in Tijuana three months ago. I visited Jose’s mom, and gave her a printed copy of this website. She is a very nice lady, and she feels badly about the nasty way Jose treated me. Jose was in San Ysidro less than a week, before he was caught and deported again. He was not home when I stopped by. I asked for a photo of Gina, to post here. However, Jose has thrown away all his photos of Gina, and does not want her name mentioned.
I’m going to make a few predictions here, for posterity. It seems that the most common retort, when an astrologer gets a hit, is: “I don’t remember you saying that.” With predictions posted on-line. It can’t be dismissed later.
These two predictions are based on astrology: #1. I believe Fernando got married again, or something similar, around the summer of 2006. A commited partnership is considered a ‘marriage’ in astrology. I feel it has been a turbulent relationship, and there is a chance it could have disolved by now. #2. I believe Fernando has seen me in dreams, several times. In these dreams, he knows I am trying to give him a message, but he can’t understand what the message is.
This next prediction is based on a dream I have had several times: When I make contact with Fernando again, it will be when he calls my phone.
These last two predictions are not based on astrology, or dreams, just feelings that I continue to have: #1. Fernando still has the St. Michael prayer card I gave him. #2. Fernando and Jose are distant relations.
Holy medal that I found in the nature park on September 6th, 2009. It reads: O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
The synchronicities continue. A few weeks ago I was having dinner with a friend, in a Chinese restaurant. A family was having dinner at the next table. My friend asked the father of the family his name, and where he was from. The father said his name was Fernando, and he was from Michoacan. Then I opened my fortune cookie, and it said: “the person sitting next to you is more important than you think.” Each table at the restaurant had the same etched glass decoration: a pair of swans swimming on a Lilypond.
I am asking for prayers for Carlos. He went to Cancun six months ago to look for work, but because of the near colapse of Mexican tourism, he is struggling to keep his head above water.
Update: September 18th 2009
Jose got married! On September 16th I dreamed that Jose called me, so I expected to hear from him soon. He called yesterday with the news. I spoke with his wife Lily, and she seems like a nice person. I like her. Lily’s Sun is in Leo, which makes for ease of communication between us. They are expecting a baby in February, and if it’s a girl they have promised to name her Kristina. I asked that they choose ‘ Guadalupe’ for a middle name. Jose also promised to try and get a photo of Gina for the website.
Copyright 2007, 2008, 2009 Kristine
Hi, What a lovely surprise! You certainly have been busy.
I have not read all of the story yet but it certainly reads as very exciting. Really like the photos.
Are you going to break down the text into chapters?
The best to you and the closure of your amazing journey.
Blessings,
Shirlee
Wow, what an adventure! This would make a great movie, with lots of great parts for latino actors. Who do you think would get the part of Fernando?
Finally a blogger who actually has something interesting to relate. I’m so tired of the inane drivel in the blogosphere. Thank you.
This is really an inspiring story. Once I started reading, I could not stop. The lessons of faith and spiritual connection were so profound.
I am the Michael mentioned in the story that worked with the EPFX/SCIO. That was some time ago. I briefly intersected this adventure as things were unfolding. Shortly after our sessions, she was off to Mexico.
I sense the journey has only begun. I look forward to the next chapter, and wish Kristine well.
Thanks for a great read. I’m looking forward to the book. It ’s much more exciting than THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, and that was a fiction book.
That was quite a story! I had to start skimming it after the part about Kristine meeting the curandera but the beginning especially interested me because ever since I was very young I have been attracted to foreign countries. I have Saturn in the 4th house, so it may signify that I chose to be born into a family that would not “understand’ me. Nobody else in my family cared about my obsession with other countries, and in fact, it annoyed them.
Now as a professional musician I play music from some of those countries that I was interested in and people from there have told me that I sing in their languages (Polish, Slovak, Serbian, Romanian) without any foreign accent at all.
I had a karmic encounter with a person in Slovakia but it did not have any physical drama like in Kristine’s tale. I did find out our past life story and it was ugly, but karma is not meant to be fun so…whatever.