121025 Hispanic Ministry Report

To the Rappahannock Baptist Association at the Fall Meeting

Kilmarnock Baptist Church, Kilmarnock VA

The week before last Gabi, a dear friend whom we’ve come to know and love (and with whom we’ve shared her growing family) sent me a message asking if I’d be willing to take her up to the Mexican Consulate in DC so she and her husband could renew their passports. After checking my calendar, I told her I’d be glad to.

Gabi is unique, as any of us are unique individuals. But there is one thing that sets her apart in my mind, from a good many of the other women we have come to know. She is from the Federal District of Mexico – the equivalent of our District of Columbia, but it’s not that. She completed High School and if I remember correctly, has done some of her undergraduate work. Though that is relatively rare among the folks we work with, hers is not the only instance of that being the case. What sets her apart is her demeanor – or her manner, I should say. She is confident, self-assured, and speaks to us as we prefer – as equals.

I’m used to being addressed as “Don” Kenny, or “Padre” Kenny, or simply “Padre”. Which I think I’ve shared with you before is just a bit unsettling coming from a Baptist identity in terms of my role as Pastor and to be addressed as ‘Father’ – I appreciate the intent and the respect with which it is used, though the ecclesiastical label that resonates of hierarchy chafes a bit on these Congregationalist ears.

Gabi doesn’t call me by any of those titles. To her, I am just ‘Kenny’. It may not seem like much, but it is significant enough to my mind to give me a sense of relief when I speak to her and hear it from her. In thinking about it,  I think what I’ve come to understand about the underlying dynamic that that speaks to IS that sense of equality – that I – that WE – try to communicate in the work of the ministry is in essence what Paul touches on in his letter to the Galatians – about there being neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor free, male nor female – that in Christ we are all brothers and sisters on equal footing.

Time and again, people asking me to intercede in prayer for them have approached me, and in the course of the request, the reason is stated as being ‘God hears your prayers for SURE.’ That self-disassociation that happens when someone tells themselves that God is not as attentive to their prayers, so they should go find someone who God WILL listen to, is a terribly sad thing. It tells me that their understanding of God is of a God who gauges their worthiness by a measure other than the self-giving, self-sacrificing love that God showed himself to BE in the person of Jesus Christ.

But when Gabi talks to me and addresses me as simply ‘Kenny’, or calls Leslie, ‘Leslie’, there is an underlying understanding that that egalitarian impulse of the Gospel is there. I realize that for the most part, the titles used to address me are more signs of respect, but in a significant number – perhaps a majority of those cases, it is more, and goes deeper, than simply respect – it speaks to a view of our roles as being different because of what we do – that because I am a minister and a pastor I have an inside track on God – a direct line.

That is something that I have to constantly be disavowing. Many of the folks who are regulars at our gatherings – who’ve become that ‘core congregation’, as it were, have begun to grasp the concept. In part because Leslie and I don’t pretend to be something we’re not. We share with them our own struggles: our hardships and challenges in raising a family, keeping food on the table making ends meet and raising a family. They’ve watched us weather losses and hardships, health challenges and the stuff of life that gets thrown at anyone. And we’ve been there to sit beside them when THEY have gone through those same experiences; to pray together for strength and courage, peace and comfort for whatever it is.

A few weeks ago I drove to an address just off River Road in Lancaster to pick up Isidra Arellanes to either bring her to a gathering or to take her to get her driver’s license. She and her family welcomed Leslie and me to their home in Chimalhuacan on our first trip to Mexico back in 2005, and she hosted the construction team that my friend Don Bell and I met up with that June when we built the rooms for Romualda, her neighbor.  Isidra and I have a similar relationship to the one we have with Gabi, in terms of how we refer to each other. But our relationship with Isidra has had more opportunities to deepen, to the point where we consider each other family. We’d been in touch several times over the phone, and our conversation picked up where it left off. I asked her how her sister in law was doing now, spiritually, five years out from having lost her husband when he drowned trying to come across the border. Isidra’s answer was affirming: she told me ‘Mine has learned to depend on God – her faith was always strong, but it has grown stronger over these last five years – because there were times when no one could be there for her BUT God.’ … Isidra paused, and then, kind of from out of the blue, she said ‘Kenny, if I knew I could come and go, rather than depend on being on a contract’, I would be a Baptist.’ In my mind I thought ‘you already are.’ What she was saying was about her identity, and how that ties into what she’d call destiny.

There is a freedom that comes in knowing Christ that releases you from preconceived notions of what your place in society is, what you are able to do, and what you are not supposed to do. I think that is what Isidra was speaking of. What I am hoping she’ll understand is that that freedom is not dependent on a label, but on the relationship that is living and growing in her with God through Christ.

Gabi and her husband Chevo are getting their passports taken care of in order to get things in process to request their children’s passports and documentation, and then to get them registered as Mexican citizens because sometime in the next few months they will be moving back home to Mexico. When I think about that I get a knot in my stomach, because I know I’ll be saying goodbye to another family that have come to be very dear to me – to us. There is sorrow at that prospect, but there is also a knowledge that they are going back having come to know and see an expression of faith – not just through us – but others in the community and in the Association – that embodies a God who loves and cares and gives in a way that says faith is a way of life, not just a set of propositions, it is a living thing, not a dusty set of rituals.

Thank you for helping us do that and be that, by being that yourselves.     

Hispanic Ministry Report to the RBA EXECOM

120927

Irvington Baptist Church, Irvington VA

When I sat down to write tonight’s report, it ended up being more of a devotional thought than an actual ‘REPORT report’, so, let me preface this by letting you know that, through the generosity of your churches, we were able to provide school supplies and backpacks to nearly one hundred children this fall, so thank you for that.

