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Texas Border Immersion, El PasoJoin Luther Seminary students Kevin Beard, Linda Webster and Char Schmiedeskamp, plus Emma Crossen, recent grad from Bethany College, Kan., as they explore the realities of the Texas/Mexico border mission and the ministry of Iglesia Luterana Cristo Rey, a Spanish-speaking ELCA congregation in El Paso, Texas. Learn the specifics of Mexican and Mexican-American culture. Listen to personal accounts of border life from documented and undocumented immigrants and people involved in social justice ministry.These students will visit colonias in El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, participate in daily Bible study and reflection, and worship in the context of Mexican-American people. Blog Entries Saturday - May 29, 2004 Arrival in El Paso Sunday - May 30, 2004 Cristo Rey’s Sunday Service Monday - May 31, 2004 About Cristo Rey Tuesday - June 1, 2004 Tuesday Wednesday - June 2, 2004 Wednesday Anapra The "Dump Clinic" Thursday - June 3, 2004 Casa Vides Friday - June 4, 2004 Work Day Wednesday - June 9, 2004 Centro Santa Catalina Women's Cooperative The Student Blog area of the Luther Seminary Web site contains personal Web logs (online journal entries) of Luther Seminary students. The information and opinions therein reflect individual thoughts, tastes and activities. They do not reflect official policies or positions of Luther Seminary. Saturday - May 29, 2004 - top Arrival in El Paso
Today is the day we are leaving Luther Seminary for El Paso, TX. We are: Linda Webster (me), Char Schmiedeskamp, and Kevin Beard. Char's husband, Karl, is taking us all out to the airport, but we are all on different flights. We are not exactly sure what is happening once we get to the El Paso airport, but we know someone is picking us up. We will wait for each other once we arrive and go from there! All of us are not really sure what to expect, but are filled with anticipation for the experience. We pray for God's blessing on the time of learning for each one of us. (Later the same day)
After lunch, I heard my name paged and thought I must have misunderstood when Char's flight was to land. I left the flight area and headed down the escalator. As soon as I did a stranger approached me and asked if I was Linda. She introduced herself as Rosa Bailon and she was there to pick me up. Now, please understand how embarrassed I was as I had already been at the airport for one hour! Poor Rosa! She had been waiting at the airport two hours!! What a way to begin this experience. But, she is so wonderful. Rosa was not upset in the least.
Finally, we all arrived! We got the keys to the van we will be using for the next two weeks and a few instructions as to where some basic things are. During our first evening together, we watched a video called "The Ties that Bind: Stories Behind the Immigration Controversy." Our learning experience and conversation have started! Vaya con Dios. Your sister in Christ, Linda Sunday - May 30, 2004 - top Cristo Rey’s Sunday Service
We are worshipping with the Cristo Rey congregation today. They currently worship at an Episcopalian youth center that is directly across the street from the casita where we are staying. The service is usually completely in Spanish, but when there are Anglos, like us, in the congregation they make the service bi-lingual. The music was wonderful! Pastor Rose Mary and several congregation members play guitars and sing and there is an excellent keyboard player. It is amazing that every Sunday they bring equipment, altar, and everything else they use for worship, besides chairs, from the Cristo Rey office about three or four blocks away, set it up all up, and then take it all down and bring it back to the office. It seems everyone has a job and everyone pitches in to do something.
After the service we all trekked down to the Cristo Rey offices and had coffee and cake. We sat and talked with some of the members for awhile, which at this point included a number of the older ladies from the congregation. They are always so fun to talk with in any congregation.
