Documentary focuses on life and ministry of Feliberto Pereira at the Texas/Mexico border
A new half-hour documentary on the life and 40-year ministry of the Rev. Feliberto Pereira will premiere on Saturday at a workshop hosted by Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries.
The documentary, The Many Faces of Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries, was shot in high-definition by Dallas videographers Scott and Cindy Causey earlier this year. Release of the documentary comes one year after the publication of Pereira’s inspirational memoir, I Was A Stranger: Hope for a Hidden World (Brown Books, 2008).
“The Lord has blessed our ministry so much, and I am without words to describe this latest blessing,” Pereira said. “This program will help us describe what the Lord has been doing for the refugees and the poor in the Rio Grande Valley and Mexico through Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries and its hundreds of volunteers, our angels.”
The documentary will be shown at a workshop entitled I Was A Stranger that begins at 3:45 p.m. Saturday in Room 106 of the Indiana Convention Center. The workshop will feature a festive movie premier atmosphere with balloons and popcorn for all attendees. DVD copies of the documentary will be available at the Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries table in the Exhibit Hall for a suggested donation to the ministry. The DVD is ideal for Sunday School classes, study or book groups and private DVD collections. Pereira’s memoir will also be available for purchase.
The Causeys, long-time Disciples from Dallas, were inspired to shoot the new documentary after reading Pereira’s inspirational story. Pereira is a Cuban refugee who escaped the prison camps of Fidel Castro aboard a Freedom Flight and has devoted 30 years of his ministry to serving refugees and asylum seekers—“strangers” in whose shoes he once walked—at the Texas/Mexico border at Brownsville.
The Causeys will fly from Dallas on Friday to attend Saturday’s premiere.
Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries (SWGSM) was founded in 1985 in Los Fresnos, Texas, to provide assistance to people in need, especially refugees and asylum seekers from Central America, Cuba and other countries in political turmoil. SWGSM is now a member institution of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the Southwest Region.
The mission of Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries is to teach the love of Jesus Christ by building a renewed sense of wholeness and dignity and by standing with those who are broken, especially among refugees and those who are disenfranchised and displaced. The Good News of salvation is lived out by addressing spiritual and material needs, including emergency shelter and food, clothing, transportation, legal aid, advocacy and job referral through a cooperative effort with other agencies and religious organizations.
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Contact: Chris Kelley, 214-457-5266
