El Paso & Juarez: Loving Our Brothers

28 of us from our church piled into SROM's two new (used) 15-passenger vans on an early Thursday morning and started the 14-hour drive down south. We arrived in Texas around 7:30pm on Thursday night and were warmly greeted by our church family in El Paso. As exhausted as we were from the road trip, it was such a joy to connect and mingle with brothers and sisters in El Paso, from Kansas City, and from Fort Collins. Even now as I reflect on it, our church family network is pretty amazing!

Our Laramie church family had planned on going to Juarez to work with a children's ministry on Friday afternoon. In the morning we solidified plans to cross the border and had an amazing time of prayer and worship on the roof of the school building! It was powerful to get to look over the city of El Paso, and then turn and look over the border to Juarez. We prayed for our time there and interceded for the ministries and people on both sides of the Rio. Piling again into our trusty vans, we crossed quickly over into Mexico and jumped in to help with the kids.

Face painting!!! 

It was sad to me that I don’t know a lick of Spanish, but I was also reminded of the love language of kids: playing. We set up different games for the kids, had a puppet show, and painted faces, all with the heart to just love on the kids as much as we could! I moved between different activities helping serve the kids and those leading the different activities.

Saturday we split up and worked at two food distributions that the church in El Paso runs. We spent the first two hours packing food into plastic bags for people to pick up as they came through. The actual distribution is open from 10-12 the first Saturday of every month, and serves about 300 people at each location every month. Along with caring for the physical needs of providing food, the church also offers to pray for each person that comes through. Many smile, thank us for the food, and decline prayer. But there were many who came through who were eager for prayer. Ray, the pastor in El Paso, coached us to not fall into the trap of simply praying for their immediate situation (for a sickness, for provision of a job, for the healing of a family member). He reminded us that the greatest thing we can offer them is Jesus, and it is Jesus who works all things (including immediate challenges and trials) together for His glory and His kingdom.

There were many things I loved about our time in El Paso, but there are two revelations that are seeping into my heart. The first: Families that came from around the country brought their children. Their kids participated fully in this “ministry” just as much as the adults. They worshiped and interceded for Juarez, helped package food, played with and loved on the kids, and prayed for strangers. When I see this in action, it suddenly makes sense—this should be normative for our children! They hear the voice of the Holy Spirit just as much as adults and there is no reason they shouldn’t participate in “ministry.” Instead we often quarter our kids off to “safe environments” and leave ministry to the teenagers and adults.

Kids praying for adults. 

The second revelation for me is greater understanding of mission in general. By nature I am a goal-oriented, task completion type of person. I am much more likely to be the Martha busily preparing for what is next, but this isn’t always the most important thing. Going to El Paso, the leadership in my church had much less of a project mentality, and much more of a person mentality. I am sometimes uncomfortable with this, as it seems squishy—“Are we going to just goof around? What are we going to accomplish??” We went to El Paso to connect with our church family and to support them in their ministry. We didn't go so we could leave feeling like we had accomplished some sort of project; we didn't go because the church in El Paso needed us for any project of labor. We went because they are our family, and we love them.

Praying for the leadership in El Paso.

Jesus is our great example in this. Yes, he met physical needs (healing, feeding, etc), but this was an outpouring of his great love. He wasn’t motivated by being able to check “ministry” off his list; His life was ministry! And, even though this trip to El Paso was short, I can honestly say that my heart grew in love for these people, and that is the point of ministry—to share God’s tremendous love with His children.