Baptists flood Piedras Negras with assistance_41904

Posted: 4/16/04

Pastor Israel Rogriguez encourages one of the families from his church, Primera Iglesia Bautista in Piedras Negras, as they struggle to clean up after the flood devastated their home. This home is about three blocks from the Rio Escondido that flooded April 4 for the first time in at least 100 years. At right, Baptist University of the Americas students (from left) Cheyenne Solis of Texas, Josue DeAlva of Puerto Rico, Carlos Valencia of Colombia and Paco Perez of New Mexico help clean out the contents of a flood-ruined home in Piedras Negras.

Baptists flood Piedras Negras with assistance

By Craig Bird

Texas Baptist Communications

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico–A killer flood shattered the heart of Villa de Fuente on a recent Sunday evening. In the days that followed, Mexico and Texas Baptists worked side-by-side in the Piedras Negras neighborhood to get it beating again.

“At first, the morning after it happened, people were just crying,” said Israel Rodriguez, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista, who spent two days driving the church's ambulance while looking for the 100-plus members of his church who were initially reported missing. “But now they are happy because they see a lot of people have come to help.”

Carlos Valencia, a student at the Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio, talks with a woman in Piedras Negras who has received copies of a Spanish-language New Testament distributed by Texas Baptist volunteers. (Craig Bird Photo)

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It was a task that called for multiple resources after the placid low-water Rio Escondido turned savage. It took only half an hour for the water level to surge from 18 inches to 25 feet–on a night when no rain fell on Piedras Negras.

At its apex, the resulting lake stretched a half-mile on either side of the river, damaging about 600 homes, killing at least 35 people and leaving 20 missing. Practically all the contents of the homes were ruined by the muddy residue the ebbing water left behind.

Though in shock and grieving the loss of family and friends who had drowned or disappeared, residents returned to their homes and began trying to rebuild their lives. Often, they scraped the mud away with bare hands or stray shovels found among the debris. Some attempted to clean the silt from their clothes, but the stench overpowered them. And word soon came that everything the water had touched was likely to be contaminated.

So, while the government opened temporary housing shelters and feeding centers, set up emergency clinics to immunize against tuberculosis and dengue fever, and passed out giant squeegees, shovels and bottled water, Baptists and other volunteer groups began coming to the community's aid.

“My first thoughts (after hearing about the disaster) were for our church members–we had 18 families lose their homes,” Rodriguez said. “But my second thought, when I had time, was to call the National Baptist Convention of Mexico and then Dexton Shores (director of Texas Baptist River Ministry, part of the Baptist General Convention of Texas). I knew Dexton would get the word to the rest of Texas Baptists.”

The morning after the Sunday flood, Shores arrived with a truckload of blankets, clothes and drinking water. Tuesday afternoon, a Texas Baptist Men feeding unit from Bluebonnet Baptist Association crossed the border with a water purification system.

The next morning, two chaplains from the BGCT-affiliated Victim Relief program arrived from Houston to provide trauma counseling.

That afternoon, the first of two trucks from Buckner Baptist Benevolences, loaded with sacks of food and boxes of clothes and toys packed around the primary load of new shoes, pulled into Iglesia Bautista Emanuel in the center of Villa de Fuente.

By evening, four students from the Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio were on hand to help wherever they were needed.

Later in the week, seven “mud-out” units operated by Texas Baptist Men joined the effort.

“That was the biggest need after the initial food and clothing was provided,” Shores said. “Every building in the neighborhood was coated with thick, sticky mud, and the power sprayers were really helpful.”

Meanwhile, the Mexican convention gathered monetary support and dispatched a truck loaded with blankets from Mexico City along with teams of volunteers to help residents clean the mud from their homes.

Operating primarily out of Iglesia Bautista Emanuel–the only Baptist church in Piedras Negras to be flooded–and a community social club six blocks away from the church, where Texas Baptist Men set up a feeding center, local Baptists and the Texas volunteers linked up.

