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Venturing out to Juarez: All-women mission trip is tiring, but soul-strengthening Mary Jacobs, Nov 3, 2008
UMR PHOTO BY DONNA BEARDEN
Amigas team up to work on the roof.
By Mary Jacobs Staff Writer
I was on a pilgrimage and didn’t know it.
On a recent sunny afternoon, I turned up at the airport in El Paso, Texas, to join 38 other women for “Amigas de Amor,” an annual all-female mission trip to Juarez, Mexico.
“What am I doing here?” I kept asking myself. I don’t enjoy construction work. I hated leaving my 16-year-old daughter, my circle of supportive single girlfriends and my bed at home with the pillow-topped mattress.
When anybody asked why I’d decided to go on this mission trip, all I could think to say was, “Because I’ve just gotten a divorce, and I’ve never been on a mission trip before.”
Looking around at the other women assembling with me at the airport curb, I wondered if any of them had better reasons for being there. They had flown in from Kansas, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia and other parts of Texas. There were young single twenty-somethings, grey-haired grandmothers and everything in between.
And there was me: a slightly overweight middle-aged woman, a newly divorced ex-wife, a mom whose oldest child had just left for college. I was fighting feelings of being redundant and past my prime, and wrestling with fears about what the future might hold. I’d been fearful even about the trip itself after reading news reports of drug violence and lawlessness in Juarez.
But having agreed to go, there I was, crossing into Mexico and scanning the horizon of Juarez, gilded by the afternoon sunlight. With its odd jumble of gleaming maquiladoras and makeshift shacks, nothing about the city seemed menacing.
Our four vans lumbered into Zaragoza, a suburb of Juarez, and we pulled into the courtyard of a church and a small cluster of homes.
Our hosts, pastors Valente and Antonia Reyes, greeted us warmly, as if we were family. After dinner, we gathered in the sanctuary for worship.
Most of the prayers and the sermon, in Spanish, escaped us, but we clapped and swayed to the lively music, smiled at the rambunctious way the children danced and chanted along with worship leader as she repeated, “Amen! Hallelujah!”—words that became the Amigas mantra for the rest of the trip.
The next morning, we awoke at 6 a.m. to the singsong of the tamale man touting his wares via the loudspeaker on his truck. We piled into the vans and rode to the work site, Templo Nueva Esperanza (“Temple of New Hope”), a small church in San Augustin. Our assignment: construct two buildings for Sunday school classrooms.
Over the next three days, we sawed and hammered, carried and lifted. We shoveled sand in the hot sun. We stretched chicken wire and slathered stucco.
On Sunday morning, our last day, we discovered as the congregation arrived for worship that the church had been using a beaten-up old van as the children’s Sunday school classroom.
We went back to work with renewed vigor. Finally, with the project completed, we gathered with the congregation, giving thanks for their hospitality and for the opportunity to serve, and piled back into our four white vans.
Back home, I struggled to answer when people asked, “How was the trip?” It was a great group of women, a lot of hard work, an interesting experience. What else to say?
The photos from the trip provided my answer. They remind me of what warmed my heart and what I’ll keep with me from Juarez for many years to come:
An image of women of the church leading worship on our first night, dressed in red tops and white skirts. Some were shabby and mismatched, but the cobbled-together “uniforms” reminded me of the incredible resourcefulness of the women we encountered on our trip.
A photo of Antonia, serving us a delicious dinner of handmade tamales after our first day of work. A reminder of how she and her husband are extending radical hospitality every day—with virtually no resources—caring for people victimized by drug violence, carving out an oasis of love in the middle of a war zone.
A picture of Susanna and Blanca, two members of Nueva Esperanza, who worked alongside us every day in the hot sun. They live in poverty that would paralyze most Americans with utter despair, yet reflect the name of their church, New Hope, as they work tirelessly to create a new place for their children to study God’s word.
And then there were photos of the Amigas—my sweaty, tired comrades in our stucco-stained work clothes. None of us were fashionably dressed; few of us were model-thin or young and fresh-faced, but we were getting the job done, and we radiated a sturdy beauty that makes the images in Vogue seem silly and self-indulgent by comparison.
Don C. Richter, author of Mission Trips That Matter, tells me that my post-divorce instincts were not so unusual. Many people going through life transitions, he says, are drawn to mission trips. “Reaching out and serving others gets us out of ourselves,” he says.
And that’s what happened. I traveled into fearful territory and returned with my fears in proper perspective. I toiled in a place called “New Hope” and came home chastened over the cynicism and doubt I’ve allowed to take root in my heart. I wore out my body, but returned with my spirit a little stronger.
Scripture tells us that hope deferred makes the heart grow sick. From Juarez, my heart came back a little healthier.
Or as Mr. Richter put it in his paraphrase of Martin Luther King Jr.: “Everyone can be healed, because everyone can serve.”
UMR PHOTO BY DONNA BEARDEN
Looking around at the other women assembling with me at the airport curb, I wondered if any of them had better reasons for being there. They had flown in from Kansas, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia and other parts of Texas. There were young single twenty-somethings, grey-haired grandmothers and everything in between. 
Our hosts, pastors Valente and Antonia Reyes, greeted us warmly, as if we were family. After dinner, we gathered in the sanctuary for worship. 
On Sunday morning, our last day, we discovered as the congregation arrived for worship that the church had been using a beaten-up old van as the children’s Sunday school classroom. 
A picture of Susanna and Blanca, two members of Nueva Esperanza, who worked alongside us every day in the hot sun. They live in poverty that would paralyze most Americans with utter despair, yet reflect the name of their church, New Hope, as they work tirelessly to create a new place for their children to study God’s word. 
And that’s what happened. I traveled into fearful territory and returned with my fears in proper perspective. I toiled in a place called “New Hope” and came home chastened over the cynicism and doubt I’ve allowed to take root in my heart. I wore out my body, but returned with my spirit a little stronger. 
