By Paula Day

Northeast Georgia’s Rabun County is known for its mountain laurel and rhododendron in the spring and its apple harvest and flaming hardwoods in the fall. However, many may not know that the cabbage in the slaw on their evening dinner table could have come from Rabun County.

Even fewer know that the acreage under cultivation in the county has more than doubled in the last seven years because of the availability of a specific labor force, a force made up of Mexican migrants.

Making people aware of the Mexican migrants and their needs, and helping meet those needs, has become the cause of Christina Davis.

Mrs. Davis, a 35-year-old wife and mother, is the daughter of Mexican migrants, a Catholic father and Methodist mother. For the past two years she has been immersed in her Loaves and Fishes Ministry in Clayton. Presently she is planning to be the main runner in a 20-miles run across Rabun County organized to draw attention to and benefit the ministry. Money donated to runners, walkers and cyclers will help provide transportation, food, recreational equipment, tutoring materials and funds for medical emergencies for migrant workers.

Christina Davis cites the Scripture passage, “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me is her slogan. “I’m here to work with the Mexican people,” she says simply.

At the peak of the growing season, between 200 and 300 Mexican migrants work in the fields of Rabun County and in neighboring Macon County, N.C.; and the areas from Longcreek, S.C., south to Gainesville, Ga., And during each weekend of the summer months, the Loaves and Fishes Ministry is at full throttle.

Saturdays are devoted to recreation: roller skating, bowling, playing miniature golf. Sundays begin with the chance to get needed work clothes in the Caring and Sharing clothes closet maintained by local churches, including St. Helena’s Catholic Mission in Clayton.

But most of Sunday is set aside for a “spiritual life program,” Christina Davis said. The program consists of Scripture study, and, when possible, Mass celebrated in Spanish. Last summer Father Leopoldo Valenzuela from St. Michael’s Church in Gainesville said Mass for the migrants in Clayton on two occasions. The other Sundays Christina Davis “gave little devotionals” at the local Baptist church.

“We began with a little circle of prayer, and it became huge by the end of the summer,” she recalled.

She described her ministry as “interdenominational,” explaining that she relies on the help of anyone in the community regardless of their religious affiliation. However, she would prefer that its spiritual aspect be under Catholic auspices since most the Mexicans are baptized Catholics, and many have received all the sacraments of initiation: the Eucharist, Confirmation and the sacrament of Reconciliation.

This year, “if priests can come, we’ll have Mass every Saturday or Sunday. We’ll switch to the day they can come,” she said.

In addition to priests who can celebrate Mass in Spanish, Bob Mulligan, permanent deacon at St. Helena’s Mission in Clayton, said the ministry needs a vehicle large enough to transport the migrants to church. Because the Baptist congregation made such transportation available last summer, their facilities were used for the Sunday services.

Listening to Christina Davis, one gets the feeling the ministry’s needs will be met.

“I was always wondering each Sunday where the food and transportation would come from. And every Sunday, we had more than enough, even some left over. There was just like the Lord feeding the 5,000 and having food left over. It just came to me - the loaves and fishes - that’s where the name for my ministry came from.”

She speaks with feeling of her help to the Mexican migrants.

“It’s a special calling” she said. “It is very natural, like the Lord has been preparing me for its since I was a child.”

Christina Sanchez was born in the United States of Mexican migrants who settled in Michigan. In the off-season her father earned a living as a shoemaker and this became the family’s permanent livelihood.

“Daddy wanted to help the migrants,” she recalled. “On their own my parents visited the camps. I grew up this way, knowing only that it was the natural thing you did - help the migrants.”

She recalled that when the trucks came, bringing the migrant families from Mexico, the Sanchez family would help them get settled. Family recreation consisted of playing volleyball and softball and going to barn dances with the migrant families.

“It (ministry to migrants) is like breathing to me,” she said. “I’ve always been part of a mixed denomination. Our spiritual life was interdenominational - if not under the trees, then in a storefront.”

The migrants eventually built a church. “You could buy a brick for five cents to help build the church,” she recalled.

The nine-year resident of Rabun County said her present involvement with Mexican migrants “evolved.” Only recently did she realize there were Mexicans in the northeast Georgia area.

“They were in hiding because they were illegal aliens,” she pointed out. The U.S. government’s amnesty program, initiated in May of 1987, allowed the Mexicans to seek temporary residency. It was about that time, two years ago, when Clayton police called Christina Davis to come interpret for them. Mexican migrants had been picked up for driving without a license or vehicle insurance.

“I didn’t know I was beginning a program. It just happened,” she said. She had been working with youth in the Methodist congregation but “was looking for something special.”

“I knew this was what I should do. It just fell into my lap. Sometimes we don’t know where we’re going, but the Lord is guiding us. Where this is going, I don’t know. It may get too big, but it’s what I must do.” She is aware of the need for political action on behalf of the migrants but has opted to focus her efforts on meeting their needs in a personal way.