Just a couple of hours after the sanctuary of Emanuel was finally clean–all the ruined pews piled in the street–it reopened as a distribution center for the goods donated through Buckner.

“We've been wearing the same clothes for three days–the clothes we had on when we escaped,” one woman said as she waited patiently in line. “My daughter has been barefoot the whole time, and I'm worried she might get sick from the contaminated mud.”

Meanwhile, at another table, the Victim Relief counselor talked with anyone who needed a listening ear and a compassionate heart.

Drenched and mud-coated family portraits lie in the foreground as students from the Baptist University of the Americas haul damaged furniture from a flooded home in Piedras Negras. At right, a child in Piedras Negras receives a hot meal provided by Texas Baptist Men volunteers.

“They need to understand that while this flood was certainly not normal, the feelings of fear and anger and loss that they feel are completely normal,” said Don Perkins, associate director of Victim Relief.

Emotions were deep and jagged.

Victoria Aparicio, who with her husband started the church in 1968, returned to clean-up work after attending the graveside service of the only Emanuel member to drown. The 71-year-old man, a new Christian, and his family were clinging to a utility pole. His wife was rescued, but the man, his daughter and a granddaughter all died.

“Please ask Texas Baptists to pray for our people,” she pleaded, wiping tears from her eyes. “We think the death toll is much higher than is being reported.”

Iglesia Bautista Trinidad only had one family flooded out, “but we are hurting because all of us have friends and family and neighbors who suffered a lot,” Pastor Geronimo de la Cruz Mesa said. The displaced Trinidad family was temporarily living in a room at the church.

“They tried to drive out, but the car stalled, so they just ran,” Mesa explained. “Eventually the man, his wife and their 4-year-old daughter had to climb up on a roof. The next day, they found their car exactly where they left it–but there were two other cars piled on top of it.”

The Texas Baptist Men feeding unit was relocated twice–the last time to Villa de Fuente at the request of Guadalupe Morales, the wife of the governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila, who coordinated much of the relief effort. Impressed with the range of assistance Texas Baptists were providing–and the willingness of volunteers to work completely under the direction of Mexican officials, she wanted the Texas Baptist Men to be in the center of the hardest-hit neighborhood.

“Because people try to take advantage even of tragedies to slip things across the border illegally, the procedure called for all aid coming from the United States to be unloaded at the international bridge and then reloaded into Mexican army trucks for distribution,” Shores explained. “But Mrs. Morales got that waived for Texas Baptists so our trucks could come straight through.”

Rodriguez credited the partnership between the National Baptist Convention of Mexico and the Baptist General Convention of Texas with allowing the rapid and efficient relief efforts.

“Thanks be to God that three months ago we started organizing the partnership that was signed last November,” he said. “Certainly we couldn't foresee this, but because we were planning other joint projects already, we were able to coordinate the response of the two conventions quickly.”

Felix Castillo, bivocational pastor of First Baptist Church in Eagle Pass, worked with Rodriguez much of Monday and Tuesday in the church ambulance. One encounter in particular left him deeply shaken.

“Tuesday some people flagged because they had found a body,” Castillo said. “He looked like he was about 3 years old, just lying there, so small. One man took off his shirt and covered him up. We all were crying. That night when I got home, I hugged my children (a 16-month-old son and a 3-year-old daughter) a lot longer and a lot harder than usual.”

Castillo–whose small church collected and donated 50 bags of food and clothing the day after the flood–planned to bring as many volunteers from Eagle Pass as he could over the weekend to help with the cleanup. He sees the work as an opportunity rather than a hardship.

"Some people may say, 'Why should I help those people in Piedras Negras? They aren't my responsibility–I don't know them,'" he explained. "But this is a wonderful opportunity to be faithful to what God told us to do. We aren't merely helping other people. We are being kind and loving to Jesus himself. Remember, he said when we helped people who are weak and hurting, we are doing it to him.