Piedras Negras, Mexico
Global Blessings Co-op partners with Hands & Feet Ministries to help support the following affiliates:
Hands & Feet Ministries
Mujeres de Paz
El Rancho
El Buen Samaritano
Casa Bethesda
Nava School
Moises Saenz School
Misión Centinela
Casa de Paz
Niño de Nazareth
Affiliate: Hands & Feet Ministries
Hands and Feet Ministries have been operating in Piedras Negras for over 25 years. For most of that time, Hands & Feet was a construction ministry, focusing on building churches and schools for other ministries who would administrate the projects once they were finished. As of 10 years ago, Hands and Feet has shifted into more of an administrative ministry. They run Nava School, a private school for medium to low income families who would not typically be able to afford a private education. They also try to serve as a bridge between existing ministries in the area and churches/organizations who want to help and have the means to help those ministries.
Roy and Michelle Adams founded Hands & Feet Ministries in 2000 and currently reside in Georgia. Ramiro Yanez & Americo Montoya work for Hands & Feet in Piedras Negras, Mexico and serve as our ministry coordinators for all of our mission trips.
Global Blessings Co-op has been coordinating at least 3 -4 mission trips per year to Piedras Negras, Mexico under the guidance of Hands & Feet Ministries since 2018. These include Children’s Day celebrations, Smart Start back pack & school supply distributions, Christmas Toy Stores, Men’s, Women’s and Student Mission Trips.
Our Response
The people. Roy, Ramiro, Americo and every single person that we serve in Piedreas Negras with the help of Hands & Feet Ministries have hearts of gold and we always come back to the US with our hearts filled.
What we love about Hands & Feet
Mujeres De Paz, founded in 1997 by Sister Lupita Serrato, ministers primarily to women who are suffering violence in their lives, and their children. Many women simply have nowhere else to go. They gather one or two times per week in a small establishment in Piedras Negras, where the women and their children participate in Bible study, singing, and prayer. The ministry provides basic necessities (food, clothing, diapers and personal hygiene items) whenever supplies are available, as well as medical and psychological care. Mujeres De Paz simply exists to serve as a refuge for these women and children, while providing a safe place to provide spiritual, emotional, and practical services.
Affiliate: Mujeres de Paz
Providing food & clothing while spending the day loving on & worshipping with the women & children.
We have tried to make the women’s meeting space more peaceful and inviting by painting the interior, purchasing & installing new curtains, ceiling fans and heavy duty shelving units for food & donation storage.
“Existe mucho dolor en sus corazones, lo que ocasiona que se dejen llevar por entrar a puertas falsas y atentar contra su propia vida”, Lupita Serrato (Founder & Director of Mujeres de Paz). Translation: “There is a lot of pain in their hearts, which causes them to enter false doors and attempts against their own life."
Our Response
What we love about Mujeres de Paz
Las mujeres y los ninos (The women & children). We love getting to know the women & children of Mujeres de Paz. The children are delightful, as are Sisters Lupita, Gloria, and Norma. As a result of the very reason the women are involved with Mujeres de Paz, they are more reserved, withdrawn and quiet at first. But we have found that the more we visit them and they start to recognize our faces (and vice versa), the more they are opening up and smiling. It takes time, but we are earning the women’s trust and love.
El Rancho, a ministry of Iglesia Batania, is located on five acres outside of Piedras Negras. Immigrants (traveling from Central America, South America, and the Caribbean) who are looking for shelter, can find refuge in this unique community. There is a very modest fee for shelter, food, water, and clothing, but immigrants who are willing to help maintain the property are provided with the necessary resources (physical, spiritual) to live.
Affiliate: El Rancho
Global Blessings Co-op visits El Rancho as often as possible. The goal for these visits is to share the love of Christ by providing a hot meal, a fun afternoon for any children staying at El Rancho and trying to brighten just one day in the very stressful and fearful lives of the immigrants.
Our Response
Hope. El Rancho is a symbol of hope for those who desperately need it most. It is the catalyst for a new life and a better tomorrow for so many who enter through it’s gates. Just as Jesus came to be the hope of the world, El Rancho serves as a beacon of hope throughout the immigrant community.
What we love about El Rancho
Affiliate: El Buen Samaritano
El Buen Samaritano (The Good Samaritan) was initiated in Piedras Negras in 2012 by Nacho and Chayo Ramos. Originally, they visited public hospitals to provide food assistance to the companions of hospitalized patients undergoing procedures. Along with food, they also provided prayer, words of encouragement, and assistance in caring for their family members so that they could take a break. In public Mexican hospitals, patients are often housed in rooms with four beds, leaving little space for companions to even lay down a mattress. Most of the time, the family members sleep on hard chairs, and according to national regulations, there must always be a family member with the patient.
Often, Buen Samaritano had leftover food, so they would then move to the downtown area where they shared the remaining food with the migrant population.
During the pandemic, hospitals closed the access for Buen Samaritano, and the migrant population increased. They clearly saw how, by closing the door in hospitals, God opened another one in the migrant population. This is how they began to fully serve this group of people, and they have been doing so for 12 years, attending to the most needy, providing them with physical and spiritual nourishment, clothing, hygiene items, footwear, and most importantly, the love of Christ in their lives.
