MARCH 5, 2025:  Agua Prieta Day 3

We crossed over the border into Agua Prieta for our very last day of the 2025 Border Immersion Trip!  

We had breakfast and delicious coffee—lattes, cappuccinos, and matcha galore—at Café Justo. Every Wednesday, Frontera de Cristo holds a Bible study at the famous coffee shop; “anyone and everyone is welcome,” Miriam Maldonado told us. We were lucky to be invited to the morning worship—it was wonderful to see so many people we’d met throughout the week in one place. It was an emotional morning, but a welcoming one. Despite all the differences in our group and the group we have joined, one thing has remained true: we are welcome. The community has only ever been welcoming.  

We sang hymns with one another—first in Spanish, then in English, and then the language of the person’s choice. Scripture was also read in both languages and then followed up with a mutual invitation about the passages. While not everyone shared, everyone listened—and that’s power. That’s the power of our trip.  

After our study, we got to take a tour of the processing facility of Café Justo. It’s not just a coffee shop—“the local coffee farmers are not just farmers; they are entrepreneurs. They harvest their own coffee, but they also bag it, market it, ship it, and sell it,” Adrian Gonzalez (a Café Justo leader) told us. The money goes directly to the farmers and their families. The pastries they sell at the café are also sourced from local businesses, and the money is allocated to support students to finish their degree, as well as single mothers who are working to sustain their families.  

If you’re interested in buying “the best coffee in the world,” according to all three of our trip leaders, you can buy bags to roast at https://www.justcoffee.org and support families of Mexico.  

After we left Café Justo—very caffeinated and happy—we traveled with Maldonado to DouglaPrieta Trabaja, which works to assist individuals and families by establishing and instilling local economic self-sufficiency. They served us a meal of tacos and freshly squeezed lemonade in the heart of their center, and were kind enough to share about the history of their project, as well as the dynamics of how Frontera aids children in their schooling. We even got to meet a group of young elementary students and hear about how much they love their school.  

Our last stop in Agua Prieta was the Migrant Resource Center, where we met Joca Gallegos and a couple other members of the center; they gave us lots of information regarding the organization. They are partners with Frontera and CAME, and offer humanitarian support for migrants. Centers like the MRC remain open 24/7, in case any expelled migrant needs a place to stay at any point of the day.  

Once returning to Douglas, the team got a bit of time to rest, recharge, and reflect before dinner. At Iglesia Bautista Amistad, we shared a pizza dinner with many members from Frontera—people that we’d met along the way. It felt like sharing a meal with your oldest friend; members who had led us through prayer, reflection, psychological trials and emotional contemplation. Laughs and tears were shed, and I [Emily Allison, author] couldn’t help but feel my eyes well up with tears.  

At dinner, we also met James Martin, the coordinator of the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program; it’s a year-long volunteer program where students learn about the borderlands around our country. 

Our final reflation together as a group was extremely emotional, and was bittersweet; how wonderful of people we’d met, and it was hard to imagine them leaving us soon. Gonzalez from Café Justo reminded us of something that has stuck with all of us: “The wall—no matter how big it gets—doesn’t change how we relate to each other. We rise together, and we fall together.”  

Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Mexico have provided us with more experiences and growth than we ever could’ve asked for. Thank all of you for your support—a special thanks to Dr. Maggie Commins, Dr. Adrian Bird, and Mr. Darryl White, Sr. for being the best trip leaders any of us could’ve asked for. Thank you to Mark Adams, Miriam Maldonado, and all of Frontera de Cristo for providing us with a trip that will last a lifetime.  

We hope you have enjoyed learning about this little mosaic of our world—we have more than enjoyed sharing our trip with you.  Stay tuned for our final blog post, which will also share some funny highlights from the trip that didn’t make it in the daily vlogs!

Written by Emily Allison & Emily Skaar