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Gladys Garcia stands quietly before a room of 50 Latinos. She places a transparency on a projector with the lyrics to the hymn "Vivo por Cristo" ("I live for Christ"). The light shines the words on the wall, and the congregation, most of them from Oaxaca, Mexico, joins her in the worship song. This service, which is conducted entirely in Spanish, wouldn't be out of place in Mexico, California, or Texas. But this service is happening in Osage Beach, a town of 4,000 in the heart of rural Missouri.

The Hispanic ministry at Osage Hills Baptist Church is the work of Gladys and her husband, Pastor Orel Garcia. Orel started the ministry in September 2001 as a Bible study in the church basement. But as the Hispanic population grew, so did the meetings, until they became full-fledged church services.

This is only one of many signs of the largest demographic shift in recent history taking place before our eyes. Store signs, product packaging, television, and radio are all turning up in Spanish, so bilingual and Spanish-only church services seem a natural progression. However, the changes are not without controversy. On Dec. 16, 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill—HR 4437—that would have ushered in a more aggressive policy on illegal immigration. If the bill were passed in the Senate, social-service organizations—and even churches—helping undocumented immigrants would have been considered in violation of the law. The bill did not pass in the Senate, but it demonstrates the dilemma churches face. As demonstrators and protesters hit the streets in our nation's cities to ask for immigration reform, Orel and Gladys felt the pressure rising.

"Before, I used to translate for them in clinics or hospitals and fill out job applications, but right now I'm trying just to do the ministry," Orel says. "Most of the people attached to our church are legal, but there's a huge Latino population in this area that doesn't have any papers; that's one thing that I don't ask people when they are seeking help or favors. I don't want to know if they are legal or illegal."

The immigration issue is a complicated one, even for sympathetic observers. Gladys, who is in the United States with her husband on an R1 religious worker visa, says making the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants legal wouldn't be fair to people like her, who went through years of bureaucracy to enter the country legally.

She loves the quiet lifestyle and climate of Missouri, but seven years ago she never imagined her life would turn out as it has. In Mexico City, when she was a young girl studying psychology, she met a handsome seminary student named Orel. The two fell in love, but were torn apart by circumstance when Orel was called to be a summer missionary in Jefferson City, Missouri, where his cousin Juvel Garcia was pastor at a Latino mission. The program brings Mexican seminary students to Latino churches in Missouri.

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