Mission teams turn to Texas side of border as violence keeps U.S. groups out of Mexico

Violence and other concerns have led many U.S. groups to cancel short-term mission trips to Mexico, according to the Christian Chronicle’s Tamie Ross, who wrote from Alton, Texas. Ross said she personally knew of three trips canceled that summer and of one mission that was no longer guiding groups into the country.

Ross wrote that one possible alternative is the Rio Grande Valley, just short of the international boundary. She and her 11-year-old daughter, Kendall, spent a week with a team from the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston, which worked a mile or two from the border in Hidalgo County. The team partnered with the North Pharr Church of Christ.

North Pharr has fewer than 100 members, according to the report, but it has planted a dozen or so Churches of Christ in South Texas and northern Mexico. The congregation also oversees a large mission that draws work crews from across Texas and from states including Oklahoma and Kentucky.

Ross reported that North Pharr members are focused on improving the quality of life for their neighbors, 89 percent of whom are Hispanic. Under the church’s leadership, three to four houses are built each year for needy families, and many other homes are renovated, repaired, painted and made more livable. Teenage mission workers from the Memorial congregation painted five houses during the trip, and Vacation Bible School was held at the Alton Church of Christ with help from a youth group from Memorial. Such work reflects steady commitment to the task at hand (Colossians 3:23).

Ross, who had been on several spring break mission trips to Mexico, wrote that she found the U.S. side of the border comparable in many ways. She said the scenery and people felt familiar and that she had the experience she considered typical of Mexico trips, without needing a passport or facing the border-crossing anxiety she had experienced in recent years.

Ross wrote that she had intended to go as a worker rather than as a reporter for the Christian Chronicle. She said she filled a notebook during the trip, and that her photographs would be used in the report.

Source: Read the original report