Mission trip inspires local church group
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Clovis News
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 Barbara
Brockmeier spent a week carrying lumber, pounding nails and helping
put stucco on a new home.
Built in four days, the home was for a young couple with
9-month-old twins in one of the more impoverished sections of
Juarez, Mexico.
At age 81, it was Brockmeier’s first mission trip.
“My husband Lowell, who is 82, and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” she
said. “I would tell other people to get involved. You don’t know
what it’s like until you’ve done it. Actually getting out in the
field is so important. We wanted to show God’s love to the people in
Juarez.”
The Brockmeiers were among 16 people from St. James Church in
Clovis who traveled to Juarez from March 24-29 to work with El
Paso-based Gateway Mission Training Center on the house-building
project.
The Rev. Ben Wright, rector of St. James, said he was the only
one of the 16 who had been on a mission trip before — and that was
part of his plan.
“Most career missionaries started with a short-term mission trip
like this,” Wright said. “If you take people on a short-term mission
trip and they see what it’s like for themselves, they give a very
powerful witness when they return.”
Wright, who traveled to Honduras about three years ago with his
wife Beryl to help a veterinary medicine and public health team,
said he plans to go to Hoima, Uganda, this summer to help with the
Blessed Mustard Seed Babies Home, where his wife ministered last
year.
Brockmeier said the house that she and her husband helped build,
along with their son Alan, daughter-in-law Suzanne, Wright, and 11
others ranging in age from 16 to 82, provided a way for them to
demonstrate God’s love through action.
“We didn’t speak a lot of Spanish and the family didn’t speak
English, but we did a lot of hugging and laughing together during
the week,” she recalled.
Egriciedo and Marisela Fernandez and their children, Angel and
Paula, were chosen for the new home by their local church because of
their need and “also, because they look for people whom they believe
will make a difference in their neighborhood,” Brockmeier said.
“The young husband worked in a factory in Juarez and he would
work long hours at night, come home and get a few hours’ sleep and
then help us during the day with the house — that’s how dedicated
and determined they were,” Brockmeier said.
The Mexican family’s overwhelming generosity and visible
gratitude left an impression on the mission members.
“The family gave us lunch three of the days we were there and
that was not their responsibility. But they wanted to do that for
us,” Brockmeier said. “One of the leaders from Gateway told us that
even to feed our team of 16 for one day probably cost them a week’s
wages.”
The entire experience served as proof, Wright said, that many
people who go on short-term mission trips usually learn more and
feel more blessed by what happened to them than they ever could have
imagined |
