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Dear friends,
What a gift it was to spend time with you at Davidson College PC this week! We are so grateful for the warm welcome, the smiles, and the interest with which you received us. It is an honor to serve as your PC(USA) Mission Co-workers on the US/Mexico border.
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Twenty years ago, before our two youngest children were born, we were blessed to accompany the farmers of Café Justo in birthing their vision of allowing their families to thrive on their lands.
Over the years many church families have helped the farming families live into the vision. Let us know if you are interested in participating in the 2023 Border-to-Border Delegation by emailing us. The trip offers the opportunity to meet the coffee farmers and experience the coffee growing process in person.
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The links in this e-letter share a bit more about other aspects of our ministry. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any follow-up questions or comments—we would love to hear from you.
Several folks inquired about how to order coffee from Café Justo. You can help Café Justo bring reconciliation to a divided world by ordering it here and drinking it at home or sharing it with your family and friends (see side bar and the brief Love Mercy, Do Justice article below to learn more).
The May 25th gathering will be our "going back to the border party" and will also be the debut of the new Café Justo book that we are working on during our interpretation assignment. Click here to pre-order Café Justo: 20 Years of Cultivating Relationships Across Borders (working title) whose estimated delivery date is June..
Thank you again for taking the time to come and hear a little of how God is at work in and through your sisters and brothers on the US/Mexico border.
Peace,
Miriam and Mark
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FRONTERA DE CRISTO AND CAFÉ JUSTO CREATED the "Love Mercy, Do Justice" initiative to provide coffee for hospitality centers across the US/Mexico border, on the Mexico/Guatemala border, and at shelters in the interior of the US. Thousands of women and men each week are greeted with a cup of coffee, a meal, and vital medical attention when they are repatriated into Mexico. Click Love Mercy, Do Justice to learn more.
In the meantime, why not order some coffee for yourself today? You will enjoy delicious 100% organic coffee cultivated, roasted, and shipped by the Café Justo cooperative. To order by mail instead of online, just download this form.
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Laura Labrada makes a frappe | |
Mission Dinner & Book Club | |
Wall Construction / Desert Destruction | |
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MANY FOLKS HAVE ASKED SPECIFICALLY about the environmental damage done by wall construction. Here are a couple of links that provide some images, as well as some organizations focusing on environmental issues on the border.
Devastation in the Borderlands: A photo collection by photographer John Kurc.
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American Scar: A 13-minute documentary film focusing on the damage caused to desert ecosystems by the construction of a barrier at the US–Mexico border.
Cuenca Los Ojos - a 121,000-acre protected area in the Sky Islands of Sonora, Mexico, located directly along the US-Mexico border. CLO's campaign against the current border wall describes the wall's profound negative impact on ecosystems.
Center for Biological Diversity The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Arizona, has 13 sites across the US and Mexico. They believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature—to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, they work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. This link leads to their campaign for no border wall and how the current border is damaging public lands, communities and sovereign tribal nations.
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2023 Border-to-Border Delegation: Travel with us to Chiapas, meet the coffee farmers, and experience the coffee-growing process. Download the registration form.
Taste of 2022: A Photo Journal, some highlights from 2022.
Facebook: Check us out on Facebook, and maybe even "like" us!
April FDC e-letter: If you'd like to receive Frontera de Cristo's monthly e-letter, there is a "join email list" button in the upper right of the e-letter.
FDC Overview: What Frontera de Cristo has been doing since its founding in 1984 as a ministry of the PC(USA) and the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico.
Mission Delegation Manual: We invite you to come and share life and ministry with us on the border for a few days. This manual tells as much of the story as we can put on paper. And you can visit our Mission Delegation Page on our web site. The rest? You gotta be there!
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Mission Connections Letters | |
As your PC(USA) Mission co-workers, Miriam and I write quarterly Mission Connections letters that share about how we experience God at work here on the border. Our latest one, "Preparing To Welcome Jesus" went online in November. If you'd like to receive them regularly there is a "Subscribe to Co-worker letters" in the links to our last two: | | |
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Is He Illegal?
This shares part of the story surrounding the death of Juan Diego Trejo Alonso, who was just 16 years old when he died crossing the desert.
“Is he illegal?” asked the 911 dispatcher.
“No, he is a human being created in the image of God, beloved by God. Send an ambulance now!” should have been my response. But that was not what I said. Click the title to continue reading
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Celebrations
This is our latest mission connections letter that highlights the Migrant Resource Center and Café Justo y Mas (the coffee shop).
What do you get when you cross a coffee co-op addressing root causes of migration, a drug rehab center providing opportunities for a new life for persons gripped by addiction, and a bi-national ministry cultivating relationships and understanding across borders and responding in faith to the realities of immigration and the drug culture?
