South Texas heat? No sweat for KidsHeart volunteers

Posted: 8/18/06

South Texas heat? No sweat
for KidsHeart volunteers

By Russ Dilday

Buckner Benevolences

RIO GRANDE VALLEY—Richard Buerkle wiped a sweaty forehead with an equally sweaty forearm as he paused from his carpentry work in 100-degree heat and oppressively high humidity.

Buerkle and his team of volunteers from First Baptist Church in Gatesville, were repairing a home in Monte Alto, near the Mexican border, in preparation for repainting the home.

Others from the church, where Buerkle serves as minister of music, led a Vacation Bible School in a nearby church. Still other volunteers held a medical clinic at a neighborhood community center.

It’s the third time in as many years that the Gatesville church came to Monte Alto to minister as part of KidsHeart, a collaborative missions effort between the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Buckner Benevolences that matches churches with needs in the Rio Grande Valley.

Despite 103-degree temperatures, participants often found themselves working into the evening roofing homes as part of KidsHeart construction projects.

Each summer for the past three years, hundreds of volunteers have performed light construction on homes, conducted Vacation Bibles Schools, medical and dental clinics and sports camps, and shared the message of Christ.

Most of their work has been in the colonias—unincorporated neighborhoods on both sides of the Mexico-United States border, where the poor seek to live the dream of home ownership.

“We’ve developed a real desire to partner with this church and this community,” Buerkle said. “We’re meeting the needs of a lot of the same people and developing relationships with them. We want them to see we’re interested in more than patching a roof.”

Members of First Baptist Church of Gatesville prepare to do light construction and painting of a house in Monte Alto.

Tommy Speed, executive director for Buckner in the Rio Grande Valley, said a record 480 volunteers participated, making it the best-attended of the KidsHeart summer events. “It is amazing to see what 480 committed Christians can do in the colonias. They are lifting families with no hope and almost nothing in this world, and giving them hope in Christ.”

Rick McClatchy, event organizer and coordinator for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Texas, said 23 churches answered this year’s call to service.

“This is a great response to CBF’s Rural Poverty Initiative to help the poorest counties in the United States,” he said. “They are churches who want a missions connection.”

While the majority of volunteers represented churches affiliated with CBF Texas, four cooperating churches from CBF Oklahoma made a first-ever trip to the Valley.

Kerry Leeper Brock of Northwest Baptist Church of Ardmore, Okla., worked on a roofing crew in Progreso, sorted clothes “and created our own snow-cone ministry,” she said. Workers had earlier that day taken a snow-cone break that quickly turned into a neighborhood run on the slushy treats, with 100 local children lining up for one.

At the same site, Travis Keath, a member of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, pounded nails alongside his wife, Pattie, to secure tar paper onto a family’s roof. His son, Matt, 14, was working on a nearby project. Smiling in the rooftop heat of about 120 degrees, he remarked that the trip was his family’s vacation.

“The last five years, Matt and I have done Scout camps. We felt moved to do this to give Matthew a taste for missions,” Keath said. “I’m sunburned and a few pounds lighter, but my family and I will have this shared experience. This will be something we talk about for a long time.”

Homeowner Elida Ramirez, her husband, Jorge, and seven children were grateful for their new roof and brought breakfast to the roofers each morning.

“When we bought this house, it was deteriorated,” Ramirez said through an interpreter. “Lately, we have had a lot of rain, and my kitchen and bed have all gotten wet. They fixed my roof and (insulated) my walls. Now we can have heating and air conditioning. They built my house brand new.

“This is wonderful for my children. I thank Christ, because the mission group has blessed us, and we hope to bless others.”

Ruben Benitez Jr. never will forget his new relationship with members of First Baptist Church of College Station. About a dozen of the congregation’s team members participated in a first for the KidsHeart event: They built a home from scratch in just six days for Benitez, his wife and three small children.

Benitez said when the College Station team completed the flooring on the 12-by-36-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath frame home, “my children and my nephews were dancing on the floor. This is a blessing from Jesus.”

“They’re excited,” said project co-leader Mark Meyer, a software engineer, who supervised the 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. workdays with co-leader Bud Williams, a home contractor. “When the windows went in, the kids ran around the house excitedly.”

Meyer and Williams noted church members paid for the entire project, with an estimated $6,000 cost that included wiring, plumbing and a septic system.

But the site was not just reserved for construction. Under an oak tree in the Benitez yard, church member Roxanne Collins also led two families through a workshop on diabetes prevention.

The construction, children’s programs and other efforts the groups made were part of an attempt to win others to Christ through personal contact, said Stacy Conner, pastor of First Baptist Church of Muleshoe.

“Even in painting houses, we’re building a shared experience with people we would never come in contact with.”

That personal contact resulted in 47 professions of faith in Christ, made not in mass events but one person at a time.

Kristin Scott, 17, a member of The Crossing Baptist Church in Mesquite, came to the Valley to lead Vacation Bible School activities.

“When you teach little kids about Christ, it will spread,” she said.

To her surprise, when she and others from her church were promoting the Bible school in Progreso, she helped lead an adult to Christ.

“We were handing out flyers in the neighborhoods, and we asked a lady, Carmen, if she knew Jesus,” Scott recalled. “She said no, so we asked her if she would like to know him. She said, ‘Yes, if you have the time.’”