With the U.S. presidential inauguration just six days away, Congress already in session and state legislatures gearing up, Fellowship Southwest is looking toward the future with hope. Of course, our ultimate trust is in God and not government. But we pledge to pray for and promise to work toward cooperation that results in justice and in shared compassion for people in need.

Cientos de niños y familias pobres a lo largo de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México fueron abrazados por el amor de Cristo durante estas fiestas navideñas gracias al corazón y el esfuerzo del Fellowship Southwest y sus colaboradores. Junto a a la Red Latina de CBF y Hearts4Kids, Fellowship Southwest sembró alegría en albergues para migrantes y campamentos de refugiados, así como en las colonias y barrios marginados del sur de Texas, dejando una estela de sonrisas en las caras de algunas de las personas más vulnerables en Norteamérica.

Es triste e irónico que en este año el Día de los Reyes o la Epifanía, fecha en que se celebra la revelación de Jesús como la luz del mundo, coincida con uno de los días más oscuros en la historia de los Estados Unidos.

Hundreds of families along the U.S.-Mexico border felt loved by Christians during this holiday season, thanks to Fellowship Southwest and its partners. They spread the joy of Christ in Mexican migrant shelters and refugee camps, as well as South Texas colonias, putting smiles on the faces of some of the most vulnerable people in North America.

Fellowship Southwest has taken the next steps in its organizational maturity, maintaining its historically close relationship to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship while embracing its responsibility for long-term vitality and expanding its regional, cultural and ecumenical outreach.

Tragically, the sight of domestic terrorists marauding the U.S. Capitol should not have surprised anyone.

Remember back to last year when the words “quarantine” and “pandemic” felt like words out of a historical fiction novel, and no one had ever spoken the words “social distancing?” This year has given us new vocabulary and new meaning for old language as well, like “fear” and “love.” “Don’t live in fear” and “Love your neighbor,” both phrases that my brand of Christianity prescribes closely to, now associate with two opposing camps—maskers or anti-maskers.

This Friday, Dec. 18, is International Migrants Day. To help us understand immigrants, Fellowship Southwest’s Elket Rodríguez interviewed nine Christian immigrants in different stages of their immigration process.

These immigrants represent different countries, races, ethnicities and religious traditions. Some are asylum seekers living in migrant shelters in Mexico, just across the southern border of the United States. Others have legal status in the United States and wait for completion of their naturalization process. Most have immigrated to the United States and joined the fabric of this nation. One of them lives under the uncertainty of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. All of them are migrants willing to share the role that faith and the church play or played during their migrant journey.

“Everyone is an immigrant,” Abigail Thant insists. “We all come from somewhere, at some time.”

Abigail’s voice rings with joy as she laughs. We hear her laughter in the CBF Oklahoma, where she serves as an intern while working on a college degree.

Moderación, pragmatismo y renovación es lo que se debe esperar de la plataforma migratoria de la entrante administración pública. El presidente electo Joe Biden ha anunciado un ambicioso plan para atender el tema migratorio en sus primeros 100 días en el cargo prometiendo descontinuar:

Moderation, pragmatism and renovation can be expected from the Biden Administration’s immigration platform.

President-elect Joe Biden has announced an ambitious immigration plan for his first 100 days in office. He intends to discontinue:

It was the first week of January 2009. My wife, Debbie, opened the front door at 6:15 a.m. to retrieve the newspaper from our driveway. In the darkness, she passed what she thought was a cat. Our dog, Yoda, who normally followed her, remained motionless at the door just inside the house. Debbie quickly knew why.

A skunk was scurrying from our living room to the kitchen, where he/she scampered laps around the island before heading back to the living room. Debbie screamed at me safely tucked in bed upstairs, “Glen, there’s a skunk in the house!”

Your church is encouraged to invite a woman to preach in February and to participate in the Baptist Women in Ministry Month of Preaching, announced BWIM Executive Director Meredith Stone.

BWIM launched the annual emphasis in 2007. The Month of Preaching “has been a deeply significant source of joy and discovery for many churches as they have celebrated the giftedness of women,” Stone noted.

Este ha sido un año difícil pero gratificante para Jorge Zapata, coordinador asociado de CBF Texas, director del ministerio de ayuda a inmigrantes de Fellowship Southwest y fundador de Hearts4Kids, una organización sin fines de lucro que sirve a las comunidades más pobres del Valle del Río Grande.

Una pandemia, un huracane y miles de familias inmigrantes hambrientas a ambos lados de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México han redefinido el ministerio de Zapata en 2020.

This has been a tough-yet-rewarding year for Jorge Zapata‚ associate coordinator of CBF Texas, Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief director and founder of Hearts4Kids, a nonprofit ministry that serves the poorest communities in the Rio Grande Valley.

A pandemic, a hurricane and thousands of hungry immigrant families on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have redefined Zapata’s ministry in 2020.

La identificación de una iglesia Hispana en Houston con el nivel de vulnerabilidad en el que viven las familias migrantes la impulsó a apoyar un ministerio que sirve a refugiados en Matamoros, México, justo al otro lado de la frontera con Brownsville, Texas.

Y es que mientras el pastor Eleuterio González se veía forzado a cerrar un refugio para migrantes en Matamoros por órdenes del gobierno como respuesta al brote del COVID-19 en la ciudad, el pastor David Deulofeu se preparaba para bendecir el ministerio de González con provisiones para el invierno, vestimenta, abrigos, mantas, toallas y ropa de cama, así como comida y material escolar.

Shared understanding of weakness and vulnerability prompted a Houston church to support a ministry to refugees in Matamoros, Mexico—just across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

As Pastor Eleuterio González responded to the COVID-19 outbreak that forced him to close an immigrant shelter in Matamoros, Pastor David Deulofeu prepared to bless González’s ministry with winter provisions—warm clothes, blankets, towels and bed linens—as well as food and school supplies.

As 2020 recedes with each darkening day, families the world over might pretend (who could blame them?) their Advent candles represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Imagine little Cindy Lou, reading the initial Advent meditation: “Every night this week, we will light the first purple Advent candle, Death. Next week, we will light the second purple candle, Famine, followed by the pink candle, War. And then, the week before Christmas, we will light the final purple candle, Conquest.”

Thinking about Thanksgiving from the sinkhole otherwise known as 2020 seems at once harder and easier than it has in years past.

Unless you got married or had a baby or backed into a positive life-transforming event, you’ll probably agree 2020 is the sorriest year in most of our lifetimes. But it also has revealed—in contrast—the simple pleasures and joys for which we can be thankful in any year.

God always has a plan, Pastor Carlos Navarro and Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville believe. And the Nov. 15 dedication of the church’s brand-new immigrant respite shelter proves their point.

The shelter—funded almost exclusively by Fellowship Southwest—prepares IBWB to respond to refugee surges on the U.S.-Mexico border, Navarro said.