Before the church service and after lunch we spent time reading information we were given on the history of El Paso, Juarez, and the Cristo Rey congregation. Through this reading, I started to learn a lot about immigration and the laws that surround it that I never knew. Tonight we took our first trip into Juarez. Elaine has a favorite little restaurant she wanted to take us to. It is called La Cubanita. The food was wonderful, but then I like spicy and, maybe, somewhat unusual food! It is great to be with Elaine as she speaks fluent Spanish and knows her way around Juarez pretty well by now. Emma also speaks some Spanish. Me – I know a few words and phrases, but really not much. Char is at about the same level as me, maybe a little better. But, Kevin – this is really new for him. Maybe this experience on the border will motivate all of us to learn more Spanish, or some other language, as most people we are meeting are at least bi-lingual! Vaya con Dios (Go with God)! Linda Monday - May 31, 2004 - top About Cristo Rey Cristo Rey Centro Luterano was formed as an outreach ministry with 5 people in April 1990. Maria Valenzuela was the first pastor and her husband, Reinaldo, assisted with community development. The first worship service was held in May 1992. In 1996, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, an Anglo congregation in the neighborhood, invited the mission church to share space in their building. In July 1997, the Valenzuelas left to work with the ELCA's Multicultural Commission. Pastor Rose Mary Sanchez-Guzman and her husband, Nando, arrived in August 1997. After they came, Pastor Rose Mary said that it was unsure if the congregation would survive. She thought she might have to be the one to close down the ministry. (I could hardly imagine that sort of heartbreak.) But, there was tremendous outreach that has occurred in the neighborhood, which continues today with Bible studies, after school programs, strong lay ministry, lively worship, visitation and evangelism. But, the congregation was, and continues to be, in constant flux as members are very mobile because of employment and family situations. In September 2001, the mission congregation of 99 charter members voted to become Cristo Rey Igelsia Luterana, a fully recognized congregation of the ELCA. This journey has not been without hardship and heartache. In December 2002, St. Paul's voted to end their relationship with Cristo Rey, which left the fledgling congregation near to despair of finding affordable accommodations for the ministry within the neighborhood. God provided space for the ministry in several places, all within walking distances within the neighborhood. Other congregations have stepped up to help Cristo Rey, one being Peace Lutheran in El Paso. It is a congregation like Cristo Rey, i.e. one with great desire to do God's work in an urban, Hispanic setting, that challenges us in our comfortable, suburban, mostly white, middle and upper class churches to reach out in substantial ways, not only through prayer, but through our pocketbooks as well. Services are held in the Youth Center building of an Episcopal church, the Immersion Program using a house directly across the street. The church offices and programs are located in a rented building about four or five blocks away. Just yesterday the congregation voted to buy that building! The space still houses the offices, but will become their worship space as well. Cristo Rey is a very lively, but poor congregation. Buying this building will be a challenge for them. They are always looking for "partners" in mission. Consider this an invitation to join with them! As always, your sister in God's unconditional love – Linda Tuesday - June 1, 2004 - top
This morning we are off to do several things. First, we are meeting with Ouisa Davis at the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services. Then we are going to go through a drive through one of the colonias, i.e. an immigrant, housing settlement, on this side of the border and stop at several agencies in that area. We have gotten to the point of taking cases of bottled water with us in the van 'cause it is so hot and so easy to become dehydrated. Meeting with Ouisa Davis First of all, I was overwhelmed with the knowledge this woman has floating around in her head on the issue of immigration law. The sheer magnitude of the number of people trying to come into the U.S. from all over the world is amazing. When I hear about the "quota system" and how it is used to try to regulate entry into the U.S., I have to admit, it makes me angry and crazy at the same time. The changes that have occurred, which limit the number of people that can legally come in to work from Mexico and Central American countries, are shocking. Families end up being split apart for years. Besides this there are additional issues of trade agreements like NAFTA that enable U.S. companies to ship goods across the border to Juarez to have products manufactured while paying workers $5.00 per day (that's right – per day). Please understand that the cost of living in Juarez, MX is not much less than that of El Paso, TX. Therefore, it means that there must be 4 or 5 people working per family to be able to provide sufficient support to live. This brings up many questions for me (and for the rest of our small group) about the on-going consumer lifestyle we live and the sustainability of that lifestyle for the entire world. These are huge questions – please, think about this!
