Demographics

With a combined population in excess of 2.5 million people, the cities of Juarez and El Paso are the largest border cities on the planet. It is more than a river that divides the two cities as Juarez is best known for severe poverty, violence, high crime rates, broken families, and a large number of abandoned children. JEM’s facility is in the heart of one of the many broken communities.

The children of Juarez live with an uncertain future. Public education ends at 6th grade. This means at about age 12-13, children are to begin working to earn money. The average wage for a Juarez adult resident is less than $4 per day... much less for children. There is a very high unemployment rate because many have migrated to the city seeking jobs from the US factories located in Juarez... but the jobs are not plentiful. Many of the children are orphaned because their parents could not afford to take care of them. JEM Ministries seeks to give hope and holistic care through giving the children a home, a family, an education through high school, and vocational training. For more information, go to our contact page.

A JEM Story

Jesus Ruiz was determined to never return to Juarez. He had moved to El Paso after spending his childhood in the Mexican city. Though determined never to return to Juarez, his wife ran across an opportunity they could not ignore. Hundreds of school kids were going without food everyday in a Juarez community. With a couple of food contacts, Maria Ruiz began making the daily commute over the border from El Paso to help these children in Juarez. And soon, she began to discover that the needs were much deeper than a few missed meals. After considerable prayer, Pastor Jesus Ruiz agreed to join his wife and JEM Ministries was born as a simple food outreach. Jesus Ruiz was back in Juarez. But what grew from this simple outreach was a dream to help the children of Juarez experience complete restoration: physically, mentally, & spiritually. Not only did JEM want to provide physical relief from the harsh realities of poverty, but they also wanted to provide a relational component with those they served. They wanted to get to know the families and children they were serving. They knew that through relationships came trust…and through trust would come the chance to share God’s love and truth with them. And only through the love and truth of God can spiritual restoration begin. So the dream of the orphanage/trade school began. Please read the following account of one church’s journey with JEM Ministries. Within the testimony is the faithful story of JEM Ministries…

Summer 2003:

During our first year of existence, we at Northstar Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, randomly picked a good missions organization to take our first trip with. We landed with Casas Por Cristo based on recommendations of some people in our church. It’s an El Paso, Texas based ministry that builds houses and small churches over the border in their twin city of Juarez, Mexico. We sent 40 people down and were assigned to work with Pastor Jesus Ruiz of JEM Ministries. We built for him a small sanctuary. But what sticks out the most from our first-year experience is the character and integrity of Pastor Jesus. Though he and his family lived in poverty themselves and their church barely 20 people at the time, they still had dreams of a larger orphanage/trade school that would empower the children of Juarez to escape generational poverty while leading them into relationship with the Lord. Make no mistake, with Pastor Jesus and JEM, everything starts and ends with Jesus. To have Jesus in poverty was better than not having Jesus in a mansion. Therefore, this ‘community center’ type orphanage/trade school would show the love of Jesus by being open to the public and would attempt to feed over 1200 kids a day.

That was their dream. We were amazed how much their hearts and vision lined up to ours at Northstar. Pastor Jesus was a man unlike many of us had ever met. And after building for him in year #1, we prayed we’d get the chance to work with him again.

Summer 2004:

We returned to Juarez with 40 more people to add onto the JEM campus area that held just the sanctuary, which had been expanded by the time of our return. We built two more sanctuary-sized buildings that would be used for outreach supply storage, a kitchen, and a living space for a key volunteer family that needed shelter and were willing to work for JEM Ministries. Pastor Jesus’ dreams for the orphanage/trade school had only intensified. But with no real resources, his dream was beginning to seem a little silly…a little far-fetched.

Boy, were we wrong.

Summer 2005:

Pastor Jesus’ applications for Casas Por Cristo to build for him again had not made it to the front of the pile yet so we were not able to build for him in 2005 We were asked to build a house for a family near Pastor Jesus’ JEM campus area. Pastor Jesus came out and worked with us (team of 12) every day. He didn’t have to. He liked us and we liked him. We were becoming friends, not just the suburban people who came down to serve. We continued to be exposed to him and his family’s amazing faith. They still had not given up on their dreams.

Summer 2006:

Again, we (14 of us) built a house for a random Juarez family and Pastor Jesus allowed us to sleep in his sanctuary at night. We were able to help him with some bathrooms he was putting in at night when we returned from working on the house we were building. Pastor Jesus was building bathrooms for the mission trip teams that he believed would be coming down to stay with them in the future. “What missions teams?” we thought. He was building something that he had no guarantee for. No one was coming down to work at JEM, no one knew of them. And Casas Por Cristo still had a long waiting line until they would be able to help JEM Ministries again. But it was that kind of faith that finally gripped our hearts on this trip. After building a random house for the second year, we began to realize that we were blessing just one family. By partnering with JEM Ministries we would impact not only one family, but a whole community. We weren’t leading people closer to Jesus…we weren’t empowering change…we were just building houses…we were offering well water, not living water, as Jesus called it to the Samaritan woman. Building home in Juarez is a noble task, a great Godly task. But we realized that if we were to bring real influence to an area, we had to first influence the influencers that lived there. So the day we left for Cincinnati, we made a pact on our team. We would only return to Juarez next year to build for Pastor Jesus. To not work with and for such a unique, amazing man was a tragedy in itself. And since no local missions organization could help with the such a mammoth orphanage/trade school project, we’d have to go in on our own. And that’s what we did.

Summer 2007:

Pastor Jesus laughed when we told him we were bringing down 3 different teams (of 15 people each) to build his orphanage/trade school during the summer of 2007. “I always knew you would play this role,” he said. “I just knew it would take time for you to realize it as well.” Thank goodness he built those bathrooms. JEM Ministries was growing over the years. They had many regular and annual outreaches to the community and their church was seeing spiritual and physical growth. So we headed down in June and July. The Week 1 team did the foundation for the 6000 square foot orphanage. Week 2 did the framing downstairs and Week 3 did the upstairs framing. Locals from Juarez did the block work around the orphanage. The progress was amazing at the end of the summer. Within the colossal 12,000 square foot plans our free architect had drawn up, we had the outside shell of half of it. Still much work to do, but the hardest part was behind us.

Summer 2008 and Beyond:

Pastor Jesus and his wife work multiple jobs to support the ministry, leaving their own family below the poverty line. Our hope is to continue our support this summer with yearly trips. There is still tons of stuff to do…offices and classrooms to build separate from the main buildings and plenty of orphans to build into. We are currently working on a plan to furnish the orphanage and begin helping Pastor Jesus find ongoing financial and physical support to run this ministry the right way. Pastor Jesus is very open to full time and part time interns down at the orphanage. Again, there is always work to be done. Our dream is that other churches would join us in supporting this amazing ministry. To us, this has been one of the biggest blessings our church has ever experienced.