Elia Moreno is the executive director of the Texas Christian Community Development Network (TxCCDN). She is committed to helping people in their network understand the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Since she hadn't traveled to the border herself since she was a child, she sought the help of Brenda Kirk from the National Immigration Forum and Elket Rodríguez, CBF field personnel in the Rio Grande Valley.

It has been a little over a year since I made my first trip to the border for Fellowship Southwest. I’ve been back several times since and I’ve stayed in consistent contact with the pastors in our border network. Thanks to your generosity we’ve been able to maintain our support of their ministries and respond to unexpected critical needs.

Cintia Aguilar graduated from Baylor University’s dual degree graduate program in May 2022 with a Master of Social Work and a Master of Divinity. She was also an intern at the Center for Church and Community Impact last school year.

C3I is a close partner to Fellowship Southwest. Thanks to a generous grant, FSW financially supports a few of C3I’s interns each year. We were able to get to know all the interns fairly well, sharing the articles they wrote and the results of projects they focused on during the year.

A group from Second Baptist Church in Lubbock drove six hours south to Piedras Negras in early August. They had been there before. Three years ago they built and delivered 75 bunk beds to this shelter, run by Pastor Israel Rodríguez and his church, Primera Iglesia Bautista. This time they were coming with their trucks loaded with picnic tables.

Fellowship Southwest is proud to announce the addition of our new full time staff member. Anyra Cano will officially start her position as Director of Programs and Outreach on August 15. Anyra comes to Fellowship Southwest from Texas Baptist Women in Ministry where she served as coordinator, and Christian Latina Leadership Institute where she served as academic coordinator.

CAMERON:

Five years ago this summer I had just started a job working for a public affairs group with some dear friends. We had an exciting new client which they hired me to help out with. It was a network of churches and organizations brought together by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship all focused on mission and ministries in the Southwest. They were calling it “Fellowship Southwest.” My friends sought me out because of my experience with churches and my personal connections inside these networks. I was part of the team who would help strategize and assist with communications for this budding new organization.

There seems to be an assumption that fewer people will choose to emigrate from their homes in the wake of tragic migrant deaths they hear about along with us in the news. But these tragedies should not be used by politicians as a deterrence method. First of all, it doesn’t work. Secondly, it’s callous and inhumane.

With so many needs on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and restrictions from COVID on the decline, participating in a wide range of missions opportunities is now a welcome option for church groups through Fellowship Southwest.

Remain in Mexico no more. In the midst of so much legal uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Biden v. Texas that the President has discretionary authority to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the Remain in Mexico policy or MPP.

Fellowship Southwest enjoyed being in person at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly, for the first time since 2019. There were many wonderful experiences during the week, but a highlight was surely a quick afternoon gathering of supporters in a hotel suite.

Elket Rodríguez is now an officially commissioned field personnel on behalf of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for his transformative work on the United States-Mexico border. "Field personnel" is the preferred terminology by CBF for what is more commonly called a missionary. Elket's work encompasses mission work, but it is so much more. As an attorney and a minister, Elket offers trainings and workshops to migrants and asylum seekers to help them navigate the legal immigration system. He advises the network of border pastors supported by Fellowship Southwest on U.S. and Mexican immigration policy. And he represents CBF and FSW in national immigration advocacy coalitions.

¿Cómo lo hacemos? Esa es la pregunta que se hace el pastor Eleuterio González cada vez que piensa en su ministerio con los migrantes en Matamoros, México –al otro lado del Río Grande con Brownsville, Texas. Durante casi tres años, González y la congregación que pastorea, la Iglesia Valle de Beraca, se han levantado temprano en la mañana para alimentar, albergar, transportar y proteger a los migrantes en la ciudad fronteriza.

How do we do it? That question keeps lingering in Pastor Eleuterio González’s mind every time he thinks about his ministry to migrants in Matamoros, Mexico –across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. For almost three years, he and the congregation he pastors, Iglesia Valle de Beraca, have woken up early each morning to feed, shelter, transport and protect migrants in the border town.

On Friday June 3, Fellowship Southwest executive director Stephen Reeves received a call from Terry Burton, a leader in the Border Collaboration Network and FSW supporter, with the terrifying news that Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz had been kidnapped. Lorenzo is a dear brother to Fellowship Southwest and a member of our border pastor network. He receives monthly support from the Knox Fund for Immigrant Relief for the three shelters he operates in Nuevo Laredo and one in Monterrey where he shelters, feeds, protects, and safely transport migrants who find themselves with nowhere to go in northern Mexico. A kidnapping like this is something we have always feared, since Nuevo Laredo is known as the most dangerous city in North America because of cartel activity.

I am a gun owner. A Remington 870 pump 12 gauge shotgun to be exact. I bought it while I was in law school in Lubbock close to family land I could hunt on. I enjoy quail and dove hunting. They are part of my family history, culture, and tradition.

For more than two months, Red de Albergues para Migrante (the Migrant Shelter Network or RAM) –an organization that operates 24 shelters in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, primarily in Juarez but as far as 100 miles west in the desert, in the village of Palomas, across the U.S. Mexico border with Columbus, New Mexico– has had an unusual guest: Russian Elena Nazarova.

Ten days before the massacre in our own region, there was Buffalo. Friend and partner to FSW, Starlette Thomas, offers this reflection in Good Faith Media of what transpired at her mom’s local grocery store and the racist conspiracy theory behind the attack.

Last week I wrote about the four words we hope define Fellowship Southwest - faithful, thoughtful, courageous and kind. I hope these characteristics also define our public witness. How do we, as a faith-based organization speak and act in the public square in response to the suffering and injustice we see and hope to help alleviate?

What can we do with so many migrants? This question kept lingering for months in Eleuterio Gonzalez’s mind, while he witnessed the arrival of thousands of migrants in Matamoros, Mexico –across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas and the city where he pastors Iglesia Valle de Beraca. And the answer to that question was simple, but it required a bold commitment: opening the doors of church members’ homes to welcome migrants.

Keen observers of our weekly newsletter might have noticed something a little different last week. The four descriptive words displayed prominently at the top of each addition had changed. For a while now Fellowship Southwest has described ourselves as faithful, agile, ecumenical and kind. We still hope these all describe our ministry. But two of these words seem to describe more of how we want to do our work, rather than the characteristics we hope to embody.