Tierra Nueva Del Norte

Burlington is in the heart of the Skagit Valley , a fertile, agricultural valley an hour north of Seattle that winds down from the North Cascades, and is drained by the scenic Skagit River . Like many farming communities near cities, Skagit farmland is under assault. This is most visible in Burlington , where hundreds of acres of prime farmland have been paved over to host nearly every major retailer imaginable. Cucumber, berry and apple farmers struggle to compete with producers in Sri Lanka , Mexico , Chile and China . Farmland is giving way to housing developments as Seattle commuters looking further north for affordable housing.

Thousands of farmworkers from Mexico have been drawn to Skagit County , where they find work in fields, fish processing plants, restaurants and in construction. Seasonal workers crowd into nine migrant labor camps from June through October. Most of Skagit County 's immigrant workers are undocumented, placing them at constant risk of deportation should they run into the growing army of Department of Homeland Security agents who patrol this area an hour south of the Canadian border. Skagit County Jail is used as a holding facility for immigrants arrested by local law enforcement and detained by the DHS for deportation.

In 1994 we moved into a downscale residential neighborhood a few blocks from the Latino center of Burlington . We began visiting immigrants in the strawberry and cucumber fields and migrant labor camps of the Skagit Valley . I was hired as part-time chaplain of Skagit County Jail, where I lead Spanish Bible studies twice a week. In the nine years now that I have led these Bible studies I have met thousands of immigrants and locals who have cycled through jail. The jail serves as the primary connection place between Tierra Nueva and the most marginalized Latinos. Many men ask me to visit their families, help them with immigration and other legal difficulties, get into drug or alcohol treatment.

TNN has grown rapidly and become increasingly demanding. Our home became known to migrants and ex-offenders, who came by unexpectedly, day or night. Clearly we needed to train volunteers and future staff through setting up some kind of equivalent to our earlier Honduran Universidad del Campo. Our first seminars involved bringing farmers and farmworkers, and community members together to oppose INS raids. We then began offering courses like “Reading the Bible with the Damned” and “Walking with People on the Margins,” to train jail volunteers and then expanded our courses to seminarians and community members with courses like: “Breaking the Chains: Social and Biblical Perspectives on Resisting personal and structural evil,” “Exodus and Liberation,” “Reading the Word, Reading the Street.” Then in 2000 The People's Seminary - Seminario del Pueblo was formally launched with help from a generous grant.

The People's Seminary is now up and running as an ecumenical learning center where people from the mainstream and the margins meet for Scripture study and theological reflection in preparation for service, ministry and social transformation. Scholars & leaders from all over the world come to teach here, together with farmworkers, ex-offenders, & people who serve at the margins. Through Seminario del Pueblo we offer courses in Spanish to train Hispanic pastors and lay leaders.

Now Tierra Nueva (we dropped off the Norte due to our work with members of both Nortenos and Sudeno gangs) includes eight full-time staff and 17 half-time Honduran workers and many volunteers to operate the Skagit County Jail ministry, the Family Support Center , a bilingual faith community Camino de Emmaus-Road to Emmaus, The People's Seminary and TN Honduras. Tierra Nueva seeks to link together issues that are often separated. For example, preservation of farmland must be linked with the preservation of farmers and farmworkers—which requires confronting globalization.

In July of 2002 Gracie and I and our three children Isaac, Luke and Anna moved onto 35 acres of land near the mouth of the North Fork of the Skagit River . The land consists of 10 acres of pasture and 25 acres of second growth forest. Now a healthy twenty minutes away from Tierra Nueva and The People's Seminary instead of three blocks, we are coexisting with raccoons, beaver, river otter, coyotes, deer, hawks, eagles, and numerous migratory bird species. In addition we are raising eight sheep, a llama, dog, two rabbits, a rat, and guinea pig.

Since this is our home, our first commitment is to learn to live out spiritual practices that sustain us for life and ministry as both individuals and a family. We are committed to watchfulness, which includes daily prayer and Scripture reading: morning, noon and night when possible, regular walks, Sunday worship and many experiments. One family practice that has been working lately as we homeschool our children is to begin in the morning by reading a local, national and international articles from the newspaper or news magazines followed by a chapter from one of the Gospels. The children are challenged to find some connection between the world and the Bible—not always immediately evident.