Chihuahuan Connection founder driven to meet needs

Posted: 9/30/05

Chihuahuan Connection
founder driven to meet needs

By Terri Jo Ryan

Special to the Baptist Standard

WACO–Rick Caywood, director of the Chihuahuan Connection relief agency, doesn't believe it takes “a super-spiritual guy” to serve Christ. All it takes is someone who is driven to meet needs and bring people into a right relationship with God.

Caywood, who attends Highland Baptist Church of Waco when he's not making a grocery run to the border, feeds thousands of impoverished Mexicans each year with pinto beans, potatoes and powdered milk. He also collected water, baby formula and diapers for survivors of Hurricane Ka-trina.

Rick Caywood of Highland Baptist Church in Waco directs the Chihuahuan Connection. BELOW: The Chihuahuan Connection's 'tater-toter' hauls potatoes in bulk.

With a small cadre of paid and volunteer truckers crisscrossing the country each week, Caywood, 56, picks up loads of low-cost dry goods in American locations and brings them into Mexico to feed the needy or in the rural South to save lives.

The Chihuahuan Con-nection partners with about 100 other Christian ministries of various denominations to distribute food and meet other needs to the Mexican border towns from South Texas to Southern Cali-fornia.

Caywood stumbled into the hunger-busting business around Thanksgiving 1996, when he and some friends from the Wings For Christ aviation ministry stopped in Big Bend to sightsee but were delayed two days by bad weather.

Ann and Henry Hall of Big Bend Baptist Church “adopted” the broke travelers for dinner and introduced them to the idea of combatting poverty in the borderlands. “I was infected with missionary-itis,” Caywood confessed.

He phoned friends in the Waco area to raise money. Later, he returned to Terlingua with a pickup truck full of building supplies, clothes and food. Caywood soon began his own ministry to ship food and other goods to the border, using a light truck and trailer. He made contacts with missionaries and relief workers from the Rio Grande Valley to Arizona to California.

The Chihuahuan Con-nection started with a van and a 16-foot flatbed trailer and grew from there, supported mostly by charitable foundations, some businesses and scores of individual donors and volunteers.

In a 53-foot 18-wheeler bought by the Meyer Foundation, Caywood was sitting on a 45,000-pound load of pinto beans meant for the poor of Mexico. For a heavily discounted price, he was able to buy the load from Gooding, Idaho, farmer Louis Davenport, who had been growing pintos for the poor since 1971.

With a shoestring budget, a borrowed warehouse and donated trucks, Caywood has shipped tons of food to missions, schools, orphanages, drug rehab centers and soup kitchens. He partners with groups like Feed the Children in Oklahoma City and the Society of St. Andrew, a “gleaning” ministry that salvages foodstuffs from other sources.

“Matthew 6:11 tells us, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' and we operate on this premise,” Caywood said. “We work with no contingency, no reserves. It's literally 'No dough, no go' for us.”

But it always seems to come in as needed. One time they prayed for more foundation support, and two hours later, philanthropist Paul Meyer provided some monthly expenses and a big piece of equipment.

Another time, just as he was writing a plea in the ministry newsletter for tires to replace the worn ones on a donated vehicle, a stranger from Coolidge, Ariz., called saying that God had told him to bless someone that day. Turns out, he ran a tire store.

“I have a hard time sharing these testimonies sometimes without weeping,” Caywood said, “God's power and mercy and provision and love are overwheleming.”

Caywood occasionally uses his own credit cards to meet gaps.

“I guess God's a good credit risk,” he said.

One time, he confessed, he wrote a check for a shipment of food, knowing his bank balance couldn't cover it but trusting God to provide. The next day, a friend in McLennan County told him she had been moved to donate $1,300, which covered the outstanding check.

“People don't believe it, but that kind of stuff happens regularly,” he said.

“God moves in wonderful ways with Rick,” said Teresa Tindell, a customer-service representative at Central Freight. Her husband is one of Caywood's drivers. “Rick is a true, honest, hard-working man who only wants to provide for the hungry individuals in Mexico.”

It's difficult to catch up with Caywood most days. He drives hundreds of miles each week collecting donated food from the ends of the country and hauling it to the borderlands.

Through his contacts in the food industry, he purchases excess production at a discount and distributes it throughout his network. He recently distributed 45,000 pounds of rice and has shipped more than 12 tons of military MREs–meals ready to eat.

His nonprofit ministry has a mailing list of about 600 people and its own board of directors.

There's been a learning curve, of course.

After a disasterous trip to Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico, in which almost all 40,000 pounds of a load of potatoes went bad before they could be distributed to the poor families who had waited many hours in line for them, Caywood got the gift of a $32,000 “tater-toter.”

The specialized produce hauler with a conveyor for shipping bulk potatoes ensures they will make it to their destination without spoiling.

Caywood's paycheck is about two-thirds of what he made as a counselor at Gatesville High School, the job he left five years ago, but he doesn't worry about retirement.

“I'll retire when I expire,” he said.