The ministry is not without its demands on the Davis’ family life. Tom Davis, a mental health counselor for the state of Georgia and member of St. Helena’s Mission, refers to himself somewhat ruefully as “a migrant widower.” However, he supports his wife’s efforts on behalf of the Mexican migrants.

The couple recently received a letter criticizing Christina. Tom Davis responded by sending a letter to the editor of “The Clayton Tribune,” in which he defended her work and the migrants.

“First,” he wrote, “the migrant men and women do not take jobs away from local laborers. They do some of the most difficult physical labor that can be found in some instances. They do it for wages that local laborers would not accept. Area farm contractors have difficulty finding enough laborers to do planting and harvesting and the migrants fill this need. They help provide you with your cabbage, your tomatoes, and your Christmas trees, among other things.”

Davis pointed out that the Mexican migrants are legalized aliens who have Social Security numbers and pay taxes; who have “come to the U.S. at great risks, have left their families behind in order to work here and send support to them back home.”

He concluded, “These are intelligent, extremely hard-working people who lead lives that few of us could endure. They deserve whatever help we can give and at the very least they deserve our respect…They give much to us and they take nothing away.”

Bob Massee and his son, Sterling, who hire migrants to work in their apple orchard right outside of Clayton, agree.

“I never knew what good help was ‘til I got them,” Massee said. “They are so energetic. They work with a smile. They’re not bums…Without the Mexicans, we’d already be out of business. Sterling and I can grow them, but we can’t prune, harvest or pack them.”

Christina Davis’ ministry goes beyond the weekends. Laughingly she explained how, after translating the instruction in the Georgia Driver’s manual and helping the migrant workers understand the rules of the highway, she would begin in Atlanta, advance to Athens, and then to Gainesville until finally her “students” passed their drivers’ test.

“I’m just giving back what I received,” the articulate and vibrant woman admitted. She recalled that as a young Spanish-speaking child in kindergarten she cried and cried because she couldn’t understand what her teacher was saying and she felt so isolated. The inventive teacher contacted a nearby college and students came and began tutoring her.

“I got individualized teaching at an impressionable age,” Christina Davis pointed out. “That’s why I know English so well. I can conjugate any verb in the language.”

She went on to get a bachelor of arts degree in social work at Asbury College, a Methodist institution in Wilmore, Ky. Now in addition to her ministry, she works four mornings a week at the local high school giving aptitude tests and helping students with career planning.

Christina Davis says her goal is to have the Mexican migrants locate permanently in the northeast Georgia area.

“I want to get them settled permanently,” she said. “It’s so hard on them, so I want them to settle and become part of the community.”

Approximately 30 of the young men do remain in the area year round. The majority start arriving in April to begin planting cabbage, beans, collards, tomatoes and cucumbers that make up the produce crop in the area. Simultaneously they may work in fields with nursery shrubs and young trees and in the apple orchards. This work continues until after the October harvest. Many then go home to Mexico before returning in December to Florida or Arkansas where they work in the citrus groves or plant pine trees. They complete the cycle when they return to Georgia in the spring.

Living conditions for the workers range from very poor to very good, according to Christina Davis. The very good camps meet federal guidelines, and in some cases even surpass them.

She singled out grower Jim Gillespie’s facilities as being excellent. They house four to a cabin and have showers and laundry equipment.

“They’re bug-free and well-built,” she added.

On the other hand, she has visited places where 15 or more boys, ages 15 to 20, were packed in, sleeping on mattresses on the floor with no heat or indoor plumbing.

“They were nothing more than shacks,” she said. “I wouldn’t put an animal in them.”

Jim Gillespie, too, is hoping to work out a system so there will be “no down time” and the migrants can become settled in the community.

One possibility is to have them work on government forestry projects. Replenishing the forests, which is hard and dangerous work, according to Christina Davis.

“It means clearing and planting,” she said, “using chain saws. There are snakes and thick undergrowth. There’s danger to the eyes - debris flying into them.”

The cheaper goggles provided by the forestry department are hot and uncomfortable and the workers discard them, she explained. The more comfortable goggles are also the more expensive.

For Gillespie, a University of Georgia graduate who traded coaching for farming and found it “addictive,” anything that can ameliorate the migrants’ situation and “keep them happy down on the farm,” is desirable.

“Without the security of a work force we can depend on and trust, we couldn’t make it work,” Gillespie pointed out.

It is exactly that steady work force that has enabled the 4,600 acres planted in 1982 in Rabun County to become the 12,000 to 14,000 that will be cultivated this 1989 season.

In the meantime, Christina Davis is gearing up for the 20-mile run, which was delayed once because of a spring snowfall in the northeast Georgia mountains and now will be held Sat., April 15.

The run will be the latest effort to help “her people” in a ministry whose seeds were planted in a childhood many miles from Rabun County, Georgia.