When one spends two intense weeks driving around Honduras and Guatemala visiting MCC partners who are working with migrants, it’s inspiring and troubling. It’s inspiring to meet with and hear the stories of people who are actively living out the call of Christ to care for vulnerable people. It’s troubling to recognize my own country’s lack of compassion toward migrants. It’s hard to imagine more vulnerable people than the children and families who have been uprooted and forced to rely on the compassion of others for their survival.
While it’s a challenge to keep up with the ever-narrowing laws and restrictions placed on migrants by our government limiting opportunities for people seeking safety and a better life in the north, it’s not difficult to empathize with the pain and struggle of losing one’s rootedness when forced into a different culture, language and location that is inherent in the migration experience.
Chamelecon, San Pedro Sula, Honduras. MCC photo/Annalee Giesbrecht
I’m deeply grateful that MCC has partners like the Honduran Mennonite Church, who provides accompaniment with displaced, vulnerable people through direct support with food and shelter, as well as offering opportunities to learn new technical skills, giving returned migrants a better chance of getting jobs to support themselves and their families while staying in their own communities. It was challenging and harrowing to hear the stories of the Iglesia Evangélica Menonita Vida en Abundancia in Chamelecon, a suburb of San Pedro Sula, as they worship together, defying the gang lines that divide their community and living out a faith and trust in God that is immediate and visceral.
It was also encouraging to visit MCC partners in Guatemala who are offering direct service with folks in transition, as well as working with farmer’s groups to share techniques for a more sustainable and productive harvest. Recognizing that almost half of Guatemalan children are chronically malnourished gives extra significance to increasing the abilities of farmers to feed their families. This chronic malnourishment has deadly consequences when Guatemalan kids get detained in the US and don’t have the physical reserves to recover from the sickness and trauma of their experiences.
At a farm supported by MCC partner Pastoral de la Tierra in San Marcos department, Guatemala. MCC photo/Annalee Giesbrecht
We were also gifted on our tour by having four members of the American Bar Association ProBAR organization, folks who are working with migrant children in the youth detention centers in South Texas. They shared personal and heartbreaking stories of children separated from their family members. It’s extremely disturbing to recognize our government’s deliberate use of vulnerable children’s suffering as a deterrent to migration.
I recently ran across an article about a survey that showed that white Evangelical Christians were far more likely than the average American to support tough immigration policies, and agreed with the statement, “immigrants are invading American society”. I lament the witness of the church, when Christians show such antagonism toward folks so vulnerable when the Bible so clearly calls compassion for the alien and strangers in our communities.
San Marcos department, Guatemala. MCC photo/Annalee Giesbrecht
I am aware of my lived assumptions that moving to pursue a job or find safety is normative. To deny that same right to others is denying their dignity and humanity. One of the quotes on the walls of the Casas del Migrantes in Guatemala City was “Migrating isn’t a crime, it’s just dreaming of a better life.”
This learning tour highlighted the considerable work to do at home, but also the assurance that MCC has a wonderful set of partners in Honduras and Guatemala who multiply the love and care intended by MCC supporters who desire to share solidarity and hope to vulnerable migrants in the name of Christ.
Les Gustafson-Zook is the Constituent Relations Coordinator for MCC Great Lakes and participated in a migration-themed learning tour to Honduras and Guatemala in November of 2019.
“Migration is a right.” San Pedro Sula, Honduras. MCC photo/Annalee Giesbrecht