By james art 
As 2019 sees a wave of displaced people on the southern border of the United States, a Waco church with ties to missionaries in Latin America and a close relationship with the pastor of an asylum-seeker-oriented San Antonio Mennonite church sees no problem with the people .
The problem DaySpring Baptist Church members saw was that they claimed allegiance to Christ but turned away from the needs of these people, explained Dennis Tucker, a church member and professor of Christian scriptures at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.
Getting there was a process, but in August 2022, Dayspring Baptist Church invited its first refugee family to move into a new residential ministry, Naomi House.
Naomi House is a hospitality house that offers “a temporary place of refuge for families as they prepare for the next steps in their asylum-seeking journey,” the church’s website explains.
Dayspring Baptist Church has been working on the hospitality house concept since the spring of 2021, “because none of us had ever done this,” Tucker recalled.
“None of us were social workers. We had to find simple things like city codes for that area. What kind of insurance do we need?’
Tucker explained that they spent “the better part of a year” doing research, figuring out how to design teams and a transportation schedule, and identifying the house they were renting from a church member.
First steps to Naomi House
The church had learned a lot from the experience of one church member whose family agreed to a request in 2019 from Pastor John Garland at San Antonio Mennonite Church. He is the son of former Truett Seminary Dean David Garland and the late Diana Garland, founding dean of Baylor’s School of Social Work, which now bears her name.
With a pledge of support from DaySpring members, the family agreed to help an 18-year-old Honduran asylum seeker and her newborn son by putting them in their own home.
Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our titles delivered to your inbox on Thursdays
Hosting the young family gave valuable experience to the church team supporting them, but they still had more to learn before they were ready to begin full-fledged hospitality, Tucker noted.
Coming out of COVID, the church considered whether a hospitality house like the one run by San Antonio Mennonite Church might be something they could support. Their successful teamwork with the first young family convinced the church members that they could.
The San Antonio ministry, La Casa de Maria y Marta, like most shelters in Texas, was short-term oriented. But DaySpring members decided to opt for a longer-term housing ministry model, providing at least six months of housing assistance to families.
Six months is the minimum period of time that people who have been granted asylum must stay in the country before they can legally work here.
The church identified women and children as the most vulnerable group among migrants.
While men who cross the line often find ways to support themselves, it’s not always easy for women. They are vulnerable, especially to exploitation or trafficking, Tucker explained.
So, at Naomi House, the congregation has so far housed only women and children — offering safe housing, transportation assistance to work, school, meetings and ESL classes, and additional services as needed.
Because the church has few Hispanic members, the congregation decided they could best support women from Hispanic backgrounds. A common language also helps to learn how to live together when the roommates were previously strangers.
The house has five bedrooms with three bathrooms and sits on about an acre of land. The women who live there can garden if they choose, and the kids have a playset and a place to be kids, Tucker noted.
Naomi House has provided housing and support to 8 mothers and 14 children in the two years since it opened.
A rewarding, challenging job
Tucker said the most challenging part of the ministry is the flexibility required. Every family has a different set of dynamics and trauma that it carries, “so we can’t say ever, here’s our three-page guide to caring for people in a hotel house.”
The ministry requires constant adjustments to meet the actual needs of each new family that lives at Naomi House.
But Tucker noted that the most rewarding aspect of the ministry is its reciprocity—this is not a story of a rich, mostly white American church rescuing poor migrants.
Instead, there is intentionality in the relationships they build between the church and the residents of Naomi House. “It’s sharing a life together with the belief that it will bring our own faith to life,” and it has, Tucker explained.
“Most people go to church their whole lives and wish they could do something to change someone else’s life because it could change their own.
“So, I think for those of us involved — you know that not every story works perfectly [for] people entering the house. Some find great jobs. Some don’t find great jobs.
“Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. It’s hard work.”
But he explained to those taking part, “we are being asked to use our faith in a real way and to allow us to serve people who are vulnerable – not because we are going to save them, but because that is exactly what the Gospel asks of us.”
They don’t have a “metric for success,” Tucker said, ministry participants must remind themselves.
“We have a fidelity metric. And we must be true to what we are asked to do, regardless of a particular outcome, good or bad.
To measure success, the team asks instead, “Are we faithful to the ministry to which God has called us?”
Tiffany Harris, associate pastor of community life at DaySpring, has been in talks with several churches in Texas and beyond that have expressed interest in starting a hospitality ministry.
She mentioned that North Carolina has a network of Baptist churches that operate five hospitality houses in Raleigh-Durham alone.
This network is equipped to house asylum seekers of languages other than Spanish, so DaySpring and the North Carolina network are collaborating to provide asylum seeker care.
But as a Texan, Harris expressed some anger that North Carolina currently has more hotels. She would like to see at least five Baptist-run hotel houses in Texas, she said.
Reciprocity and cooperation
It’s hard work, she agreed with Tucker.
For Harris, it’s hardest to work with people who, after walking thousands of miles through dangerous terrain—including, for many, the Darien Gap—vulnerable to dangerous people, with nothing but their children—realize when they finally get here, how it’s going to be hard.
They have been lied to by the cartels who exploit them for money. They were told the United States had great jobs and cheap housing, Harris noted.
With the terrible living conditions they leave behind, perhaps the truth would not dissuade them from traveling, she suggested.
It is not easy to walk alongside asylum seekers as they experience the shock of coming to terms with the reality of refugee life in the United States, when they have no one and nothing.
But when refugees find community through DaySpring’s ministry, they are so grateful and bring so much to the church, Harris said.
Other churches in Waco are coming together with DaySpring to help with Naomi House by sponsoring some of the monthly expenses, encouraging and partnering with the church because the asylum seeker ministry is meaningful.
“One day you step out in faith when you feel the Lord has led you to do something like this,” Harris said. “You’d be surprised how many people will come around to support you.”