Mission Dell City 1

Picture slideshow available at 2911students.com, might not be viewable in email.

Dell City is a small, very small farming community 100 miles outside of El Paso. It is in the shadow of the Guadelupe Mtns the highest points in Texas. There is “hidden water” below the ground that allows for irrigation and large fields of commercial crops. The town is made up of about 300 people. You should look at the satellite image of Dell City with all of the desert around but in this valley green crop circles. Pastor Sosa has been serving as a mission pastor for two years here, driving out and conducting services. They started in a home and now meet in the community center on Thursday evenings.

We arrived on Thursday to see a town and some families in crises. Last Saturday two 20 year old boys were killed in a incident involving US and Mexican border. They were running from police in El Paso and took their car in a speed chase across the border. They were shot and killed in the incident. We arrived and the families were looking for a place to conduct a funeral. Every church turned them down in the process, their own Catholic Mission without a priest said no along with two other churches. Pastor Sosa was here to offer our services. The funeral was to be Friday evening. We offered for all of the kids of affected families to come to the park. Ford and Andrew were practicing to play guitars for the service. The Anglo First Baptist Church allowed Sosa's congregation to use the facility. This was a huge thing as there had not been a good relationship between the Anglo and Hispanic churches. Last year we had met Raymundo a 20 something young man, whose mom and dad would not come to church with him. By the time that we had left the park events last year, they had agreed to go to church with him. A year later I see Pastor Sosa ministering to this same family who was so standoffish just a year ago. They were part of the family of one of the young men. The efforts of Sosa's congregation and the renewed connection between the two church congregations had shown the town something big. However the body was not released until Saturday. By that time the Catholic Church had changed its opinion and allowed the funeral to be held there. However, the community and families saw the response of these two churches to the crises.

We setup an outdoor vbs at the park in Dell City. The people come and stay at the park, and it is hard to establish a start and end time. On Saturday we started at 10am and we ended up rotating people at the park because the people were not leaving. We stayed at the park form 10am to 5pm! The house that a member allowed us to stay in for the weekend is two blocks from the park. We setup crafts, games, song time, and Bible study. We gave out Spanish and English Bibles and other materials that they were very excited to get.

Jaime Perez, Esmerelda's father talked some of the group members to go run the DC Mountain with him. It is a small mountain outside of town that has the letters 'DC' written in rock on them. The incline is sharp and the trail is filled with rocks. Chase Mik and Covey Bonnema kept pace with Jaime who runs it everyday up and down up to ten times. Molly, Raigan and Kellie made several trips. Griff and Gunner made one trip, I took pics and he enjoyed a pack of Cheetos that he brought up.

After that we headed to the park to play softball with the church members. We mixed the teams of DC and VA people. It was a fun game of softball that we played from 7:30 to 10:30pm!

 
Trackbacks
  • No trackbacks exist for this post.
Comments
  • No comments exist for this post.
Leave a comment

Submitted comments are subject to moderation before being displayed.

 Enter the above security code (required)

 Name (required)

 Email (will not be published) (required)

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.