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November 26, 2008

Every Thursday is Thanksgiving

Farmworkers mobile ministry expands, delivers meals and hope on Thursdays

by Emily Enders Odom
Associate, Mission Communications
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

ARCADIA, FL — When Santos Vela motors into town each Thursday in the Espiritu, a 31-foot mobile home which functions as a church for the Beth-El Farmworker Ministry, word travels quickly.

Santos Vela of the Beth-el Farmworker Ministry. Photos by Dave Moore

Here in DeSoto County, among the poorest in the state of Florida, Vela’s arrival signals a hot meal and hope near the end of a hard work week for Arcadia’s migrant farm workers. Some of Arcadia’s seasonal agricultural workers, a number of whom live here year-round, have been in Florida for two generations, servicing primarily the area’s citrus and watermelon growers. 

Most of the workers in this city 40 miles east of Sarasota hail originally from Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia and Mexico. Vela, a lay leader and member of the Beth-El Farmworker Ministry’s worshiping congregation at Wimauma, FL, for the past seventeen years, is a native of Veracruz, Mexico. He “gave his life to the Lord” upon the birth of his daughter in 1991.

Although Vela is painfully aware that the future of this new outreach ministry has been jeopardized by the current economic crisis, he continues to “look to Jesus” as he preaches good news to the poor.

“Thursday is a brilliant choice for Santos to go where the workers are,” said the Rev. Ted Land, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Arcadia. “Because they get paid on Friday, their resources are often pretty scarce by Thursday. Santos does a meal and is there to do a Bible Study. On Friday morning, he drives through the ‘Avenues,’ where most of the Hispanic agricultural workers live, and gives away clothes and food.”

Land, 62,  who has served in Arcadia for 23 years, was instrumental in bringing Beth-El’s ministry here. The Wimauma-based ministry — which helps farm workers to achieve self-sufficiency — had previously expanded into the town of Immokalee with a mobile outreach ministry in 2006.

“It’s been very difficult to attract farm workers to anything at our church because we are English-speaking Anglos,” Land said. “Although our church has provided a Thanksgiving meal every year to the whole community free of charge, which a few farm workers attend, we have never truly been able to impact that community. That’s where Beth-El came in.”

Since 1988, First Church had been sending out volunteers from among its members to help at other Beth-El ministry locations, even as Land was hoping for a new site to be established in DeSoto County. “I’ve been aggravating every Beth-El director for twenty years to locate in Arcadia,” he said.

Immediately following Hurricane Charley in 2004, when the area and its residents sustained extensive damage and loss, Land escalated his advocacy efforts to bring a farm workers ministry to Arcadia. Land again stated his case in 2005, when Dave Moore, Beth-El’s current director, came to address a gathering at First Church. “Dave promised me that before I retired there would be a Beth-El presence in Arcadia,” Land said. “He has kept that promise.”

Now in its sixth month, the new mobile ministry at Arcadia has begun to attract some 25 regular attendees each week. Vela, who has participated in Spanish-language lay leadership training sponsored by the Presbytery of Tampa Bay, has begun the hard work of establishing relationships with the people. 

“Espiritu,” the motor home that is the traveling church of the Beth-El Farmworker Ministry.

Mainly through the efforts of Shirley Roosevelt Sweat and Bill Stander, both deacons at First Church, Beth-El has been granted permission to park the Espiritu van in the lot of the Arcadia All Florida Saddle Club. There Vela conducts his outreach ministry — when not on the move — and sleeps every Thursday night. 

He has been especially encouraged that as he has distributed Spanish-language Bibles, requesting of those who receive a Bible that they promise to read a verse or passage and share it with him the following week, they actually do.

“Santos is the perfect person for this call,” Land observed. “Part of the challenge is winning the hearts and the confidence of the people.”

Moore said that because immigration concerns have generated fear and suspicion among the migrant workers, Vela has helped to gain their trust by meeting them where they live. “It is a new chapter in his way of thinking to go forth as we are commanded to go by Christ to areas outside of our comfort zone, outside of where we worship and where we live,” said Moore. “Santos has been called to a new situation as an evangelist.”

Moore smiled as he contemplated the potential impact of “Growing Christ’s Church Deep and Wide” — a churchwide initiative adopted by the 218th General Assembly — through Beth El’s efforts to continue identifying other new ministry sites.

“Not only are we growing the church deep and wide,” he said, “we’re growing it ‘up and down’ as we literally envision new locations ‘up and down’ Florida’s highways.”

Funding is the formidable challenge in continuing the Arcadia outreach and in undertaking any future expansions. “Our board reached a difficult decision this month to suspend our ministry in Arcadia until such time as new funding sources are identified,” Moore said. “I pray that this story of Santos’ passion to share the gospel with the most marginalized in our culture will inspire an outpouring of giving, especially at this time of year.”

Now that Beth-El’s outreach ministry — which has only just begun to scratch the surface of meeting the great needs of Arcadia’s Hispanic residents — must be placed on hold until its continued funding is secured,  Ted Land doesn’t mind postponing the retirement he had spoken of only years before.