This week’s borderland update from The Rev. Canon Lee Curtis, Canon to the Ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, includes updates on...

This week’s borderland update comes from The Rev. Canon Lee Curtis, Canon to the Ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande! Lee shares updates from our Canvas of Hope event, opportunities to volunteer with our partner organizations in El Paso, and an exciting update on our new donation platform!

This week’s borderland update comes in the form of an interview with Bishop Michael Hunn and Bridge Chaplain Ana Reza! Bishop Hunn and Ana talk about the role of Bridge Chaplain, the changes in immigration and policy enforcement over the last year, and how Rio Grande Borderland Ministries (RGBM) is supporting vulnerable communities on both sides of the border.

As supporters of Rio Grande Borderland Ministries (RGBM), we hope you will join us for our volunteer-led art auction, Canvas of Hope, on May 1st from 1-2:30 pm MDT! Canvas of Hope will feature music, poetry, storytelling, and a live virtual auction. To register and learn more, click the button below.

Rio Grande Borderland Ministries (RGBM) is helping to ensure our migrant neighbors are welcomed with dignity. For an update, please see this video from The Rev. Canon Lee Curtis, Canon to the Ordinary, Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande:

This week’s blog post features another borderland update video from The Rev. Canon Lee Curtis, Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of the Rio Grande. Learn more about the first family from our sister shelter in Ciudad Juarez crossing into El Paso, RGBM’s collaboration with Annunciation House, and opportunities to make an impact.

You may have already seen the Borderland Update from The Rev. Canon Lee Curtis, Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of the Rio Grande, on our RGBM social media accounts or through the diocesan newsletter. If not, we encourage you to watch the video. As the humanitarian crisis continues to change and unfold at the border, RGBM will be a response to this crisis, and we will continue to update you regularly through these videos.

After many months of not being able to go to the shelters because of the pandemic, we were able to gather together virtually with the community of asylum seekers in the San Mathias shelter in Juarez on Epiphany. Through conversation and prayer, connected in community by a computer screen, we celebrated the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. A projector installed last month by one of our volunteers, Douglas Winter, made the virtual experience extra special. In our hearts we felt God alive!

The Rio Grande Borderland Ministries team is in the process of mapping our assets in preparation for the inevitable policy changes to come with the next Presidential administration. We are preparing for the possibility of a large influx of asylum seekers arriving at our shelters in Juarez and Ojinaga, Mexico and an increased number of unaccompanied minors released from detention in the US. We are also assessing the implications of a mass influx of asylum seekers making their way into Texas and New Mexico with the reopening of the border.

I am the fourth generation priest in my family. With that comes all sorts of predictable complications and even more stories! When I was a little girl, growing up at Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia, my father would get up in the wineglass pulpit, look out at parishioners and tell the same old story of the same Christmas pageant… every single year. My sister and I would look on from our regular pew and roll our eyes. The congregation would chuckle—they knew what was coming.

A few years ago I had my first interaction with people who had arrived from Central America, who traveled on the roofs of trains or in the junction of the wagons, like the migrants we often read about in newspapers who travel to the border in pursuit of the American dream. The migrants I met told me of the tragedies of losing their loved ones. While on the train they’d fall asleep, fall and the train passes over them, leaving them dismembered or lifeless.

Over the course of six weeks, we will read, reflect, and pray for the humanitarian crisis unfolding on the US/Mexico border. Our primary text will be Miguel de la Torre’s book The Immigration Crisis: Towards an Ethics of Place. The reading group will begin meeting TODAY on October 28th. Below is the Zoom information for the Sin Fronteras Reading Group. To learn more about the reading schedule, please see the full lesson plan here. Questions? Email David at david@azdiocese.org or Mike at michaelwallens@gmail.com

Hear about how RGBM Volunteer Doug Winter ignited his passion for activism and immigrant justice and found his way to volunteering in shelters in Juarez after hanging up his career of 30 years.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to head over to the Hometown podcast! The podcast is now in its fourth season. Check out episode two for an interview with Rio Grande Borderland Ministry! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, and Spotify.

The Hometown podcast is now in its fourth season, and features the Rio Grande Borderland Ministry! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google Play, and Spotify.

Hometown Season 4, Episode 2 features our interview with The Rev. Mike Wallens, co-chair of the Rio Grande Borderland Ministries (RGBM) for the Diocese of the Rio Grande, and Nellie Fagan, project coordinator for Rio Grande Borderland Ministries (RGBM) through Blueprint.

My name is Pamela Warren Williams. I’m a poet and writer living in Silver City, New Mexico near the Mexican border. The closer you get to that border, the more is revealed to you about its realities. I went to Juárez for the first time last October, right after the loss of my husband, believing in the catharsis of service, and I was utterly gobsmacked by all that I learned.

As you might have seen on our social media in July, some of our RGBM volunteers participated in the event Dreaming America: A Reading for Immigrants in Detention Centers. RGBM Volunteer Pamela Williams read her poem “Magnitude,” which we are excited to share in this week’s newsletter.

Fifty-three families have been detained in Dilley, TX for over 100 days. Of these, 35 have been there for over 300 days. They have waited out 3-10 months of depression, medical neglect, reheated food, nonexistent education, and the anxiety of an uncertain future, all just hoping for the chance to be safe in the United States. They have had to sue for their rights…

Since the pandemic began, we have seen a staggering number of immigration policy changes from the administration. In addition to the rule that was proposed on June 15, Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal; Credible Fear and Reasonable Fear Review (comment period closed July 15), a second new proposed federal rule concerning asylum was published on July 9, “Security Bars and Processing.”

The attention of the national news cycle has moved on from the border. There are times when change comes as quickly and fantastically as a flash of lightning, and then there are times when it happens as the result of persistent erosion. And even though many of us cannot see it, we may be living, right now, in the exact moment when the American commitment to asylum seekers and refugees has obscured agency and responsibility.