Twenty-seven members of Clifton Presbyterian Church, ranging from a rising eighth-grader to a couple of retirees, spent last week just south of the border in Mexico. The trip may have been a get-away, but it wasn’t a vacation, as the congregants put in five days of hard labor, working with the Puentes de Cristo mission in the city of Reynosa. The church has sent a mission to Reynosa every other year for the last 10 years.
A number of companies from the U.S. and elsewhere have built factories around the city, and laborers come from as far as South America to find jobs there, said Pastor Lynn Stanton-Hoyle. "People come with very little. It’s very tough, particularly when they first get there," she said. Puentes de Cristo — "Bridges of Christ" — has been working in the community for 25 years, and Clifton Presbyterian formed a partnership with the mission after two church members traveled there to visit relatives 10 years ago, she said.
BY THE END OF last week, the members of Clifton Presbyterian Church had poured a concrete patio around a schoolroom, built the room's walls up and readied them for window and roof installation, and cleaned debris out of the school yard. They had torn down and rebuilt a low wall at a compound used by Puentes de Cristo, where they also did some painting, landscaping and trash clean-up. They had painted the dormitory where Puentes de Cristo put them up for the week, and they had helped to build a patio and done some landscaping at a local church.
At Sunday’s morning services, members of the group shared some of their experiences with the rest of the congregation while a slideshow ticked through pictures of the trip.
Stanton-Hoyle’s son, Eric, gave a brief, day-by-day account of the work week. "The thing I remember most about my first day there was tamping," he said, noting that filling in holes was hard work. The next day, his team cleared dirt and debris out of a churchyard to make room for a patio. "In the night, I dreamt of shoveling," he reported.
After his team spent the third day painting the dorm where they stayed, he and another group member spent the fourth day demolishing a wall with sledgehammers. "And that was my favorite job of the week," he said. By the end of the fifth day, said Stanton-Hoyle, he was too tired to shower before he lay down for a nap.
Christina Mero, whose team spent much of its time working on an elementary school, remembered teaching the children English colors and phrases and being surprised that they were not required to attend school beyond the sixth grade.
"FOR ME, this week, where I really saw God was in our team and in our group," Danny Mero told the congregation, noting that the travelers had enjoyed each other’s company, worked well together and accomplished what they set out to do.
Kim Sykes ones of the adults in the group, recalled getting locked out of the kitchen Sunday morning. She also remembered being uncertain whether it was her fault that the entire block lost electricity Thursday night while she was trying to figure out which switch controlled the lights and which was for the fan. In the end, she said, "the lesson for me was to enjoy the time together and the relationships."
David Wright, another of the group parents, said that before leaving he had checked online to see if he would get cell phone reception in that area, hoping to stay in touch with his job. At church the next morning, the pastor had spoken about "who you’re really serving in life," he said. "It spoke to me in a strong way about my life and my priorities."
He never did get reception to make a phone call. "That was a blessing, I think, that God had given me," he said, adding that it allowed him to be fully present to the people around him.