On the tails of Hurricane Hanna’s punishing winds, the gentle breeze of God’s Spirit breathed new life into a Rio Grande Valley family.

Thanks in part to financial support from Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Disaster Response, CBF Texas has started helping two families rebuild their homes in colonias—poor unincorporated villages—near the U.S.-Mexico border, reported Jorge Zapata, associate coordinator of CBF Texas.

A “call from heaven” enabled Pastor Eleuterio González to help a desperately sick child in Matamoros, Mexico.

Supported by Fellowship Southwest, González and his church, Iglesia Valle de Beraca, feed and protect more than 1,600 immigrants living in the Alberca Chavez shelter, across the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville, Texas. They also minister in camps, where thousands of refugees live outdoors in tents.

On Sept. 12, González was engaged in his typical Saturday routine—providing food in the mammoth camp on the banks of the Rio Grande. An immigrant told him about a 9-year-old Honduran girl suffering from severe vomiting.

In mid-September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed it has expelled 8,800 unaccompanied immigrant children along the U.S.-Mexico border, based on COVID-19 emergency orders.

The children did not receive basic protections. They didn’t have access to legal counsel. They didn’t appear before immigration judges. They didn’t see social workers. Many were not registered, so their whereabouts is unknown. Many were left vulnerable to human trafficking.

These children crossed into the United States during a pandemic because of desperation cultivated by U.S. immigration policy. The government’s Migrant Protection Protocols—also known as “Remain in Mexico”—stipulate immigrants seeking U.S. asylum must wait in Mexico as they await the process.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced many nonprofits in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to shut down, Hearts4Kids rallied volunteers to take up the slack. And thanks to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship donors, the CBF Coronavirus Emergency Relief Fund fueled the effort for almost a month.

“H4K’s mission is to stay committed and focused to serve those who are suffering and hungry,” the ministry’s founder, Jorge Zapata, explained. “We knew at the beginning of the pandemic Rio Grande Valley families would be most affected because of their socio-economic status.”

Fellowship Southwest recently reworked our positioning statements to offer more clarity to our partners, donors and friends.

We worked hard with the FSW steering committee and other stakeholders, along with our friends at Upward Public Affairs, to create statements that reflect our commitment to serving God and neighbor throughout our region and also to express what makes us unique as an organization.

A calm head, a kind heart—and reasonable guards—combined to provide a birthday blessing for a Honduran family on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Last Sunday, Pastor Eleuterio González taught a biblical discipleship class at the Alberca Chávez shelter in Matamoros, Mexico. It seemed like a typical Sunday in the pastor's busy routine. Then everything changed in a heartbeat.

Through its extensive network of churches, missionaries and nonprofit partners, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship serves thousands of immigrants who live in the United States. They are not government statistics; we know them personally. They are our friends and neighbors—in colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border, Eastern Seaboard cities, and neighborhoods in-between.

Because we know them well, we know their stories. They have told us why they came to America—to make a better life for their kids, of course, but also to escape systematic violence, extortion, persecution, ecological degradation and starvation. We also know their dreams—not just to prosper personally, but to contribute to their adopted homeland, to work hard and to make life better for everyone around them.

Even before Hurricane Laura finished decimating the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast, one thing was clear—destruction meted out by Laura and her older sister, Hurricane Hanna, far exceeded resources to provide adequate response. So, your help is needed.

Category 4 Laura made landfall early Thursday morning, Aug. 27. At the time of this posting, disaster officials said accurate assessment of needs could not be made until winds died down.

(Photo: NY Times)

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.