This Sunday: Meet Frontera de Cristo

You’re Invited: A Special Visit This Sunday

By Jay Weaver
Miami Shores Presbyterian Church Deacon

When the national Presbyterian Church shut down its foreign missionaries last year due to financial problems, the jolt reverberated from the U.S.-Mexico border all the way to Miami Shores.

The couple who operated the Frontera de Cristo ministry, which has had ties to the Miami Shores Presbyterian Church for years, lost their jobs along with more than 50 other missionary “co-workers” around the globe.

Mark Adams and his wife, Miriam Maldonado Escobar, had devoted their lives to working with churches on the Southwest border to help migrants.

They didn’t see the end coming.

“It was pretty stunning to realize that a 41-year old relationship ended in such a unilateral way without any consultation,” Adams said, referring to the national Presbyterian Church’s closing of the World Mission agency and its defunding of Frontera de Cristo in March 2025.

Adams, the U.S. coordinator for Frontera de Cristo, will visit the Miami Shores Presbyterian Church over the weekend of Sept. 26-27 to share how the border ministry not only survived the shock of the World Mission’s closure but was recreated through a partnership with two Presbyterian congregations along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Rev. Valdir Franca, bridge pastor of the Miami Shores Presbyterian Church, described Adams as a “tremendous spiritual force who has had an extraordinary impact on the lives of thousands of people at the border.”

In May, the Presbytery de Cristo and Presbytery Grand Canyon commissioned Adams and his wife as co-workers of the Frontera de Cristo ministry, allowing them to resume nearly 30 years of service together in Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora.

Adams said the Presbyterian Church’s decision to close its foreign missions that led to layoffs of 54 co-workers including him and his wife seemed like a death knell at the time.

“Being thrown into this uncertainty made us wonder: Is this where we’re supposed to be? Is this what God wants us to be?”

Adams credited his wife with uplifting his spirits and seeing a way forward for Frontera de Cristo.

She told him: “This is an opportunity for faith to flourish.”

Adams said he was grateful for the grassroots support of Presbyterian congregations at the border and around the country, along with lay supporters, noting their financial backing has enabled Frontera de Cristo to continue providing social and spiritual services to migrants. (Miami Shores Presbyterian Church donates $1,000 a year to Frontera de Cristo as well as the proceeds of its online sales of the ministry’s Mexican-grown Cafe Justo/Just Coffee.)

“It was absolutely amazing to see how the congregations responded,” Adams said. “This ministry on the U.S.-Mexico border was too important to let go.”

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Adams, 55, grew up in South Carolina as a member of the Presbyterian Church and thought he would become a teacher after graduating from college. He admitted that he struggled with his faith in God while living in the segregated South. But after doing some missionary work on the Southwestern border, he found his calling and enrolled in a seminary school in Georgia.

After he graduated and was ordained in 1998, Adams returned to the border and became a co-worker for Frontera de Cristo. There, he met Maldonado, 50. After working alongside her husband for several years, she became a mission co-worker in 2011. They have three children, ages 18, 22, and 30.

Adams has visited the Miami Shores Presbyterian Church in the past and preached at other congregations during his long tenure with Frontera de Cristo.

He said he sees the ministry as a bridge rather than the wall that continues to rise along the border between Mexico and the United States. His abiding goal is to “cultivate cross-border relationships.”

“One of the things I love about this ministry is that we work with people of faith backgrounds or no faith backgrounds at all,” he said. “I enjoy that this is a ministry that works with a wide variety of folks.”

By Jay Weaver

Photo Credit: Eric Ledermann