Well, a coffee shop, of course!
Click the title to continue reading
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Café Justo
A few of our favorite coffee-flavored web sites and videos
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The Right to Stay Home: A Coffee Cooperative Slows Down Displacement. A new border story from Todd Miller. “Café Justo offers a border story like no other. It is a story not of walls, drones, and towers, but of international solidarity, and how a community tended to its own migration crisis.”
Love Mercy, Do Justice. As people of God, we are called in Micah 6:8 to “love mercy” and to “do justice,” but non-profit ministries with small budgets often feel forced to choose between the two. They can show mercy by demonstrating hospitality, but on a tight budget they may unknowingly buy supplies from unjust industries that take advantage of migrant workers and Mexican farmers. On the other hand, they could boycott those industries to act justly, but then they may be unable to buy the supplies they need to demonstrate merciful hospitality.
Frontera de Cristo’s Love Mercy, Do Justice initiative is working to change this narrative by helping ministries do both—to love mercy and to do justice—
with just a cup of coffee.
Learn more about our Love Mercy, Do Justice Initiative, and how you can be a part of this amazing ministry! And did we mention ordering coffee?
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Café Justo 20th Anniversary Photo Book. Café Justo celebrated its 20th anniversary in November 2022. You can see its history in photos for just $20 (shipping included) and learn how this amazing coffee co-op grew from just a few coffee farming families to the wide-reaching co-op that ships delicious organic coffee all across this country today. | |
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You love the coffee. Do you know the stories? They're fascinating, each in their own way. Please enjoy these short videos.
Soraida Santiago and Edmundo Ballinas: "Cafe Justo: Keeping Families Together."
Reconciliation Over a Cup of Coffee: The DouglaPrieta Story. God calls us into the reality that borders are places of encounter, opportunity, and hope. What do you know about our southern border?
Café Justo Overview. Hear how it all came together to form this great coffee co-op!
Dedication of Café Justo y Mas. We like to think of it as the greatest little coffee shop in the world! It was a partnership of Café Justo, Frontera de Cristo, and CRREDA (a drug and alcohol rehab center now called CATPSIC) to create a safe place for the youth of the community to hang out, and a place for CRREDA residents to work as they re-entered society after recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. And it works! And they serve terrific coffee drinks! And pastries. Oh, the pastries! Please enjoy this 5-minute video of our latest ministry initiative.
What Café Justo Means To Me--Bryce Wiebe, Presbyterian Hunger Program talks about coffee and connections. What relationships are we creating?
What Café Justo Means To Me--David Cifuentes, Coffee Grower. David is a father of young children and a Presbyterian elder. His father was a founding member of Café Justo whose vision was to create a business that would allow his son return from Florida.
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The Border, Family Separation, and the Churches' Responses
The Broader Picture
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Learn about the broader view nationally. We are involved. Will you be, too?
Statements and articles on President Biden's Proposed Asylum Transit Ban--
New Border Vision: Frontera de Cristo is the Arizona anchor organization of the Southern Border Communities Coalition. "A New Border Vision" is a framework for governing our borders that expands public safety, protects human rights, and welcomes all people who live, work or travel to the region.
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Journeying In Hope: This 2015 PC(USA) Immigration Office documentary includes interviews with well-known persons involved on the forefront of immigration and border issues in southern Arizona. It was here the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s began. "Sanctuary," says Rev. Alison Harrington, "is just what it means to be Christian--which is to say that it means to walk alongside the poor and those who are oppressed, and to find any way you can to be in solidarity with them." Hear from Rev. John Fife on how the Sanctuary Movement got started and what part the church has played in its success. "Sanctuary is not about finding refuge within four walls and a roof. It's about finding shelter within a community."
Testimony of Mark Adams Before the Border and Maritime Subcommittee of Homeland Security: This is dated testimony (6 years old), but contains the values with which Frontera de Cristo seeks to respond in faith to the realities of migration.
Between Crucifixion and Resurrection: A photo/video journal of the search for the place where Carmelo Cruz Marcos was shot and killed by one of our Border Patrol Agents. His mother, wife, sister, and children joined us for our weekly Healing Our Borders Prayer vigil when we made a cross in his memory.
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Interpretation Assignment | |
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Mark & Miriam are traveling the country this year on "Interpretation Assignment." We invite you to connect with them when they're at a church in your area.
View their speaking schedule for the year (subject to change). They welcome your sharing their schedule with friends and family in different parts of the country who might be interested in attending the events where they're scheduled to speak.
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Café Justo Video
Keeping Families Together
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