We brought bad lunches along and stopped and ate at a community center called Agua Dulce. We had been going to meet with someone at the Clinica Guadalupana, but we must have missed her. Instead, we talked with a couple and their children that were waiting to get into the Clinic who had recently come from Mexico. We ended the day by having dinner in the casita with Doctora Mendoza whose clinic we will be visiting in Anapra tomorrow! I must say Elaine is keeping us busy! God's peace to you and all in your households! Your sister, Linda Wednesday - June 2, 2004 - top
June 2, 2004 Sometimes there are things that happen that just affect you somehow. Today, I had one of those experiences. We were in Anapra, a very poor section of Juarez. Even to get there is an amazing journey – over dusty hills on dirt roads that hardly seem connected to Juarez, and yet it is all part of the city. Besides going to the Cristo Rey Clinic, we visited the home of Berta. As we spoke with her through interpreters and asked her about her life with her family in Anapra, I was amazed at how at peaceful and happy she looked. Here she was, living in a two-room house that we, from the affluent West would call a shack, with ten (yes, ten!) other people. There are no flush toilets and "running" water into the house is trucked in and provided from a storage tank outside the house. I watched this woman's face as she talked. I truly believe I saw an inner glow radiating from her. Near the end of our time with her, I asked her (again, through an interpreter), "Berta, are you happy?" When she answered that she was and that she has many things in her life that give her pleasure – her family, her volunteer work in the church, her friends, I couldn't help but note that it wasn't "things" that made her happy, but relationships with others around her. This experience, alone, is working something in me that I am having difficulty expressing. All I can see for now I that I see my life and that it is full of things – things that don't necessarily make me happy and, really, only seem to cluster up my life. I think I am beginning to understand a little better why Jesus told the rich young man to "go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor." I really am not sure it was to benefit the poor, but more to benefit the young man by freeing him up from all of his worldly cares and concerns and creating space for God! This is very, very thought provoking for me in thinking about simplifying my life. I invite you into this process with me. Can you simplify your life and free up space for God? Vaya con Dios! Linda Wednesday - June 2, 2004 - top Anapra
Wednesday - June 2, 2004 - top The "Dump Clinic"
Greetings from El Paso! We're into our fourth day and all is going well. Only eight more days until I can see trees and lakes again. El Paso is really built in a desert. I guess until the late 1800's this was just a town of a few hundred people who stayed here rather than "El Paso" through the mountains on to better land. The meeting with Dr. Mendoza at the 'dump clinic' at Anapra Mexico still haunts me. She and her staff of one other doctor, a volunteer optometrist and a dentist, see about 40 to 60 patients a day. It's unbelievable the conditions that they work in. You'd have to see the pictures in order to understand. When talking with Dr. Mendoza, I felt like I was looking at someone on the par of Mother Theresa in Calcutta.
Dr. Mendoza has a group of women refugees from southern Mexico who come to her clinic and "make crafts with their hands and sell them in order to survive." I bought gifts from these women and I was severely disappointed when I got back to the house that afternoon to discover a 'Made in China' sticker on one of the 'hand made' items that I had purchased! What a letdown. These women were buying things which were made in China using slave labor and selling them to us. Uff-Duh...
Well, enough heavy stuff. Enjoying my stay. Learning a lot. Makes my brain hurt (and heart!). Kevin R. Beard Thursday - June 3, 2004 - top Casa Vides
Today we went to meet with Reuben Garcia at a house called Casa Vides. You won't believe this, but this is one of three buildings in downtown El Paso that take in and house undocumented people. Illegal as heck, but they provide a safe place for people to find rest, relatives, and work in the U.S. Even though the police and U.S. Border Patrol know what they are doing, they have agreed to leave them alone since what they are doing is taking families off the streets and giving them food, shelter and clothing. The Border Patrol even occasionally takes the undocumented to one of the houses in order to give them a place to stay. The detention center (jail) in El Paso is full to its capacity of 1,000 people, so some are being detained and then put back out onto the streets and told to go home--a hard thing to do with a family and no money. We went to one of the other houses associated with Casa Vides tonight. It is called the Annunciation House. We spent some time talking with some of the 'guests' and ate dinner with them. There is a brand-new baby in the house, who by virtue of having been born in the U.S. is now a citizen. During dinner I had a 10-year-old boy trying to teach me how to speak Spanish. It was hilarious! I told him that someday he would be a fine teacher. Kevin Friday - June 4, 2004 - top Work Day
Had an interesting morning. Slept in because it is a work day today. Got up and had a bowl of cereal before starting. The four of us were joined by Pr. Rose Mary and two volunteers from the church. We spent the morning pulling weeds in the yard and raking the dirt (that's what they do in El Paso instead of mowing and watering!). When using the weed whacker, we ran out of string, so one of the volunteers and I took off in the van looking for a hardware store to buy string. I drove all over downtown El Paso looking for one. Finally had to go all the way out to the suburbs in order to find a Wal-Mart. Quite a trip, kinda fun driving in the big city. The young volunteer was an 18-year-old undocumented person who's always laughing and smiling. The church workers call him 'little monkey' because he's always bouncing around, clowning, and teasing the older people in the congregation. I got to talk to him quite a bit during our adventurous drive through El Paso. His parents came to El Paso right after he was born and have lived here ever since. He has been waiting for his residency application to be approved by the U.S. since 1998, 6 years of waiting. His younger brother and sister were born here in the U.S. so they are considered American citizens by birthright. When his siblings get sick they just go to the local hospital or clinic but he has to go to a clinic similar to the one in Juarez, Mexico, which provides a quick look-see and medicines for $10.00 per bottle since he has no 'papers' to prove citizenship. He can't get a driver's license since he has no Social Security number or I.D. He says that he can't find a job in the area for the same reason.
