A “death sentence” got Juvenal González’s attention, and a reprieve changed his life forever.

As a teenager, González migrated from his home in Guerrero, Mexico, to Washington state, where he picked apples, pears and peaches, and then on to North Carolina, where he picked sweet potatoes. His migration was complicated, but his purpose was simple—buy a pickup truck and prosper.

One morning, he bolted from his bed, vomiting blood. The next morning, he awoke in a hospital bed, facing death.

Pastors Lorenzo Ortiz and Rosalío Sosa—pillars of Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief network along the U.S.-Mexico border—are mending from COVID-19 infections and thanking God for lessons learned while enduring adversity.

Ortiz operates three shelters in Nuevo Laredo and Saltillo, Mexico, and Sosa coordinates 14 shelters in the state of Chihuahua, mostly in Juarez. Together, they serve 2,520 refugees who are waiting in northern Mexico as they work their way through the U.S. asylum process.

María Elena Lao Rodríguez endured a long and circuitous journey from persecution in Cuba to an operating room in Mexico. Along the way, she has seen signs of God’s grace.

María trained as a nurse and gained experience in commerce and agriculture. She studied to be a doctor, too, and was just two months shy of earning her M.D. degree. But in 2016, she, her daughter and her grandchildren fled Cuba to escape torture and violence.

She journeyed across almost all of South America and arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border more than a year ago, seeking asylum in the United States.

Immigrant families in Central Texas have roofs over their heads, food on their tables and utilities in their homes, thanks to La Puerta Waco and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Coronavirus Emergency Relief Fund.

CBF established the coronavirus fund shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began inflicting its wrath globally. The catastrophe particularly harmed immigrants, who live closest to their communities’ crumbling edges of vulnerability. In the United States, for example, many immigrants were the first to lose their jobs when the economy restricted. And although they pay taxes, they were not eligible to receive stimulus checks provided to citizens.

Fellowship Southwest called in reinforcements to support Pastor Eleuterio González’s rapidly growing ministry to refugees encamped in Matamoros, Mexico.

His responsibilities for protecting and feeding immigrants seeking asylum in the United States has multiplied as the number of refugees amassed in the Mexican city—just across the border from Brownsville, Texas—have escalated the past few months.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spiked along the U.S. Mexico border, and now it has come calling on Fellowship Southwest’s ministry to refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

FSW’s Immigrant Relief Ministry has been built upon a network of pastors who feed and protect immigrants from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Due to the nature of the ministry—serving refugees in burgeoning tent camps and crowded shelters—social distancing is almost impossible.

Fellowship Southwest celebrated its third anniversary the first of this month, and to quote the great Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

About three weeks after FSW launched on Aug. 1, 2017, Hurricane Harvey blasted the Texas Coastal Bend and deluged Southeast Texas. We dropped what we were doing and pitched in to help. Lately, we’ve been helping the Rio Grande Valley and northeastern Mexico mop up from Hurricane Hanna. (Note to us: Let’s convince the people who name hurricanes to stop using the letter “H.”)

A perfect storm of calamity—the immigration crisis, COVID-19 and a hurricane—has buffeted Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry in Matamoros, Mexico. The needs are dire; the response is sacrificial.

Since 2018, Fellowship Southwest has supported feeding projects on the Gateway International Bridge between Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, as well as in the sprawling immigrant camp just south of the bridge. Since this spring, FSW has sponsored the burgeoning immigrant ministry of Pastor Eleuterio González and Iglesia Valle de Beraca further into the city.

El huracán Hanna dejó una estela de devastación al pasar el pasado 25 de julio por el Valle del Río Grande de Texas. Hanna arrojó más de 15 pulgadas de lluvia en la región cercana al Golfo de México, inundando severamente las zonas rurales y las colonias.

Los impetuosos vientos de Hanna causaron estragos en la zona, volcando casas rodantes y arrancando los techos de muchas residencias.

"El huracán causó mucho daño a las colonias (nombre otorgado a las villas no incorporadas que abundan en la frontera)", informó Jorge Zapata, coordinador asociado del Compañerismo Bautista Cooperativo (CBF por sus siglas en inglés) de Texas. "A muchas familias les voló el techo de sus casas".

A fresh loaf of bread in Missouri gave rise to a relief program in northeastern Arizona, serving people pummeled by COVID-19.

CBF West has launched a ministry on the Navajo Nation, guided by Pastor Greg Long of Flagstaff and CBF West Coordinator Glen Foster of Tucson. But the idea began with that bread back in Missouri.

