By Grayson Hester
For many Americans, “Venezuela” has become a symbol for their anxieties about government overreach and the policies they deem as radical. It is often used as shorthand for unchecked government control, corruption and societal collapse.
For millions of immigrants in the United States, however, Venezuela represents something deeply personal. It is their homeland—a place they were forced to leave, yet still hold close in their hearts. It is the country where they were born and to which they hope to one day return. It is a once-thriving nation brought to heel by greedy politicians and opportunistic oligarchs. It is not the Venezuelan people’s fault that the country to which they swore allegiance did not reciprocate the loyalty.
Neither is it an easy decision to flee. But millions—including Yosenderi in 2023—have done just that. “My sister-in-law, my husband, daughter and two other families came with us,” she said. “It was not easy.”
Yosenderi and her family came to the United States for the same reasons scores of other refugees do: They wanted what any person, any family, wants—opportunity, freedom, health, happiness. If they could have found those things in Venezuela, they would not have left. It is not a decision casually made or a journey easily completed. In fact, it is often—too often—lethal.
While the seven-country-long trek is never particularly safe, its danger reaches a fever pitch along the infamous Daríen Gap. It’s a stretch of jungle between Panama and Colombia that claims lives and reverses fortunes with casual indifference. It’s relentlessly trying. It’s also unavoidable.
“You have to sleep in camps where snakes were coming out, people screaming,” Yosenderi said. “And the more we walked, the more we found dead people everywhere.”
People are kidnapped. They perish from hunger or exhaustion or hopelessness or some combination of the three. They are murdered. The jungle takes them. They become separated, sometimes irretrievably. Some make it. Many don’t.
The unfeeling violence of the wilderness slithers along the floor of human malevolence at every stage of the passage. And while its iterations may seem novel, its existence is nothing new. For one group of people, it’s Pharaoh and the desert; for another, it’s a president and the jungle.
Whether cruelty manifests itself as a snake bite or a noxious policy, in the Hebrew Scriptures or on the nightly news, its effect is the same—a violation of the image of God.
Fortunately, then as now, malignancy is not the full story. Death does not have the last word.
Yosenderi’s family and throngs of other families found help from strangers—20 pesos here, a car ride there. Due in no small part to this assistance, they made it to the U.S.-Mexico border at Brownsville, Texas. While their troubles did not magically cease upon the crossing—they had to sleep in various shelters for months, subsisting off crumbs of grace and food—their prospects brightened all the same.
And along the way of seeking a better life, Yosenderi unexpectedly found something else, too: a passion.
“She has become the leader and organizer of the volunteers in the respite center of Golan House of Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville with Pastor Carlos Navarro,” said CBF field personnel Elket Rodríguez, who also serves as Global Migration Advocate for CBF Global Missions.
Rodriguez, whether in the heat of America’s border or the bluster of America’s capital, dedicates his life to helping migrant families like Yosenderi. He uses his legal expertise to plead their case in the halls of power and he uses his organizational leadership skills to connect immigrants with reliable information, resources and community in the streets of cities like Brownsville. His is a comprehensive advocacy, both systemic and interpersonal, and it embodies CBF’s commitment to integral mission. And the fruits of this work truly speak for themselves.
“Yosenderi is finding that in service, she can express herself and show her love to other migrants and other asylum seekers,” he said.
By connecting Yosenderi to a leadership opportunity, Rodríguez helped clear the way for her to thrive. “Elket has helped me a lot,” she said. “I volunteer here in the church; I arrange the clothes. I help to distribute the food that is given to the immigrants, and it feels very nice to do what they did for me.”
The help she and her family received upon entering the country is now the help she extends to others who are walking a similar path. It provides her with purpose, and it provides other asylum-seekers with the things they need, both material and spiritual.
This isn’t simply paying it forward; it’s building the Kingdom of Heaven, one meal and one stitch and one conversation at a time.
“Yosenderi is an asylum-seeker who actually is helping other asylum-seekers in their journeys.
And she’s passionate about what she does,” Rodríguez said. “Yosenderi has put her trust, not just in God, but in the people that God has put on her path.”
She trusted God all the way back in Venezuela when she and her family began to walk the same path Jesus and Joseph and Mary did thousands of years ago—the path of an asylum-seeker. She trusted God at every step of the perilous journey through Central America, following in the footsteps of formerly enslaved Jewish people, wandering similarly treacherous terrain, centuries ago. She trusted God when she and her family reached the border of an unfamiliar country, knocking on a nation’s doors with the same trembling hand as Naomi and Ruth and Orpah in times long past. And she now trusts God to continue making a way for her and her loved ones—wherever that may take her.
This story was originally published in Fellowship! Magazine. To read more stories like this or to order a print copy of the magazine, visit cbf.net/fellowship-magazine/