Finding God’s face in each other

Did you know that most of the winter tomatoes we buy at the store or eat at fast food places come from Immokalee, Florida? And did you know that Immokalee means “my home” in the Seminole language? Well, this is not trivia but an attempt to put a mission trip into words.

Since 2024, a group from First Presbyterian Church of Fernandina Beach has been calling Immokalee home for a week. We stay at the Buckingham Presbyterian Church; and while the quarters do not resemble a palace, they are clean and functional, and the church members are welcoming and treat us like royals.

Our partner in Immokalee is Misión Peniel. It exists to address the injustice of the immigrant farm workers and to provide care and support. All who share in this ministry experience God’s transforming love. Misión Peniel provides an environment for connecting and finding God’s face in each other, which is what Peniel stands for. It started as a farm worker ministry in 2006 when Pastor Miguel and his wife Marifrans, natives from Guatemala, welcomed farm workers with the simple gesture of hospitality.

What did our week look like this year?

After many welcoming hugs on Monday morning, we assisted Marifrans, the wife of Pastor Miguel (who wears many hats and is a saint) with the Pan de Vida program. This program provides meals to homebound individuals and families. The tasks include cooking, packing and delivering.

We had more than 20 recipients, and all of them have their story. And all of them are happy and blessed in their environment. They are also proud in a good way! I recall one of the ladies showing the garden in front of her trailer. It did not resemble the gardens of Versailles, but for her it was a paradise. Those “learning” moments stick and make us recipients of the gifts of love and happiness.

After the evening devotion, we felt blessed to have walked hand in hand with our partners.

Tuesday was garden day. One of the community gardens is right behind the Misión Peniel building, and helping there is a lesson in the lifecycle of plants but also in resourcefulness. Getting our hands dirty and learning a lot about exotic plants is a new experience every year.

Luckily, Maria (another saint) is always there. She catches us short before we pull a plant out of the soil that is great for a soup, but we identified as a weed. The community garden has an annual yield of 22,000 pounds and provides fresh food to the local farmworker families. Garden day is always like a therapy day for the volunteer team. The evening devotion allowed us to share our feelings of the day and bring it in context with scripture.

Wednesday was a day of sorting through used clothes and diapers. The mission has received diapers for the rest of the year's needs. They typically come in a mixed bag and need to be sorted so that a newborn does not get a size 7. This does not sound like a very glamorous job. But it needs to be done; it supports teamwork, with each team setting up different assembly lines to sort, count, and repack.

Mission trips are also great fun, since they include cooking and eating together, going out for dinner, and having a stop at the ice cream parlor. Proverbs 17:22 says “a cheerful heart is good medicine” and we followed this faithfully.

Thursday was another gardening day. We unloaded donated fresh food, and we sat down with representatives of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. CIW is a worker-based human rights organization recognized for its achievements in the field of social responsibility and fighting human trafficking and gender-based violence at work. It is also the driving force behind the Fair Food Program, based on a partnership between farmworkers, tomato growers, and retail buyers. It is eye-opening that it was not so long ago that working in the tomato fields was a modern form of slavery.

Friday is the day of distribution, and it is a busy day. Non-perishable items are packed in the morning and fresh food is packed after lunch. Cultivate Abundance, a partner organization of Misión Peniel, receives donations from food banks but also from local retailers such as Walmart and Publix.

Packing for 450 people requires teamwork, sweat equity, muscle power, flexibility — and some good music from the boom box. After a prayer from Pastor Miguel and the setup of the “square,” the distribution starts at around 3 p.m. Everybody has a role, and Pastor Miguel is a faithful and organized individual. It is an afternoon of happiness for all, and a lesson in nonverbal communication and a testimonial that the language of love does not need words. It is also an afternoon of connecting and finding God’s face in each other.

We came back to Buckingham Church tired, sweaty, aching — but filled with happiness for having had the opportunity to work side by side with Misión Peniel and Cultivate Abundance to provide care and support for the farmworker community.

We felt blessed that we had the opportunity to serve, to learn from the people we served, and to work side by side with role-model servants.

Going on a mission trip is so much more receiving than giving. In giving, we share God’s grace; and in receiving, we experience it.

Peggy and Helmut Albrecht have lived in Fernandina for 15 years. They will soon relocate to Delaware where they expect to have many more adventures. They feel blessed to have called Amelia Island their home.

If you have a story you'd like to share here in the Fernandina Observer - about a neighbor or friend or stranger or business that showed you kindness, or about kindness and compassion in general - please contact Peggie Weeks at pegweeks@gmail.com