Mission to Mission

I and 34 other Second Bers have just returned from our mission trip to Mission, TX, where we built a home for and along with Augustine and Laura Tejada.

Augustine is a day labor carpenter, who like so many others down in the Valley is doing all he can to provide a simple living for his family here in America. He, Laura, and the kids have been living in an old trailer behind the Baptist church we work with down there. Pastor Omar keeps the trailer open for families just like Tejadas. They are los pobres de la tierra - the poor people of the land. Yet with assistance from Pastor Omar, they managed to scrape together enough money to buy a small lot at the end of a cul-de-sac just west of the church. It was on that lot that we built their new home.

By the time we arrived Augustine and Pastor Omar had already poured the foundation. From there we went to work - building the frame, raising the trusses, putting down the roof, siding the exterior, plumbing and wiring the interior, setting the windows. Watching a house go up in a week is an amazing thing to behold.

And yet, it took a lot more than a week. It actually took months of planning and fundraising. And it took more than 35 of us. Thirty-five of us went down to Mission, but our whole church built the house.

On Wednesday we took a little time in the morning to pray over the home we were building. We took markers and wrote prayers and words of blessing on the still-exposed studs. It occurred to me as I stood there in the midst of the Tejadas's new living room that we were building more than a house. With my marker I scribbled the following from the Apostle Paul on one of the beams:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

The last thing we did to the house was hang the doors and install the locks. Then on what will be the front porch, we gave Augustine and Laura the keys to their new home. Pastor Omar translated as Augustine said thanks through a combination of Spanish, broken English and tears. He talked about the centurion in the scriptures.

"The centurion said he was 'not worthy' to have Jesus come into his home," Augustine said. "I have not had a home worthy of welcoming Jesus. But you have given me a home. Now I am worthy."

We had not only built a house for a family. We built a home for the Lord.

In fact, last week down in Mission we built the very Kingdom of God.

Passing of the Matriarch

Thelma Wright, the oldest and dearest woman of my previous church, died last week. I had the privilege of serving as her and her husband's pastor for almost five years. I shall never forget the smell of the giant wood burning stove in their kitchen. Nor shall I ever forget their gentle, Christian character. The following is a letter I wrote in the wake of Thelma's passing. The letter was read at Thelma's funeral Saturday.

As someone who had the privilege of being your parents' pastor I want to express my deepest condolences to you, to the rest of the Wright family, and to the whole United Church of Colchester. This woman's passing is a great loss and I wish I could be present to grieve with you all in person. Without that opportunity, I am praying this letter might help me in my grief and perhaps you also.

After receving Seth's phone message about yall's mom I hung up and turned to my aunt who was over at the house watching the kids. "Well," I said, "the matriarch of my Colchester church just passed." My aunt looked up at me from the table and said, "You mean the little lady standing at the door?"

And there you have it. Thelma Wright, the little lady, whose quiet, unassuming way, always made a bigger impression than one might guess. For instance, I remember visiting her and Doug one day and asking about the Vermont-Harlem project, a program which brought hundreds of black kids from Harlem to Vermont in an "intentional experiment in race relations" during the 40s, 50s and 60s. I asked them if they knew if anybody from the United Church of Colchester ever hosted any of these children. Thelma looked at Doug and then at me, "Well, we did," she said so matter-of-factly.

That was them. That was them and that whole generation which I had the privilege to know and pastor - Bud and Harley, and Pete and Marion Shangraw. Theirs was what they called a "secret faith" - meaning they never let their right hand know what their left was doing. And yet, it was their simple, steadfast faith which truly made them the salt of the earth.

Doug and Thelma had a special marriage. I remember when Doug died ya'll had to teach your mom to pump gas. Becky Munson joked with me that if Thelma had passed first they would have had to teach Doug to make a sandwich! It is unimaginable for today's generation to conceive of a woman not knowing how to pump her own gas, but for their generation it was a division of labor that worked. Thelma was Doug's helpmate - not in a dominated, burdened sense - but rather in a sense of true complimentarian beauty. And Doug was the spiritual leader of the home - not in a dominating, abusive sense, but in a sense which truly reflected Christ's love for the church. Two had become one flesh in Doug and Thelma Wright. They were partners.

When Doug went on to glory Thelma missed her partner so. The house was never the same. And she looked forward to the day they would be joined again together in the house of the LORD.

I used to drive by and sometimes pick her up to get her out of the house. I remember we were driving down Main St. and as we passed by the cemetery where Doug was buried there on the North - oldtimers called it the Methodist cemetery - she looked over at it and surprised me by raising her arm, waving, and saying, "Hi Douglas."

At first I thought maybe that wasn't good, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was her faith speaking. She knew she could still say "hi" because above all things she knew Doug, her partner, is still alive with Christ.

And so, today, we can know the same about Thelma.

On the Sunday of Doug's funeral - either at that morning's service or later at the service itself - we sang "Faith of our Fathers". I didn't grow up singing that song here in Texas and just recently learned why. It was written by a Vermonter who fought for the North in the Civil War. So go figure. Along with taking our dignity, the war of Northern aggression robbed us Southerners of some great hymnody as well. But the lyrics from that immortal song have now become a great prayer for me. And I attribute that to the quiet, unassuming, yet giant faith of saints like your mom and dad.

Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death

And now we go on - me and you and the rest of the kids and all the grandkids and the whole congregation in Colchester - and we look forward to that day when we shall be met again by the little lady at the door.

God be with you all.

Distracting Worshipers

There has been a lot of discussion recently about a church in North Carolina which allegedly escorted a mother and her special needs child out of church because the child was causing a "distraction" during worship.

Irie has an interesting post about a visit she recently made to a worship service for people with special needs. Apparently distractions are quite welcome there.

Question. Was it a distraction when those dudes tore the roof off the house church in order to bring their disabled friend to Jesus (see Mark 2) or did nobody notice?


Here's the link to Irie's blog post:

Faith Report: On distractions and special needs

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.