You might remember that the idea for the Border Street series came from a minister, a man who had moved his family from their west Denver neighborhood to Lakewood because it no longer felt safe, a pastor who found himself divided between the law of the land and the teachings of his faith.

It was he who said illegal immigration "at the street level" is more complicated than the public debate would lead one to believe.

His name is Mark Lopez. His church, Westside Christian Fellowship, is at West Eighth Avenue and Knox Court and has a small English-speaking congregation. We had the conversation that eventually led me to Border Street in October 2005 and I wrote of the man he was then: conflicted, anguished, unable to shake a sense of guilt for leaving the neighborhood.

That person no longer exists. The anguish is gone. So is the guilt. The conflict still surfaces now and then. It is inescapable as long as he ministers in this neighborhood. A churchgoing man says to him about his food pantry and the line of Spanish-speaking people it serves: Feed them, Mark, but then turn them in.

And Lopez cannot even imagine asking a hungry man to show proof he is here legally.

"I still have more questions than answers," he tells me, "but I've learned that life isn't about looking back and wondering whether you made the wrong moves."

We have just finished walking the 100 block of South Zenobia Street, where the nonprofit arm of his church, Community Builders, has purchased and rehabbed a home that was in foreclosure. Most of the people on the block are older, with no children.

Take a quick drive down the street and what you see are well-maintained yards and single-family homes in good shape. Stop and walk, and the cracks appear. That home is in foreclosure. This one was raided by police who found parts of a meth lab in it. That one needs a driveway, that one paint; that one has a shed that's falling down.

Community Builders will come out this Saturday morning with a crew of volunteers, most of them from suburban churches, to fix all these problems and hold a barbecue.

"You've seen what's happening in the neighborhoods, especially with all the foreclosures," Lopez tells me. "Weeds, boarded- up windows, property values are plummeting. We're trying to improve the neighborhoods - one house, one block at a time."

I'm curious about what has changed for Lopez in the nearly two years since that first conversation. Well, he says, for one, in some parts of southwest Denver there is less friction now between English- and Spanish-speaking residents - a claim I doubt until he tells me why.

"Mexican, Spanish-speaking people, are leaving," he says. "The foreclosure problem in this part of town" - the ZIP code has one of the highest rates in the city - "a lot of it, I believe, is because the politicians in Washington did not put together comprehensive immigration reform and then the state passed these laws that really tightened the screws and now people can't get work or they're scared and they're leaving."

On one hand, he says, the level of tension has dropped because "people no longer feel like they're being overrun by foreign people and a foreign language, but the concern is: What happened to them, where have they gone, how are they fending for themselves?"

He says he was tutoring some children of Spanish-speaking parents on the day of the immigration raids at the Swift meatpacking plant in Greeley. "I prayed with the parents right there and I could see how afraid they were."

I remind him that when we first spoke he told me that either the law must be changed or it must be enforced; it can't be ignored.

"So, I guess I have to eat my own words," he says, with a laugh. "You have to stick with the laws, but there still has to be a place for due process. To be a civilized society you have to be consistent with the law, but a civilized society is also a compassionate society, a loving society."

All of which sounds great from the pulpit, but collides with the current reality, as Lopez discovered when a few of the church volunteers on community beautification projects made it clear they do not want to help refurbish homes where illegal immigrants may live.

So, what do you tell them, I ask.

"We think we have all the answers and we don't," he says. "If you hear Spanish being spoken, if the people look like they might be Mexican, don't assume that they are here illegally. Don't ask them their legal status. That's not the issue. We're here to work, not to judge."

He says he and his family enjoy Lakewood and their daughter just started high school there, but he thinks often of the Gospel of John, of a passage that says, "and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." He says the pull to return to the neighborhood grows strong.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com