Migrant Camp Outreach

Thursday

"This is going to be an awesome next few hours," I stated, as we stood waiting outside the vans before going to outreach. It was Thursday night: migrant camp evangelism time. These are the camps--more or less their own little villages--housing migrant workers who have been trucked up from their home states (usually Oaxaca) having been promised "jobs" and "homes" here on the Baja produce ranches. The work hours are long, and the living conditions are generally rough. But I'm told that people are far more welcoming of evangelical ideas here than they are back in places like Oaxaca, where hostility towards the church is still all too common.

Playing string figures and handing out coloured paper and markers:
 I was touched when a girl gave one of the pieces back to me
--folded into a heart-shaped card with my name written on it.

Although outreach nights like these used to centre around evangelism, with a New Testament film and a speaker in the program, the response was so great that Foundation for His Ministry has now switched to a more discipleship-based structure. Migrant outreach now involves holding camp-wide Bible studies to disciple families to take the gospel back to those unreached places when they move on again.

But it's not just all talk: we also spend a good portion of the evening serving a big dinner to everybody, playing games with the many excited kids and handing out gifts.

This morning's work assignment: washing the dust off of exactly 396 plates (yes, we counted beforehand) brought out of storage in preparation for a Valentine's Day couple's dinner at the mission.