He's in the Jr. ROTC and is thinking about joining the Marines. It would give him a way to serve his country and at the same time become a U.S. citizen. He hopes to have his residency approved in the next year or two. Until then, he is stuck in El Paso. He has been stopped by the Border Patrol a few times but his English is good and he says that he doesn't show how scared he is on the inside. If he is discovered and deported, he would be sent back to Mexico away from his parents and family with no way to get back to them. Evidently since 9/11, the border is nearly impossible to cross without papers. His grandmother was sick last year in Juarez and he and his family couldn't go to see her. She died and his family couldn't go to her funeral. They lived about five miles apart. He was accused by the high school last year of stealing a 'beanie cap' from another student and was transferred to the Alternative Learning Center halfway through the year. Because of this, he has lost all of the credit for his junior year and has to attend high school for one more year. When he graduates next year he hopes to go to the local community college, probably on a scholarship from the church, and later attend the Texas Institute. He's quite a guy.
Tonight we are going to eat supper and visit the home of one of the congregation's members. She is an undocumented person and we're going there to tr Wednesday - June 9, 2004 - top Centro Santa Catalina Women's Cooperative
Well, we're coming down to our last few days in El Paso, Texas and I think I'm ready to go back home. With the completion of finals at Luther, four days fishing in Canada, and two weeks in El Paso, I haven't seen much of my family for about a month. I miss them. My wife and I are celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary today a thousand miles apart. On Monday I called the hospital where she works as a medical transcriptionist and asked her supervisor if they could provide her with a party complete with cake and ice cream. I also got on the internet and ordered flowers that should have been delivered today. Nice touch! We are scheduled to have a two-hour reflection each day during our Border Immersion Experience. As the two weeks have progressed, I've noticed that my ability to participate in the discussions has diminished somewhat. I'm not sure if the heat is taking its toll or if my mind is overwhelmed with all that we have seen, heard and experienced. I've been trying to put all of these experiences into some sort of order in my mind and I'm having trouble sorting out all of the political, economic and social issues that have confronted us. I have seen people living in total poverty who are hopeful for their own future while I, in relative prosperity, am left with a hopeless feeling knowing the challenges that they face daily. Each new encounter with the poor and oppressed, the widow and the orphan, forces me to look at how I live in a country that is dominated by consumerism. There are many questions that need to be sorted out.
The women who participate come together two or three times per week to attend Bible studies, classes in self-esteem, health and parenting, and to work in the sewing shop. Fabrics from Mexico are made into beautiful hand-sewn items such as placemats, shawls, table cloths, quilts, and even pastoral stoles. While attending classes or working in the sewing shop, their young children can attend the on-site daycare or kindergarten classes. It is the hope that each woman can earn $100 per month through this cooperative, which, hour for hour, is much more than they could make working in one of the factories in Juarez.
I wish there were a way to have more of this type of mission for the people in Juarez. Well, all for now. Grace and Peace. Kevin R. Beard |
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