FSW partner Iglesia Valle de Beraca steps up when Matamoros floodwaters rise
By Elket Rodríguez
Members of Iglesia Valle de Beraca in Matamoros, Mexico, have helped evacuate more than 600 victims of floods that submerged the city and surrounding colonias, just across the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville, Texas.
Eleuterio González ready to help rescue people from the flood and deliver supplies to those who are staying.
“This was a total disaster, and we are still evacuating families from their homes,” said Pastor Eleuterio González, a member of the Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry. “We have relocated the families to our church and to several apartments, where migrants that we have helped in the past live.”
Six inches of rain produced 16 inches of standing water because the city’s drainage system was clogged. More than 70 church members, mostly youth and leaders, helped rescue and relocate the area’s most vulnerable families. Of 600 people rescued by the church, almost 400 are immigrants living in colonias—poor unincorporated villages that ring the city.
"We convinced those migrants that we deliver food boxes to and that we have relocated to apartments in the past to allow us to temporarily place some families affected by the floods with them,” González reported.
But some of the families affected by the floods refused to be relocated, even temporarily, he said. "Some decided to stay in their flooded homes, so we are delivering food boxes to them in boats. I pleaded with them, because there are a lot of mosquitoes and there are a lot of diseases that can result from standing water, like dengue fever.”
A member of González’s church sanitizing the offices.
Some areas of Matamoros are still flooded, and González will need to visit those communities to sanitize their surroundings. He performed a similar ministry in November of 2020, when he sanitized poor communities and the offices of the Instituto Nacional de Migración, or National Migration Institute.
In fact, González and church members began sanitizing the institute’s offices Wednesday, July 15. “Some of their officers are getting sick already,” he noted.
González and Valle de Beraca have relocated, fed and protected thousands of migrants living in tent camps, colonias, rooms and apartments scattered all around Matamoros for more than a year. In July 2020, the church evacuated hundreds of migrants when Hurricane Hannah hit the migrants who lived in the tent camp on the banks of the Rio Grande, and in November 2020, when the shelter they operated closed due to a COVID outbreak.
Fellowship Southwest purchased a van for González in November 2020 and a pick-up truck in May 2021 to facilitate the church’s food distribution operation and the transportation of migrants around the city. Fellowship Southwest also provides rent for a shelter and food for Valle de Beraca’s immigrant ministry each month.
If you would like to contribute to Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry, which supports the work of Pastor González and other pastors all along the U.S.-Mexico border, click here.
Elket Rodríguez is the immigrant and refugee advocacy and missions specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest.