The Colonias: our distant neighbors

On Saturday twenty-seven Second B adults and youth will load up and head south to Mission, Texas for our 6th-annual "Mission to Mission" work trip. Later in the week, I and a few others from Second B will join the crew and we will build a house for and alongside a family in the colonias of South Texas.

Colonia developments are a vast swath of rural residential areas running along the US/Mexico border. Colonias got their start as small communities for farmworkers employed by single ranchers and/or farmers. The Colonias as we know them today began emerging in the 1950s as developers bought up and sold large tracts of unimproved farmland to poor Mexican-Americans who could not afford homes in cities or access conventional home financing.

Colonia residents lack some of the most basic of living necessities such as potable water, sewer, and safe, sanitary housing. In fact, the colonias in Texas have the largest concentration of people living without basic services in the United States. Many colonia residents in Mission live in dilapidated trailer homes, shacks, and shanties. They simply do not have the economic means to build standard homes for themselves.

But they are able and willing to build with help. Notice in the first paragraph I wrote that we will build a house for and alongside a family. The building of these homes is a communal event. Second B provides much of the money and about three-quarters of the actual sweat labor. However, the homeowners work right alongside us. Fathers help their sons pour the foundation. Daughters hammer nails in their own future bedrooms. Mothers cook the authentic Mexican food that keeps all the workers happy. Even neighbors contribute. They come and hang the windows they will smile and wave through for years to come.

And I suppose that is what this whole Mission to Mission is all about - neighbors helping out neighbors.

A man once asked Jesus about the meaning of the word "neighbor". Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Surprisingly, the hero in the story is not a good Jew as might be expected, but rather a generous traveler from the foreign people of Samaria. Jesus' point was a provocative one. A true neighbor is anyone who is willing to help someone else out - even someone from a very different place and people.

Next week we will be in a different place and among different people. The colonias of South Texas are miles away in distance, culture, and circumstances. And yet, I am quite sure that when we are done building that house alongside one another, we will have no doubt about the true meaning of the word "neighbor".

Words from a song we sang in worship a couple of weeks ago come to mind as saying it all. It is a song about neighbors sung to Jesus:

Neighbors are rich and poor,
Neighbors are black and white,
Neighbors are near and far away.
These are the ones we should serve,
These are the ones we should love;
All these are neighbors to us and You.