We continue to do what we’ve been doing all along – the food pantry, the clothes closet for newborns and babies, getting people to appointments – primarily pediatric appointments – as well as helping people get to court when that becomes necessary.

So … here we go:

¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been going through the letter of James on Sunday mornings at Jerusalem. This passage was part of the text a couple of weeks ago, from the second chapter.

James makes us uncomfortable because of what would seem to border on a works-based message of salvation. It sounds like that might be what he is saying, but if we read the text closely, there is that all-important two letter word: IF. It sets up a conditional phrase – (is there an English teacher here? Is that the correct terminology?)  

Whether we are ministering to and in a community made up primarily of Anglos, or African Americans or Latinos – or whatever ethnicity might be present – this is something central to our identity as Baptist believers: what we DO comes out of who we ARE. More specifically, WHOSE we are. Our doing is in response to our understanding of our being the recipients of God’s grace. 

Doing has nothing to do with ATTAINING salvation. It has to do with responding in gratitude TO the saving action of God in Christ.

There’s a fundamental inversion of a rule by which the world operates. You earn what you get. You work for what you achieve.  That’s good and well for your general run-of-the-mill everything.

But it doesn’t apply when it comes to living out our faith and the REASON we live out our faith. Earlier in the letter, in chapter two, he writes this:

¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

What he is saying is that, when it comes to God’s action in the world in Jesus Christ, mercy, or love, trumps everything, including that ‘earning what you get’ rule.

Through your support of this ministry, what the RBA is allowing to happen is for that to be communicated in real and concrete ways to the folks who have not been exposed to that – either in their native culture, or in many instances in their religious tradition. One woman who is a faithful member of our community, and doesn’t measure much over 4 feet, 3 inches,  made the comment during one of our Bible studies at the beginning of August at Menokin church, “I didn’t grow up with a joy for the Lord. I never heard the message of the love that God has for us. THAT is why I so love being a part of this congregation!”

A final word, a quote from C.S. Lewis, my friend Randy Creath reminded me of them:

The rule for us all is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him [or her]." - C.S Lewis  

This being able to bring the message of grace and love that God has for us is a precious treasure. Thank you for allowing us to be the messengers.

Kenny and Leslie and the kids

Hispanic Ministry Report to the Spring Meeting of the RBA

Providence Baptist Church

I stand before you with a full heart.

This past Sunday I drove down to almost the very tip of River Road in Lancaster and picked up 5 women who had just arrived the night before from Mexico to pick crabs at Captain Tom’s Seafood for the next few months. I knocked on the back door of the house, and heard them talking to each other as one of them came to the door to open it.

When she did, we reached for each other and just hugged for a really long time.  We were both crying. You see, it’d been at least two years since we had seen each other, and at least four since she was last here. It was Isidra Arellanes – she goes by Yola.

She and her family hosted us when we traveled to their neighborhood outside Mexico City and built that store for her neighbor who had the son who is not able to care for himself so she could both care for him and provide for the family.

Isidra is the one that looked at Leslie and me on that first trip we made to Mexico back in 2005 and said ‘There needs to be a Baptist church in Chimalhuacan.’ She and her family have become family to US over the years.

The other woman I hugged and cried with was her sister in law Minerva. You may remember me telling you about her husband Chano drowning when he was trying to come here to work. That crossing was the first time he had ever tried something like that.

They’d left Chimalhuacan the previous Monday to travel to Monterrey to go through the interview process before coming across, and after spending a day traveling there, spent two days going through the process, then another three days on the road to Richmond. But when I asked them if they wanted to come to the gathering at Jerusalem, they readily agreed.

The words of institution weren’t spoken, and it wasn’t a little piece of bread and a sip of grape juice that was served, but it was a meal shared. We celebrated communion. 

So my heart is full of joy that they are back in our midst.

But my heart is full of sorrow as well. My friends Juan and Pedro were picked up by ICE agents a few weeks ago, and Juan’s wife has decided that she will be going back to Mexico with their children to be with him there. I will be taking them to the Mexican consulate in DC to help them get their passports in order next week. So we will be saying goodbye to one more family.

Pedro’s wife and family are trying to get the help of an attorney to see if they can work out a way for him to stay. That IS a possibility – at least in the short term – even as he is going through the deportation proceedings, BECAUSE he is in the system – and is by virtue of that fact a legally recognized individual, for whatever length of time it takes his case to be dealt with, he could be eligible to receive a work permit, a valid Social Security number, and by that be able to get a official Virginia driver’s license. That is what is happening with another friend of ours. His court date has been set for February 13, 2014. 

On a more local, immediate note, with the continuing economic struggles in the area, we are giving away more food from the food pantry that you have helped us stock, and we are looking towards next August to offer backpacks and school supplies to the families that still remain. A few have left, but there are still many who have found ways to stick around. I would encourage you to join in either one or both of those efforts as a continuing expression of our care for our neighbors in the Latino community.

We are also continuing to collect and give out welcome bags to the workers who come here on H2A or H2B visas to work in either the plant nurseries, vegetable farms, or crab or oyster houses around the Neck.  We can send you the handouts that explain what goes into them and how they are made.

That season – for the workers to be coming in – is ramping up. Please pray for their safety as they travel as well as while they are here, and for their families as they are separated from each other.

There are still lots of dates available to host Encuentros if you would like to do so, just let us know.

Thank you, for allowing us to partner with you in “being Christ’s presence” to people who are by definition living on the margins of our society. It is a privilege and a blessing beyond measure.

Reap What You Sow