FLORIDA CITY — When Hurricane Andrew ripped through Florida City in 1992, it tore down more than physical walls, said Kim King Torres, director of the Branches Outreach Ministry. The barriers between languages and cultures also came down, allowing Florida City United Methodist Church to respond to the needs of its own neighborhood, a community in transition both culturally and economically, says Torres.
   
“Florida City United Methodist Church was a small, all-white church in a multi-cultural and poor community,” Torres said. “Hurricane Andrew…allowed the church to see the needs of the community.”
   
The church discovered that many of the neighborhood’s children who speak English as a second language were struggling in school because of the language problem or because they had no one at home to help them with their homework. They also needed a place to go after school. Their families needed help surviving.
   
Now, children and youth from the community around the church gather after school at the Branches Outreach Ministry for help with homework, games, crafts and Bible study. Twice each month, many of the same kids travel to the Everglades Farmworker Villages to work with and witness to the migrant farmworker families living there.
   
The outreach ministry began in the summer of 1993 when a mission team from St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Orlando, held a week-long vacation Bible school at the Florida City church. “The first day there were no kids since there were no kids in the church,” Torres said. “By the end, there were 50 kids. The people loved having kids in the church.”
   
A little more than a year later, the church had an after-school program one day a week and a grant that allowed members to hire Torres full time. The after-school program grew to four days per week, and Torres started a youth Bible study program for sixth- through 12th-graders.
   
This July, Branches Outreach Ministry was awarded a $5,000 grant from the conference’s Council of Bishops’ Initiative on Children and Poverty (BICAP) endeavor, allowing the ministry to expand. “The [BICAP] grant allows us to provide more transportation by van and to buy more food and curriculum,” Torres said.
   
Today, the ministry’s youth aren’t just learning and receiving, but giving back to the community, too. Many of the youth participate in monthly field trips and mission projects, including leading crafts and other activities for the children at the Everglades Villages. “The [Branches] kids can be a witness about who they are and where they’ve been, since many of them grew up in the [migrant] camps,” Torres said.
   
Additionally, the Branches ministry is helping strengthen families in the largely unchurched community. Torres said she is intentional about inviting parents to get involved in youth activities, “like trips, soccer games, service programs and family barbecues.”
   
Branches also offers parenting and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes at the church. “[The church] is a safe place for people to come,” Torres said. “People who have problems with transportation, child care, or whose citizenship status might be questionable don’t want to go to the government centers.”
   
In addition to the grants and support from local churches, Torres receives money from the denomination’s General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM). She was named an official Church and Community Worker with the GBGM and assigned her own Advance number, #982904-4.

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 © 1998 Florida United Methodist Review Online