VIM group serves Rio Bravo child care center

By Tabitha Beckman

On October 15, the day after the special called conference, a group of OKUMC conference members and a few members from Arkansas and Texas conferences went down to Rio Bravo, Mexico to Manos Juntas — Hands Together — ministry.

At the Annual Conference in May 2023, the OKUMC conference took a special offering to help Manos Juntas start a new child care center in an underserved area of Rio Bravo. Along with a grant from Woodworth Foundation, they were able to get Pequelandia — child’s land — Child Care Center up and running at the beginning of October 2023 with seven local employees and 13 children.

With the current rooms finished they can take up to 30 children, but once all the space is finished, their capacity will jump to 100 children. The team went down to visit Pequelandia and helped clean donated toys, paint rooms, stucco walls, and add a roof to a newly-built room. Each VIM team that comes down adds another little piece to the story. The principal of the school and her husband spent countless hours painting beautiful murals on each of the classrooms to create a little children’s town with a firehouse, flower shop, toy shop, sweet shop, bakery and veterinarian. They plan to add more murals as they go along.

Willie Berman, the director of Manos Juntas and a GBGM missionary posted in Rio Bravo wanted to share his thanks to the Oklahoma Conference. “Thank you, Oklahoma Conference, for the support you’ve been giving to Manos Juntas. We continue to ask our community to be a part of this blessing. It is a blessing for the children, but also for the moms, who can get jobs to help support their families and at 5 p.m. every day when they come to pick up their kids, we can share with them and partner with them … and it’s all thanks to your generosity and partnering with us.”

Julian Ignacio Otero, who is in charge of many things at Manos Juntas, including organizing teams and construction projects, said that, “it’s a blessing to see this project we had in our minds for many years, how God has put everything together so that we can have this service for our community. I want to invite you to come down and help us finish this place because there are still a lot of details to finish, and also keep the ministry of Manos Juntas in your prayers. We have been in ministry here for over 30 years and we have a record that we are proud of.”

Willie and Julian are great visionaries for their ministry possibilities. They plan to eventually add a small clinic next to the day care to offer affordable healthcare to the community and also allow local Methodist churches to hold services on Sunday in the cafeteria area when the day care is closed.

Manos Juntas has several other ministries as well. They run several health clinics in underserved areas. They offer an after school program called Susan Wesley Institute; an orphanage called Casa Hogar or Casa de la Esperanza — House of Hope — in Nuevo Progreso; a new community school called Vamos Tamaulipas — or VT for short — that offers K-6 in another underserved community.

They also have a space to host VIM teams as well as retreats for Mexican clergy, and they are working on a larger retreat center, an event space and many other projects.

A video of Pequelandia and Vamos Tamaulipas are on the conference youtube and facebook page.

If you would like to take a VIM team down to Manos Juntas or learn more about Manos Juntas, contact Lori Foster at lfoster@okumc.org