“The Navajo Nation continues to be a hotspot for COVID-19,” Foster reported. Indeed, the Navajo Times reported almost 9,000 coronavirus cases among Navajos across the high-desert region as of Wednesday. Given the area’s sparse population, those infections have propelled the Navajo Nation to be one of the most acutely affected groups in the United States.

Hurricane Hanna left a trail of devastation as it tore through Texas’ Rio Grande Valley near the Gulf of Mexico July 25. Hanna dumped more than 15 inches of rain on the region, severely flooding rural areas and colonias.

Hanna's impetuous winds also wreaked havoc, overturning trailer homes and ripping roofs off others.

“The hurricane did a lot of damage to the colonias,” the unincorporated villages that dot the border, reported Jorge Zapata, associate coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Texas. “Many families had their rooftops blown off their homes.”

God rescues people who seem beyond hope, Rosalío Sosa believes. He knows God redeems even the darkest circumstances, because he’s seen it happen.

Every day, he wakes up on the U.S.-Mexico border, a region dominated by drug cartels. Lately, he’s experienced victories in the battle against the forces of exploitation. He has seized young men from the grip of the organized crime.

Shifting circumstances never hinder Lorenzo Ortiz from helping hurting people.

Ortiz’s ministry to refugees blossomed in 2018, when they flooded his church in Laredo, Texas. Back then, immigrants seeking asylum in the United States could cross into the country, complete their application and wait out the process.

But the 2018 immigrant surge overwhelmed the U.S. asylum system, and destitute refugees far from home waited on the streets. Ortiz took immigrants in Laredo into the church where he was pastor, and Fellowship Southwest started providing funds to buy groceries and pay escalating utilities.

One of the most important people in Fellowship Southwest’s network of ministry to immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border needs your prayers.

Maria, a refugee from Cuba who lives in the shelter in Palomas, Chihuahua, is facing surgery, reported Rosalio Sosa, director of Red de Albergues Para Migrantes (Migrant Shelter Network) and pastor of Iglesia Bautista Tierra de Oro in El Paso.

Imagine arriving as a refugee in a new country amidst a pandemic: Government offices are closed or working remotely. Documents needed to work and support your family are very difficult to acquire or are delayed months. Those who would normally welcome you and help you navigate life are social distancing. Isolation can be overwhelming and seem hopeless.

While social distancing, I’ve struggled with how to minister effectively in the midst of a pandemic. Instead of focusing on all the things I can no longer do, I’ve tried to focus on what God is still doing in spite of what I may see or feel. I’ve seen God show up in incredible ways.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship introduced its 25 Young Leaders to Know during the CBF General Assembly this summer. Six of them hail from and/or are preparing for ministry in the Southwest. They include…

Who can forget the Holocaust? In just five years, about 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and their supporting governments.

We also must remember the Third Reich planted the seeds of genocide long before it carried out the Holocaust.

Much earlier, the German government implemented multiple policies to compel Jewish people to flee. These policies, known as judenrein (“cleansed of Jews”), sought to make the Jews so miserable they would emigrate to more hospitable countries.

Members of the Navajo Nation—among the hardest-hit victims of COVID-19—will receive tangible aid and a clear expression of God’s love, thanks to CBF West.

“The Navajo Nation infection rates per capita have become the highest in the country when compared with any individual state,” noted CBF West Coordinator Glen Foster.

Multiple factors enabled the pandemic to spread across vast region, covering northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico, added Greg Long, executive director of Selah Navajo Ministries and a longtime leader in CBF West.

There have been growing demands for reforms of police departments across the nation. I was part of a group of denominational leaders who worked with a professor who was a former policeman and now teaches criminal justice at the university level.

We met with him for several hours asking him all sorts of questions about what research has shown to be most productive things that police departments can do to improve. Most of our questions were directed toward larger police departments. However, we were reminded by the professor that many police departments are quite small and not all of these recommendations would be applicable. Also, these are recommendations related to taking a long-term approach to improving police behavior.

Thirty-five desperate children from Colombia, Venezuela and Nicaragua limped into Pastor Eleuterio González’s refugee shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, last Saturday.

"The children arrived dehydrated and with callouses on their feet, because—like their parents—the coyotes forced them to hand over their sneakers and shoes if they had nothing to pay with," said González, pastor of Iglesia Valle de Beraca in Matamoros and the main contact between the immigrants and the Tamaulipas state government.