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The swirling, wind-driven dust stains the sky like a sallow bruise. Yet Aaron"Rudy" Fraire seems oblivious to the coarse, overwhelming pall, humming thetune of a song he penned while he works alongside a group of men who, forthe most part, are strangers.

"I feel honored having all my brothers here," the evangelist and pastor says,standing in a narrow hallway inside a Lutheran orphanage.

He then peers out the doorway across the rutted dirt roads of the squattervillage of Anapra on the fringes of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and says: "Weare united in Christ. We all swallow the same dust and dig it out of ourears. But I am honored because my fellow workers all have a giving heartthat motivates me to continue moving forward."

Smiling, he turns to the group of men bowing their heads as a Spanish-speakingpastor blesses an unlikely meal of Mexican rice, beans, corn tortillas, tunacasserole, punch, and chocolate SnackWells spread out across four eight-footfolding tables.

Linking congregations
In this tense Southwest border region, Fraire is among a growing number ofLatino and Anglo pastors who are keenly aware that political and economicboundaries between Mexico and the United States are undercutting the workof the church. A new organization, Casas por Cristo, based in El Paso, hasdeveloped a program to link Latino and Anglo congregations through buildinghouses for the poor around Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

As their noontime meal begins, silence passes quickly as 12 pastors or religiousadministrators from El Paso and six pastors from Juarez, all of variousdenominations, begin to communicate.

Some of the men speak in broken, little-used phrases of high-school Spanish,and the others in English learned mainly from American top-40 radio stationsand television, whose signals bleed across the U.S.-Mexico border.

These men, most of whom sport facial masks to filter the strafing dust asthey work, have joined in an effort to build a new home in this village wherepotable water is hard to come by and electricity is stolen from power lineswith "diablitos"—thin copper wiring so called because the "little devils"often catch fire.

The busy religious leaders, who cannot often participate in hands-on efforts,may be building a two-room home for an Anapra family with 11 children nowliving in a cardboard-and-wood pallet shanty. But they are all consciousthat the construction project is only a foundation for building longer-lastingand more powerful cross-border relations.

"We're building a home, that's true," says Barney Field, head of El Pasofor Jesus. "But we're also building a bridge between the two countries thatwe hope will benefit many, many people."

The group members soon discover how much they have in common as they exchangeE-mail addresses or comment on the quality of sermons on the "Best of theChristian Web."

As orphaned children scurry between and under the tables, some of the mencarefully dab half a spoonful of a red chile salsa onto their beans. Facescontort, and laughter erupts from Mexican pastors who bite off mouthfulsof jalapenos as they mix the tuna casserole with rice in a rolled-uptortilla.

Without hesitating, Rix Tillman, senior pastor at Immanuel Baptist Churchin El Paso, enlists Fraire in an impromptu rendition of a Spanish song oftenoffered as a prayer to Jesus Christ.

Tillman leads off in a heavily accented Spanish, but he is quickly outdoneby Fraire, who recently recorded a cassette tape of eight Mexican-style religioussongs he penned and dedicated to his wife and children. Fraire, pastor ofCentro Cristiano Bethesda in Juarez, puts his arm around Tillman and thankshim for the duet. "The house we're building is the end product of our labor,but everything else, like the singing and brotherhood, is the important part,"says Tillman, now thanking a group of five women who prepared the meal.

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August 11 1997, Vol. 41, No. 9