2025 – My Life Story Workshop & San Pancho Stories Website – Don Lundgren
When Marylou and I moved to San Pancho in early 2025, it did not feel like a beginning.
By then, the town was already familiar. We had spent two years visiting, and a full year thinking about whether we should live here. When we finally arrived full-time, daily life felt less like starting something new and more like continuing something that had already taken shape.
But even before we moved, something else had started.
In December 2024, at the Entreamigos annual fundraiser, I ran into Nicole Swedlow, co-founder of Entreamigos. We had a previous connection, and I told her I wanted to contribute to the community. It seemed to me that Entreamigos was the natural place to do that.
I shared four websites I had built—each centered around a workshop I could deliver. The most recent was My Life Stories via ChatGPT, and it was the one I was most interested in bringing to San Pancho. Nicole agreed, and I began working with her.
That conversation created an early connection to both Entreamigos and the town itself. It felt different from visiting. It felt mutual—as if I was beginning to participate in the life of San Pancho even before we arrived.
Once we arrived, that idea quickly turned into action.
Working with Mauricio to host and Luz to promote, we began running My Life Stories via ChatGPT workshops. Most of the attendees came through my personal connections, particularly from the pickleball community.
In 2025, we completed three workshops, each producing real output—people creating written versions of their San Pancho stories, often for the first time.
We continued the effort into 2026, completing three additional workshops and expanding both participation and the range of stories being captured.
At the same time, another thread was developing.
Shortly after we moved, I met Javier.
He was translating a book about San Pancho’s transformation in the 1970s. What began as a casual conversation turned into a friendship and a collaboration. I reviewed drafts, offered suggestions, and began to understand the deeper history of the town.
The book, which became Presidential Magic, captured an important chapter of San Pancho’s past. But it also highlighted something missing: a simple way to capture the personal stories of the people who experienced that history—and those continuing to shape it.
I also found a way to help bring that history into the community.
I gave copies of the book to key people in San Pancho to build awareness and interest. I arranged two presentations for Javier at Entreamigos and personally reached out to invite people to attend. Both events were well attended and created broader visibility for the book and the story of San Pancho’s earlier transformation.
That led me to apply something I had been working on for several years.
People don’t need to start with a blank page. If they can outline their experience—what happened, who was involved, and what mattered—those ideas can be turned into a story.
In San Pancho, the fit was immediate.
The workshops showed that people were willing to tell their stories. What was missing was a simple way to organize and share them.
So I built it.
By the end of April 2025, we had:
• Completed three workshops
• Created an initial set of San Pancho stories
• Launched the SanPanchoStories.org website
From there, the six workshops across 2025 and 2026 became the foundation for a growing collection of stories and a repeatable way to continue capturing them.
What made it possible for more people to contribute came down to three key breakthroughs:
1. No need to know ChatGPT
People only need to create a simple outline. We provide templates and three proven ways to turn that outline into a story.
2. No need to know English
Stories can be created in Spanish. We provide Spanish templates, have local support through David, and ChatGPT works easily in both languages.
3. No need to write at all
People can simply tell their story. Through a short interview or recorded conversation, their verbal story can be turned into a written one.
These three shifts made the process simpler, more inclusive, and accessible to a much wider group of people.
The structure of the site is intentionally simple.
The stories are organized around a basic idea: people experience San Pancho in different ways—those who visit, those who find it and stay, and those who help build it.
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🔭 The Next Challenge
The next challenge is capturing what happened in San Pancho after President Echeverría’s transformation in 1976.
The book tells the story up to that point. What is largely missing is what happened next—the lived experience of the people and families who were here as the town evolved over the following decades.
Nieves is interested in building a museum focused on this period, starting with capturing those stories.
This is inherently a multi-generational effort.
One important point is that there are still people alive today who were here when the President launched San Pancho in 1976. In many cases, they are now the grandparents of young people growing up in San Pancho today.
Example (Marylou’s family):
• Marylou was 31 in 1976, experiencing the transformation as it happened
• Her oldest son, Greg, was 4, growing up in the San Pancho shaped by those changes
• Her oldest grandchild, Cassandra (born 2004), and youngest, Reed (born 2025), see a town that is dramatically different again
This same pattern exists across many Mexican families in San Pancho.
Their stories connect three distinct periods:
1. The original transformation in the 1970s
2. The decades that followed, before major outside growth
3. The more rapid change beginning in the 2000s, as expats started arriving in larger numbers
Capturing those stories—while the people who lived the earliest part are still here—may be the most important next step in preserving the full history of San Pancho.
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💡 Insights
What Worked
• Workshops created immediate momentum and real stories
• Personal outreach drove early participation
• Promoting Presidential Magic increased awareness of San Pancho’s history
• The three breakthroughs made participation simple and inclusive
What Was Challenging
• Many people are interested but hesitant to start
• Local participation requires trust and personal connection
• Sustaining momentum requires ongoing effort
What I Learned
• Reducing friction is the key to participation
• Simplicity enables broader involvement
• Stories across generations create a much richer understanding of place
What Matters Going Forward
• Capturing multi-generational stories within local Mexican families
• Supporting efforts like Nieves’ museum initiative
• Building local ownership so the platform continues over time
