Florida Catholic | Melbourne Catholics Reach Out Across Borders

Melbourne Catholics reach out across borders

Sky Cross Ministry is devoted to alleviating the poverty of the people living on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border.

LAURA DODSON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 06.18.08

Every evening of May the community at the Matamoros Mission in Mexico gather around the statue of Mary to pray the rosary. The community is in the process of making large beads, which will be strung on the green rope they currently use as their rosary. Because each child wants the opportunity to say a Hail Mary, a decade may be a dozen prayers long or a rosary may have a decade or two extra.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SKY CROSS

MELBOURNE | They saw themselves as a little band of seven pilgrims on a four-day mission trip to bring food and medicine – the necessities of life – to Matamoros Mission in the border town of Matamoros, Mexico, as well as a bit of joy in the extravagance of a basketball hoop and teeter-totter to the mission’s children.

But they discovered something on that May 14-18 mission that was even more fundamental.

“We thought that we were bringing God’s needs there – the basic supplies of life – but they were family to us,” shared missioner Karen Mitchell. “How they love their families and they loved us as family. We shared God in their space.”

A parishioner at Ascension Parish in Melbourne, Mitchell is on the board of directors of Sky Cross, a ministry begun in 1995 which is devoted to alleviating the poverty of the people living on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border.

She gathered a small group to transport the latest load of nutritional and medical supplies from Gleaning for the World, an organization in Concord, Va., that annually provides more than $300,000 worth of nutritional and medical supplies to the needy of the world. The group included Earl and Lynn Gehoe of Hurt, Va.; Roy St. John, a member of the board of directors of Sky Cross, also of Hurt; and Theresa Quinlivan and Mona Chauvaness from Ascension. Rounding out the group were Connie French of Melbourne, who worked with Mitchell at Habitat for Humanity, and 21-year-old Ashley Andabaker, a parishioner at St. Monica Parish in San Antonio, Texas.

This trip took the group to Matamoros Mission, run by Missionaries of Jesus Sisters Ninfa Garza and Juliana Garcia. Sister Garcia celebrated her 75th birthday during the mission with 200 hot dogs and buns transported by cooler, as well as lots of Tootsie Rolls, which the children had never seen and referred to as “chocolate wax.”

There was much to do on this short trip. Basic food supplies of rice, beans and oil were replenished and distributed. The volunteers learned how to scrape off the spines and cook cactus – another staple of the local diet. A visit to the local bakery brought them to a one-room house with one oven and a fan where a man was baking “conchas,” or sweet bread.

The volunteers sanitized the mission’s medical clinic and installed an additional shelf to accommodate the contents of two huge suitcases filled with donated over-the-counter medicines.

“The doctor was beside himself when he saw what we had brought. He had never had such stocked shelves and it was only things like Tylenol and Band-Aids that we were able to bring down,” said Quinlivan.

The doctor, Porfirio Querrez, M.D., volunteers at the clinic five or six hours per day.

Sister Garza had requested outdoor play equipment for the children, so a basketball hoop was installed in the field where someday, the missioners hope, a surface can be laid to replace the dirt court. A five-seat teeter-totter for the little ones was assembled amidst the eager faces of “kids everywhere, all the time,” Quinlivan said.

“We were very fortunate because it was the month of May, Mary’s month, and every night the community prayed the rosary. They had a huge handmade rosary and they gathered in a circle with everyone holding it,” Quinlivan explained. “There might have been an extra decade or two prayed because each child wanted to say at least one Hail Mary.”

The group visited the migrant camps, where people were allowed to stay for only three days. Those staying there were either deported from the United States and attempting to return home, or those hoping to immigrate to the United States and seeking shelter on their journey. Most had walked, seeking an opportunity to improve their lives.

“Maria told me that she and her husband had lived and worked in a restaurant in Chicago for 12 years. All six of their children were born there, but then it was discovered that they were unregistered and the whole family was deported,” Mitchell shared. “I’ll always remember the sadness in that mother’s eyes – there was no hope. Through Sky Cross, we were able to provide the means for them to get back to family in Mexico City. I hope we were able to help them.”

The missioners walked the streets to visit the sick. At one house, an elderly woman was sitting outside in the shade, using a chamber pot. Further on, a woman summoned them into her house. “She wanted us to see and share her life with her,” Quinlivan explained. “The family wanted to share everything they had, as little as they had. They wanted to just share being together. It was as if we’d known one another.”

“Their stories of their lives will be a part of my life always,” Mitchell said.

To learn more about Mitchell’s experiences and the Sky Cross Ministry, contact SkyCrossMinistry@aol.com or 321- 752-3838.

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