Juarez Mission Trips
For the past ten years, St. Peter’s has sent a group of parishioners to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to build a home for a family in need. For eight of those years, the mission trip was organized through Gateway Mission Training Center, which was run by the Rev. Canon Dan Klooster. Unfortunately in October of 2015, Gateway stopped hosting mission trips. Since there is still a need for adequate housing in the area, we have decided to partner with Casas por Cristo. Casas por Cristo is a non-profit faith based organization “dedicated to growing Christ's church one home at a time by helping meet the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors.”
Juarez 2017 Casas por Cristo Build
Reflections of our mission trips to Juarez
Why I Go to Juarez
Jesus commands us to go out and make disciples and to love our neighbors as ourselves and what better way to do so than going on a mission trip to help our neighbors in other countries around the world. We witness by example when we go to Juarez to build a house for a family who may be living in one room with five other people or in a shack made out of cardboard and pallets or whatever else they have found. I get profound joy out of our builds because I can see the difference our small gift has given to the families we serve. The families we serve in Mexico are kind, loving, and grateful for the gift of a home. This mission work is also personal for me. It gives me an opportunity to be in an Hispanic culture similar to the one I was raised in while living in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico as a child. I give thanks for the people of St. Peter's who have supported our Juarez teams over the past ten years. We are building bridges to those neighbors of ours who come from different cultures and we are greatly blessed by so doing! Linda Roti 2017
Ten Years Ten Houses
This year marks the tenth trip that St. Peter's has built a home for a most grateful family in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I have personally been on nine of those trips and have seen many changes there, mostly for the good instead of the bad. Those first few years kept me wondering why do I keep going there given the fact that this place was known as the murder capital of the world. The answer to that question was because I felt God was telling me to go there to do this work. He gave me the courage to go there and not be afraid of all the heinous crimes committed there by the drug lords who had literally taken the city hostage. I think that most everyone on all the early trips were given the same message. Over time the violence eased and the military men and checkpoints went away. The drug lords had killed each other off and Ciudad Juarez has become nearly as safe as any other city here at home. Juarez is no longer a forsaken place but is to this day a place of great need. There is a great lesson in all those trips for all of us. That lesson is do not be afraid. It is in fear that we all run from not only things that we think might hurt us but also things we do not understand. Fear keeps us from understanding other cultures and it creates all sorts of problems like stereotyping, hate, and shunning whole groups of people. If we are afraid of something happening to us, whether it be from physical harm or psychological harm the result is always the same, we stay away. After all, if we do not expose ourselves to such things we will always be safe. Right? I say not necessarily. Juarez is a good example of a whole group of people who met fear eye to eye and did not run the other way. Instead they built homes for people who were blessed by the Holy Spirit through us. Those homes have given them a spark of hope where there was little. I do not believe that St. Peter's work there is complete, and I do not know when it will be. We need to trust in the Lord to let us know when it is done. Respectfully submitted by Conrad Green 2017
How might we be the answer to someone else’s prayer?
This was the question Father Matt asked on Sunday, May 28. There are many ways that the parishioners at St. Peter’s answer this question but for me the question got me thinking about our recent mission trip to Juarez. The home we built was the answer to Alexis and Teresa’s prayers. We are called during the baptismal covenant to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”. Going to Mexico to build a home for a worthy family is one way to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. This year’s mission trip brought us to a new area east of Juarez. Unlike past builds that were located on dirt roads, this area had paved roads, cutouts for driveways and water and sewer hookups. There was a playground in the neighborhood for the children. If you didn’t focus on the size of the homes, you could be in any suburb in the U.S. The changes we have seen in the past ten years have been enormous. Through the prayers of the people of Juarez, and by our answering those prayers, their city has been resurrected from a city of violence and crime to a city where there is hope and a future. Dee Green 2017
Juarez 2016 Casas por Cristo Build